The Patriot Post® · BLM Is Broke

This past year was a tough one, financially speaking, for Black Lives Matter, the self-professed Marxist group that raked in huge profits in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd riots.

The Washington Free Beacon, which obtained a copy of the group’s 2022 tax return, reports: “Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation ran an $8.5 million deficit and saw the value of its investment accounts plummet by nearly $10 million in the most recent tax year, financial disclosures show. The group logged a $961,000 loss on a securities sale of $172,000, suggesting the charity weathered a staggering 85 percent loss on the transaction. These troubles didn’t stop BLM from doling out seven-figure contracts to friends and family of its former executive director Patrisse Cullors, who once said charity financial disclosures were ‘triggering’ and deeply unsafe.‘”

At a conference appearance in Washington state last April, Cullors tried to explain what was happening regarding some long-overdue scrutiny into the group’s finances:

There is a misinformation and disinformation effort to not just, um, challenge Black Lives Matter and the organization, but it’s an experiment. If they win, then it’s the next black-led organization, and then it’s the next black-led organization, and it’s the next black person who’s leading that. And so it’s so important that we pay attention to what’s happening. … They know what they’re doing, like, how to create the infighting, how to create the distrust. We have to stop it before they do it. We have to shut it down. We have to be showing up against it. … We are literally the experiment right now.

Apparently, BLM had something to hide. As the Free Beacon continued: “It’s no surprise that Cullors was so fearful of disclosing Black Lives Matter’s finances to the public. The revelations in Black Lives Matter’s latest Form 990 show that the group is on the fast track to financial insolvency, and that the excesses of Cullors’s tenure have not abated under her chosen successor, Shalomyah Bowers.”

Brian Mittendorf, a professor of accounting at Ohio State University, was interviewed by Newsweek about BLM’s financial troubles. “This does not necessarily mean the organization is headed toward insolvency,” Mittendorf said. “However, if their revenues continue as they are after the windfall from 2020-2021, they cannot maintain the spending level from 2022 indefinitely, so the organization would need to shrink its spending footprint to be sustainable.”

The Claremont Institute has compiled a database to track how much money has made its way into the pockets of the Black Lives Matter organization. As our Emmy Griffin has noted, business has been very good for the racial grievance industry, at least until recently.

As Griffin reported in March: “Black Lives Matter has taken up the Marxist mantle and is incorporating a Jesse Jackson-style extortion scheme through which BLM threatens to call people racist and damage their reputations or businesses in order to get the funding it desires. The Claremont Institute has been able to track at least $82.9 BILLION in 'donations’ or ‘pledges’ by individuals and companies to BLM.”

With all these charitable millions and billions largely unaccounted for, is it any wonder that nonprofit organizations are losing the public’s trust?