Black Lives Matter partners with charity in sign of growth

LOS ANGELES -- Black Lives Matter, which two years ago grew out of street protests and a social-media hashtag, has established a legal partnership with a California charity, The Associated Press has learned.

The formal relationship between the national Black Lives Matter network and the San Francisco-based International Development Exchange represents another side of the loosely knit group many Americans recognize for its sometimes-disruptive demonstrations against police shootings of unarmed black men.

Since November, the not-for-profit charity also known as IDEX has been acting as a mostly unseen financial arm of Black Lives Matter, with the ability to receive grants and tax-deductible donations on the group's behalf.

More recently, the relationship evolved into a contractual partnership that will run through at least mid-2017.

IDEX is managing the group's financial affairs, allowing Black Lives Matter to focus on its mission, including building local chapters and experimenting with its organizational structure.

"We completely understand the network is in its baby stages, and it's going to take some years" to develop, IDEX Executive Director Rajasvini Bhansali said in an interview.

The goal, leaders said, is to seek social change in struggling communities in the U.S. as well as in Asia, South America and Africa, where the charity has operated for years.

The partnership links the national protest movement, which has chapters in nearly 40 U.S. cities and several more abroad, with a small charity that has worked with the needy on several continents. IDEX collected about $2 million in contributions and grants in the year ending June 2015, according to federal tax records.

"We've connected people across the country working to end the various forms of injustice impacting black people," Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza said in a statement.

The organization needed to partner with an organization that "can support us as we build these connections on a global scale."

It's not clear what the partnership will mean for the overall direction of Black Lives Matter, which has been alternately praised and derided for its confrontational tactics.

The agreement comes at a time when Black Lives Matter and a constellation of related groups are receiving a surge of donations and pledges of financial support.

Together, they are seeking reforms such as remaking the prison system, adopting universal health care and offering free college education.

For example, the Ford Foundation, working with the Borealis Philanthropy organization, hopes to attract as much as $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition with ties to dozens of groups, including the Black Lives Matter network. Grammy-winning singer The Weeknd said last month he is donating $250,000 to the Black Lives Matter movement.

"It's not a time for donors to sit back and criticize," said Leah Hunt-Hendrix, co-founder and executive director of Solidaire, an alliance supporting progressive political causes that has invested about $800,000 over two years in various groups in the movement.

"We still live in this legacy of drastic exploitation and marginalization and violence," Hunt-Hendrix said. "If we are ever going to address racism in America, this is the time and this is the opportunity."

A key aspect of the agreement involves exchanging information and building potential alliances between Black Lives Matter and IDEX's partners overseas. The idea is for the groups and movements to learn from each other.

Black Lives Matter has agreed to make donations to IDEX's partners in Zimbabwe and South Africa, in lieu of an administrative fee for the charity's services, Bhansali said.