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Black Lives Matter Pledges: Where are we now?

According to our BLM Tracker, American corporations have pledged $60 billion in memory of George Floyd, mainly to support Black businesses and communities. One year later, we can only identify roughly $250 million in actual dollars spent. 

Also see:

Request the Commission develop mandatory rules for public companies to disclose high-quality, comparable, decision-useful information concerning BLM Pledge fulfillment. https://www.sec.gov/comments/4-774/4-774.htm

BLACK LIVES MATTER: CORPORATE AMERICA HAS PLEDGED $1.678 BILLION SO FAR. June 10, 2020. https://www.blackenterprise.com/black-lives-matter-corporate-america-has-pledged-1-678-billion-so-far/

Valuable Changemaking for Remote Washington Semester Program Interns. https://www.american.edu/news/20200825-washington-semester-program.cfm

Six Companies Account for 70% of Corporate Black Lives Matter Pledges. https://youtu.be/t7aqn7oGGj0

$50 Billion And A Year Later The World Still Searches For Accountability After George Floyd’s Death. https://tpinsights.com/2021/05/24/50-billion-and-a-year-later-the-world-still-searches-for-accountability-after-george-floyds-death/

American companies pledged $50 billion to Black communities. Most of it hasn’t materialized. https://fortune.com/2021/05/06/us-companies-black-communities-money-50-billion/

Are CEOs living up to the pledges they made after George Floyd’s murder? https://creativeinvest.com/FinTimesMay2021.pdf

It Turns Out, All Those 'Woke' White Allies Were Lying https://www.theroot.com/it-turns-out-all-those-woke-white-allies-were-lying-1846959017

This week, a number of entities claim to have met their BLM commitments. See:

Wells Fargo Fulfills Commitment to Invest $50 Million in 13 Black-Owned Banks: https://www.washingtoninformer.com/wells-fargo-completes-investments-in-13-black-owned-banks-fulfilling-50-million-pledge-made-in-2020/

LISC's Black Economic Development Fund hits $250 million goal, makes first catalytic investments in Black-led banks, real estate developers. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/liscs-black-economic-development-fund-hits-250-million-goal-makes-first-catalytic-investments-in-black-led-banks-real-estate-developers-301300064.html

Bank of America, Wells Fargo Hit Minority Investment Targets: The banking giants have fulfilled pledges made last year to boost investment in minority-owned banks and businesses. https://www.bankingexchange.com/news-feed/item/8719-bank-of-america-wells-fargo-hit-minority-investment-targets

A few things to note:

1. Investments in intermediaries (Venture Capital (VC) funds, banks, community development entities, etc.) are less valuable than direct investments in Black communities and people. Large white financial institutions face two problems: 1.) They do not know enough Black people to effectively deploy large amounts of capital to the Black community and 2.) Of the ones they do know, they don't trust them. Hence their desire to use intermediaries.

2. This is the issue with using banks and other financial institutions as the key capital distribution pipeline: added temporal lags and fees reduce social impact.

We have, since 1994, outlined a number of ways to either reduce or eliminate these lags while increasing social impact. See: https://creativeinvest.com/minwage.html and https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NPVp3lX7VztsBwe_Uv3KvaZR74Azrj9M/view?usp=sharing

In this case, we have designed and outlined a Black Lives Matter (BLM) Corporate Pledge Trust to hold and manage the BLM IOU's corporations have issued. The BLM Trust would be an independent and objective body designed to monitor and account for the performance of corporate and non-profit entities.

Our most recent BLM Pledge database update, to be released next week, will certainly see an increase in the $250 million identified as spent or available, the revision will not come close to the total dollar amount pledged, $60 billion, and is, therefore, still suspect.

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