After searching awhile for a BLM Annual Report or a Statement of Sources and Uses of Funds or a Balance Sheet or an Income Statement, I gave up. There aren’t any such reports.
It seems that BLM is not an IRS charitable organization, not a 501(c)(3) charity. This is confirmed by several fact-checking sites.
Meanwhile there are reports that BLM is awash in cash donations. The money passes through several other organizations before reaching BLM. Their obligations are murky too. Their monitoring of BLM is completely hidden, that is, if such monitoring even exists. We do not know that either. It is very much to be doubted because no reports about BLM have been forthcoming at any time in the life of BLM from BLM itself or from those accepting money on its behalf.
Under these conditions, BLM’s central committee can use the funds for whatever purposes it wants to. It can absorb any amount of funds in “expenses” that it wants to. It enjoys a setup that provides it with unchecked uses of funds from unnamed sources.
The BLM financial situation is one that’s fertile ground for scandals involving disappearance of funds, misuse of funds for personal purposes, and misuse of funds for purposes that donors would not approve of. It’s a situation rife with the possibility of serious fraud.
Any publicly-held company that is donating to BLM is acting irresponsibly in providing any funds whatsoever to an unaccountable setup like BLM. They should be open to shareholder lawsuits for breaching their fiduciary and other responsibilities.
If BLM has any controls over what its chapters or chapter members do or say, they haven’t made this apparent either. Who speaks for BLM? Who decides who gets what money? Who decides what BLM stands for?
All of this is murky and it adds another layer of non-transparency to BLM.
Anyone who gives money to BLM or even endorses them is taking a great deal on faith. Is such faith warranted? Is such faith reasonable? There would have to be some signs that encouraged trust in BLM. Are there any? The signs noted above lead to the exact opposite conclusion. It is unreasonable to trust BLM, and this is without examining BLM’s founders or their recent roles as activists and agitators.
ADDENDUM. I’ve been sent a discussion on YouTube that goes into this or related material. That’s here. The financial discussion starts around 44 minutes in. The entity that fronts for BLM, the speaker picks up right away, has very large “consulting” fees and travel expenses relative to its size. After a few minutes, the speaker notes that the statements do not provide information about the grants being made. Anyway, this video, unknown to me, likewise raises questions about BLM from the financial angle.
Addendum 2: A retired CPA notes 2 more problem areas that I didn’t mention. One is that without internal accounting, dissension and envy arise, along with public accusations of graft by informers. A second area is taxation. Without going into details, let’s just say that a number of pitfalls await BLM if they are not meticulous about their records and the tax laws. This goes for recipients of their distributions too.
3:28 pm on June 25, 2020
