Black Lives Matter paid $1.8m to companies owned by founder's relatives

The Black Lives Matter foundation (BLM) paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to its co-founder's brother and the father of her child for security and "creative services", tax filings show.

The leaders of the racial justice movement received $90 million in donations amid the 2020 protests triggered by the police murder of George Floyd.

But its tax filings suggest the BLM foundation is still finding its footing and currently has no executive director or in-house staff.

The organisation has come under fire after its tax filing for the last fiscal year revealed it paid huge sums to a select group of consultants which included relatives or close associates of BLM's founders.

Among them was BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullor's brother, Paul Cullors, whose security firm was paid $840,000.

Trap Heals LLC, a company founded by Damon Turner, who fathered a child with Ms Cullors, received almost $970,000.

Meanwhile more than $2.1 million was paid to Bowers Consulting. The company's founder, Shalomyah Bowers, was recently named a board member of the BLM foundation.

"It comes across as an early startup nonprofit, without substantial governance structure in place, that got a huge windfall," said Brian Mittendorf, an accounting professor who focuses on nonprofit organisations.

"People are going to be quick to assume that mismatch reflects intent," he added.

Mr Mittendorf said the foundation's reliance on consultants is not unusual for newer nonprofits, but it had "set themselves up" for criticism and accusations of impropriety.

Mr Bowers said the contract with his firm was approved before he was a board member.

The foundation spent more than $37 million on grants, property, consultants, and other expenses, according to the tax documents filed with the IRS.

That includes nearly $6 million for a seven-bedroom property in Los Angeles intended for use as a “housing and studio space”.

Ms Cullors, who led the organisation for nearly six years, resigned last May amid it was reported she owed four homes.

In a recent interview with AP, she acknowledged the foundation was ill-prepared to handle the groundswell of support for the movement and its huge windfall of donations following Mr Floyd's high-profile killing in 2020.

The tax filing lists Ms Cullors as an uncompensated founder and executive director.

The filings reveal the foundation invested $32 million in stocks, which it says is intended to become an endowment to fund its future work.

It is the first public accounting of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation's finances and reveals it ended its last fiscal year - from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021 - with nearly $42 million in net assets.

For all the questions about its oversight, the BLM foundation's tax filing shows its stewards have not squandered donations.

Nearly $26 million, or 70 per cent of its expenses in the last fiscal year, were grants.

They included funding to family foundations created in memory of Mr Floyd, Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old boy whose 2013 killing spawned the BLM movement, and Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old killed by police in 2009.

Mr Bowers, the BLM foundation's board secretary, said its tax filing revealed it to be "the largest Black abolitionist non-profit organisation that has ever existed in the nation's history. What we're doing has never been done before".

He said the foundation will launch a "transparency and accountability center" on its website to make its financial documents available for public inspection.