Fidelity Won’t Let Fund Holders Donate to Southern Poverty Law Center

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Fidelity Won’t Let Fund Holders Donate to Southern Poverty Law Center

Fidelity cited the Justice Department’s recent lawsuit against the civil rights organization in emails to holders of its charitable-giving funds explaining its decision.

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Fidelity will no longer allow customers to donate to the Southern Poverty Law Center through charitable-giving funds.

Credit...

Brian Snyder/Reuters

By

Ron Lieber

April 29, 2026,

8:53 a.m. ET

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The country’s largest sponsor of donor-advised funds has cut off the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Last week, the Justice Department

indicted

the civil rights nonprofit on charges of committing financial crimes. Many of the center’s supporters immediately went online to donate money to help it fight the federal government.

But Fidelity told its customers, who have over 350,000 charitable giving accounts that allow them to maximize tax savings while giving money to eligible nonprofits, that they could not donate to the center through the accounts anymore.

“Fidelity Charitable is aware of an ongoing governmental investigation into Southern Poverty Law Center,” according to an email it sent to a donor. “Consistent with our grant-making standards and practices, the organization is not an eligible grant recipient during the ongoing investigation.”

Donor-advised funds

allow people to donate money — including appreciated investments — to a fund that resembles a personal mini-foundation and take a tax deduction that year.

You don’t have to give the money away all at once. You can parcel it out over time, as long as the entity administering the donor-advised fund is willing to push that donation to the nonprofit recipient. Usually, this is a rubber-stamp approval process for legal nonprofits like S.P.L.C.

A Fidelity spokesman declined to answer questions about how the suspension was applied, aside from pointing to language on its website. The website lists reasons that a grant recommendation “might” be declined, including if an organization “is being investigated for alleged illegal activities or noncharitable activities, such as terrorism, money laundering, hate crimes or fraud,” or if “other state and federal agencies” are investigating a charitable organization.

In 2023, the S.P.L.C.

criticized

Fidelity and other sponsors of donor-advised funds, including Vanguard, for acting as a “consistent and significant source of income for groups peddling a variety of hateful and extremist beliefs.” It specifically mentioned white nationalist, hard right and anti-LGBTQ+ groups.

In a recent “60 Minutes” interview, President Trump

said

, without providing evidence, that the racist rally in “Charlottesville was all funded” by the S.P.L.C. “It was done to make me look bad,” he added.

Last week’s indictment accused the S.P.L.C. of fomenting racism by paying informants that worked for hate groups. The organization

responded

by saying that the federal government had known about the payments and had used the intelligence provided by informants to enforce the law.

A Vanguard Charitable representative did not respond to requests for comment on whether it was barring its account holders from giving to the S.P.L.C. Charles Schwab did not comment; as of Wednesday morning, it was still possible for account holders to request a donation to the group.

Ron Lieber has been the

Your Money

columnist since 2008. His beat is beating the system.

See more on:

Fidelity Investments

,

Southern Poverty Law Center

,

Donald Trump

,

U.S. Justice Department

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