Schwab Affiliate Halts Customer Donations to Southern Poverty Law Center

Source: New York Times

Schwab Affiliate Halts Customer Donations to Southern Poverty Law Center

Fidelity's and Vanguard's donor-advised fund entities have taken similar actions since a Justice Department indictment of the civil rights group.


Donor-advised funds let people create accounts, put donations in them, and take a tax deduction for the full amount that year. Then, they can parcel out donations to charities over time. Charles Krupa/Associated Press

By Ron Lieber
https://www.nytimes.com/by/ron-lieber
Ron Lieber welcomes tips from donor-advised fund insiders at nytimes.com/tips.
May 1, 2026

The donor-advised fund affiliated with Charles Schwab, DAFgiving360, has suspended account holders' ability to give money to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group. ... Last week, the Justice Department indicted the group and accused it of financial crimes. This week, the donor-advised funds that bear Fidelity's and Vanguard's names also cut the group off.

A spokeswoman for the Schwab-affiliated fund said, "If a governing body of a charity declares an investigation into a charity it oversees, DAFgiving360 may suspend grants to the organization." She would not provide a list of other organizations that it has suspended. ... Donor-advised funds allow individuals to create accounts, donate cash or securities into them and take a tax deduction for the full amount that year. Then they can parcel out donations to charities and other nonprofits over many years.

"Giving to your favorite charity has never been easier" is the language that DAFgiving360 uses on its website. Charles Schwab lists the account balance right next to investment account balances on its own website. ... DAFgiving360 is also careful, however, to use specific language that gets to the legal reality of how the funds work. Users can "recommend" grants to "eligible" charities, for example, which means DAFgiving360 controls the money and the account holder is technically just advising.

This is almost never a practical issue for account holders; donor-advised funds generally rubber-stamp donation requests. But in the wake of the criminal indictment, which accused the S.P.L.C. of paying informants money that contributed to the extremism that it opposes, President Trump said he believed that the S.P.L.C. was behind the racist Charlottesville, Va., riots in 2017. ... Mr. Trump did not provide evidence for his allegations against the center. And many Fidelity and Vanguard customers are furious about the move against the S.P.L.C.

{snip}

Ron Lieber has been the Your Money columnist since 2008. His beat is beating the system.
https://www.nytimes.com/by/ron-lieber

A version of this article appears in print on May 2, 2026, Section B, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Schwab Affiliate Halts Donation to Civil Rights Group. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/business/schwab-donations-southern-poverty-law-center.html

If you're investing with Schwab, Fidelity or Vanguard, you should probably look elsewhere because the people running them think the Trump investigations of SPLC are legit.

That's a warning sign that they are dumber than dirt. Get your money out before they invest it in raw milk futures or something

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) 2026-05-01T23:09:24.726Z

NEW: Schwab's donor-advised fund operation has cut off donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center, just like Fidelity and Vanguard did. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/b...

— Ron Lieber (@ronlieber.bsky.social) 2026-05-01T16:05:37.089Z