How can my business participate?

Your business can participate in two ways: Membership and Sponsorship

Members participate by taking the Pledge, advertising their participation and evangelizing to their peers the need for the Pledge. Because customer accounts are frequently subject to nondisclosure, PledgeNoHate.tech doesn’t require participating businesses to disclose which customers, if any, they have identified on the SPLC Extremist Groups list. Rather, participating business Members are asked to help build a community of practice around the implementation and evaluation of PledgeNoHate.tech as they execute it at scale. Share how and why, help other businesses understand the need for PledgeNoHate.tech, and convey to customers the urgency of the commitment to the Pledge is what will move Membership forward. PledgeNoHate.tech is not an evaluation entity, it is a facilitation entity for greater action.

Sponsors are those businesses that have given additional fiscal support to the administrative, content creation, technology and operational costs of running PledgeNoHate.tech on an annual basis. This will enable growth and additional actions over time – in 2023-2024, our sponsors are critical participants in helping defray the startup costs of PledgeNoHate.tech.

PledgeNoHate.tech is centered on the individual businesses that take the pledge, and the elements of their customer engagement that they can directly control. As more businesses commit to the Pledge, evangelize their participation, and educate their customers, the aggregate community created through these businesses is what propels PledgeNoHate.tech as an interconnected movement. Over time, through a community of practice formed from the businesses engaged with the Pledge, a burgeoning advisory board to PledgeNoHate.tech, and additional content for those businesses that dive deeper into additional areas such as external relationships and partnerships, discrimination, individuals from the SPLC Extremist Files, and supply chains, we hope to create a means to additionally identify these actions as part of the greater PledgeNoHate.tech movement. However, the core Pledge is the starting point.

What does PledgeNoHate.tech cost?

Beginning in mid-2024, new businesses joining as Pledge Members will be asked to contribute a $199 fee to cover the administrative actions associated with membership year-over-year, including a brief meeting with PledgeNoHate.tech to review how and where they will be applying their membership inside their business.

Upon renewal in 2025, all 2023 Founding Members and 2024 Members will be asked to contribute the annual membership fee of $199 in order to obtain a 2025 Member badge. Badges are distributed annually to ensure that the value of membership is retained year over year while preventing businesses from taking the Pledge a single time and not revisiting it.

What can I do with PledgeNoHate.tech?

Your PledgeNoHate.tech annual Membership badge is a starting point: a floor, not a ceiling. Your business may actively evangelize your participation with your customers, talk about the value the Pledge brings to your organization, and utilize it as a means by which employees, especially those from underrepresented communities, can have agency in their work with your customers.

PledgeNoHate.tech is a customer-facing promise that your business is committed to ensuring that your application, services, platform, and other online technologies are not sold to organizations that have been identified by SPLC as enabling the most extreme actions in the United States. It’s another tool in the CSR toolbelt for you to also move forward conversations with your own staff, especially staff whose lives and livelihoods are affected by the organizations on the SPLC Extremist Groups list. You are empowered to consider it a means to represent your culture internally, and values externally, of your business.

Why just the United States?

A key challenge that businesses have faced with extremist organizations is having an evaluation baseline for the outcomes they produce. Businesses that have tried to create these means internally frequently run into complications of scale, maintenance, and growth of these standards. The SPLC Extremist Groups list is currently focused only on organizations inside the United States. As similar lists are created and identified that respect the social and economic structures of other countries, they can, and may, be incorporated into PledgeNoHate.tech.

What about freedom of faith and speech?

PledgeNoHate.tech focuses on outcomes, not speech. Freedom of speech and worship are essential to a functioning democracy. PledgeNoHate.tech is not intended to be a barrier to working with organizations that express their beliefs and values through speech, press, assembly and/or petition. Rather, it focuses on actions taken, which is why it leverages the SPLC Extremist Groups list.

Many businesses have asked if PledgeNoHate.tech applies to faith communities and religious institutions, and it does not: these institutions are guaranteed freedom of expression and often do important and life-changing work in their communities.

The American Civil Liberties Union has an in-depth discussion on freedom of speech and expression that covers these distinctions.

What’s the future of PledgeNoHate.tech?

2023 and 2024 are very much focused on PledgeNoHate.tech’s “startup” mode in the United States. Throughout 2024, we’re hoping to develop an advisory body for PledgeNoHate.tech composed of participating business members and key organizations in the United States that work with issues related to extremism. In addition, we anticipate helping participating business members build content for internal and external use, and foster a community of business leaders who are both attenuated to extremism and capable of peer-based education.

How is PledgeNoHate.tech administered?

PledgeNoHate.tech is administered via the Impact Partners Network and Three Little Birds Agency. Your business is invited to join the Network at community.impactpartners.network, inside which is both a General Information page and discussion group for businesses participating in PledgeNoHate.tech. PledgeNoHate.tech is as much about building a community of businesses and community-developed best practices leveraging the Pledge as it is creating education and enablement for businesses to understand how extremism is represented in the United States.