Before its collapse, Silicon Valley Bank gave over $70 million to Black Lives Matter, other woke causes: report

The report also highlighted that Signature Bank gave $850,000 to Black Lives Matter before folding.

(Article by Joseph Summers republished from LifeSiteNews.com)

A newly published report revealed that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) gave over $70 million dollars to Black Lives Matter (BLM) as well as to other woke causes.

The report was published by the conservative Claremont Institute, the organization announced in an op-ed published by Newsweek. The report also stated that Signature Bank gave $850,000 to BLM before it folded.

It is not clear how the donated money was used, though the Claremont Institute suggested that money used BLM’s parent organization, the Global Network, to invest millions of dollars to “support future operations, purchasing luxury real estate, engaging in nepotism, disbursing grants to dozens of BLM chapters and revolutionary organizations, and operating a PAC to ‘elect progressive community leaders, activists, and working-class candidates fighting for Black liberation’” could serve as a possible indication.

According to The Federalist, SVB pledged to increase its “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)” commitment in the workplace after the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020. Indeed, the bank stated in a DEI report that August that “Innovation is global and is touching every aspect of our lives, which is creating even more need for inclusiveness of ideas and approaches.”

“We are on a journey committed to increasing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in our workplace, with our partners and across the innovation economy,” the report continued.

A Corporate Responsibility Report released the same year detailed the company’s commitment to supporting “diversity” based on race and sex, and a cover letter attached to the report from CEO Greg Becker stated, “In recent months, we’ve expanded our philanthropic giving through corporate donations and employee matching programs … These programs focus on pandemic response, social justice, sustainability and supporting women, Black and Latinx emerging talent and other underrepresented groups.”

The report also detailed that the bank spent $2.8 million on “gender parity innovation” and “diverse emerging talent.”

Also in 2020, SVB launched a program called Missions, “a software platform designed to engage employees to act in support of the causes they care about most such as voter education and racial justice and equity,” in which employees donated $400,000 for “justice and equity for Black Americans,” the Post Millennial reported.

The following year, the bank reiterated its commitment to DEI, with a Corporate Proxy Statement holding “The Governance Committee’s focus on overall diversity continues in 2021, including on race/ethnicity and other underrepresented categories.”

The statement also detailed that the bank “responded” to Floyd’s death by “expanding opportunities for dialogue, including hosting over 40 small group ‘Conversation Circles’ in which over two-thirds of our employees participated in discussions about racial equity issues,” and how it made a deal with “Act One Ventures to launch The Diversity Term Sheet Rider for Representation at the Cap Table initiative, which advocates for venture capital firms to include in all of their term sheets a pledge to bring members of underrepresented groups into deals as co-investors.”

The statement further stated that SVB gave its employees “a week of volunteer events focused in part on racial equity, social justice and access to the innovation economy.”

A Corporate Responsibility Report published by the company that year also detailed that SVB intended to donate $50 million in its DEI program called Access to Innovation by 2025 “with a focus on women, Black and Latinx individuals.” In May of that year, the company also proposed a $11.5 billion community benefits plan in collaboration with the Greenling Institute, a leftist organization.

The bank also gave money to support “sustainability” goals such as a pledge in January 2022 of $5 billion “in loans, investments and other financing to support sustainability efforts,” according a statement released by the company. The year before, SVB reiterated a pledge of its Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) standards to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in an index given to the organization.

SVB’s ESG index directed to the WEF last year also stated that the company gave over $18 million to various nonprofits, amounts that are not included in the Claremont Institute’s report, according to the Post Millennial.

Speaking to The Federalist, Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, stated that SVB’s failure “is yet another indication that SVB was focused on woke virtue signaling instead of protecting their customers’ deposits.”

“Time after time we see the same pattern: companies that are the most concerned with ESG scores and woke politics do the worst jobs serving their customers,” Hild continued. “The rest of corporate America should learn from SVB’s failure now, before they are the next company to make headlines for comically poor management.”

SVB and Signature Bank are not the only banks that have collapsed since the start of the month. This week, the Swiss government bailed out Credit Suisse in an effort to stop the bank from collapsing.

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