Corporations Back Boy Scouts Despite Nondiscrimination Policies
September 19, 2012 | Read Time: 1 minute
Nearly two dozen of America’s biggest corporate donors, many of which have policies against supporting groups that discriminate based on sexuality, give money to the Boy Scouts of America or its chapters, according to The Colorado Independent.
Twenty-three of the 50 most generous U.S. corporate foundations, as ranked by the Foundation Center, donated a combined $3.6-million to the Boy Scouts in 2010, in amounts ranging from $10,000 to $700,000. The national Scouts organization bars membership or employment to “open or avowed homosexuals,” a policy it reaffirmed in July.
Several of the foundations, including those of Intel, Verizon, and U.S. Bank, either explicitly oppose support for groups that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or associate their giving rules with their corporate parents’ equal-opportunity policies.
Most of the foundations declined to tell The Independent whether they would continue to support the Boy Scouts in light of the July announcement. One company, UPS, said the charity’s gay ban would not affect its giving, which totaled $167,000 in 2010. A UPS spokeswoman said the firm has also donated millions of dollars to LGBT groups.
