Black Lives Matters Charity Paid Six Figures to Co-Founder’s Family Members - Report

Black Lives Matters started out as a social media hashtag following the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Later in 2013, the Black Lives Global Network Foundation was formed.

More details are coming out about questionable financial decisions by the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF), with massive payments going towards businesses owned by co-founder Patrisse Cullors’ family members.

According to tax filings, first reported on by the Associated Press and summarized by the New York Post, BLMGNF paid $840,000 to Cullors Protection LLC, a company formed in 2020 by Patrisse Cullors’ brother, Paul Cullors.

The organization also paid $970,000 to a company owned by the father of her children, Damon Turner, to produce live events. The company, Trap Heals, is a for-profit company that put on two live events in 2020, according to their website. According to the YouTube recap posted by Trap Heals, one of those events, “Malcolm Revisited,” was presented by Patrisse Cullors.

However, “Malcolm Revisited” was described as a virtual event at the time. It is unclear if that was the event BLMGNF paid Trap Heals for or if it was another event.

For comparison, BLMGNF paid only $200,000, less than a quarter it paid Trap Heals, to the Trayvon Martin Foundation. Martin was a 17-year-old who was shot and killed by neighborhood security watchman George Zimmerman, who claimed he shot the teenager in self defense. Zimmerman was found not guilty, leading to outrage across the country and sparking the Black Lives Matter movement.

According to the public filings, the first made by BLMGNF since its founding, the organization raked in $90,000,000 in 2020 alone. It paid out $25,997,945 in grants to other nonprofits.

The largest of those was a payment for $2,167,894 to Bowers Consulting firm, which is owned by a current BLMGNF board member, Shalomyah Bowers.

The biggest expenditure overall was $32 million invested in stocks. The organization says the investment will be used as an endowment to ensure the foundation’s work continues in the future.

According to the filings, Cullors was the only board member in 2020. She resigned after the organization became mired in controversy after reports emerged that she had spent more than $3 million on real estate. Cullors denied that the money for those properties came from BLMGNF funds and they do not show up on the organization’s tax filings.

But it was later revealed that the organization did purchase a $6 million mansion in Los Angeles. Cullors denied that she lived in the home or used it for personal purposes but did admit to throwing a party for her son there. She said she intended to pay BLMGNF a rental fee for the party, and the filings show she paid the organization $390 for two events at the property.

“[BLMGNF] reports having and regularly monitoring and enforcing a written conflict of interest policy,” Laurie Styron, executive director of Charity Watch told The Post, “[but] one person can’t monitor and enforce a conflict of interest policy over themselves. It’s frightening, isn’t it, to consider that this much taxpayer-subsidized public money was being overseen by only one person?”

The filing does not necessarily show any wrongdoing by the organization, but it does open a lot of questions. “Whether there’s anything improper here, that is another question.” Brian Mittendorf, a professor of accounting at Ohio State University told the Associated Press. “But whether they set themselves up for being criticized, I think that certainly is the case because they didn’t plug a bunch of those gaps.”

Local chapters of the BLM movement have been frustrated with the lack of transparency from the BLMGNF organization. “When resources came in, when opportunities came in, (the foundation) alone would be the ones to decide who was going to take advantage of them, without having to take any consideration of the other organizers whose work was giving them the access to these resources and opportunities in the first place,” YahNé Ndgo, a former organizer with the Philadelphia chapter of BLM told the AP.

According to the filings, Cullors was not paid a salary by BLMGNF. Bowers, who is one of three new board members, says that the foundation will launch a transparency section on its website soon.