Black Lives Matter received over $90M in donations last year

Posted: May 23, 2022 at 12:10 pm

The Black Lives Matter foundation has revealed it received more than $90 million in donations last year despite the movement being splintered by ongoing feuds about the lack of funding.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation announced the massive influx of money late Tuesday the very first time BLM has disclosed its finances in its nearly eight-year history.

With $8.4 million in expenses and $21.7 million committed to local chapters, the group ended 2020 with an approximate balance of $60 million, it stated in an impact statement.

We are no longer a small, scrappy movement. We are an institution, the foundation boasted.

We are entering spaces previously unimaginable.

The financial disclosure came amid heightened tensions in the network of activists with group of 10 chapters, called the #BLM10 and including ones in New Jersey and Hudson Valley, splitting in November while publicly ripping the main organization over financial transparency, decision making, and accountability.

To the best of our knowledge, most chapters have received little to no financial support from BLMGN since the launch in 2013, the 10-chapters insisted in a public demand for accountability.

That lack of funding came despite BLM getting donations from A-list celebrities such as Beyonc, Jay-Z and prior to his death in 2016 Prince, The Associated Press noted.

BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors the foundations executive director insisted that the financial boost in 2020 was radically different than previous years, however, without releasing further records.

Because the BLM movement was larger than life and it is larger than life people made very huge assumptions about what our actual finances looked like, Cullors told the AP.

We were often scraping for money, and this year was the first year where we were resourced in the way we deserved to be.

The donations exploded following the May 2020 death of George Floyd, whose death under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer sparked protests across the US and around the world, the foundation said.

That was matched by online interest, with the BLMGNF website getting a record 1.9 million visitors on June 2 an almost 5,000 percent increase over the most trafficked day in March, the report said.

BLM vowed to use the money to be more active.

Black folks have waited over 400 yearsto be seen, to be heard, to live in a world where their lives are fundamentally valued, the report stated.

Despite the strength of our movement, this has yet to happen. Our demands continue to go ignored. As the organization supporting this movement, weve decided that we will wait no longer.

Cullors told the AP that a key focus was now on a need to reinvest into black communities.

One of our biggest goals this year is taking the dollars we were able to raise in 2020 and building out the institution weve been trying to build for the last seven and a half years, she said in an interview.

With Post wires

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Black Lives Matter received over $90M in donations last year

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