Conservative group loses quest to make sure Disney gives money to Turning Points USA, others

In the past decade, Disney has matched $113 million in employees’ donations, but one conservative group wants to make sure Turning Points USA and homeschoolers benefit from Mouse’s money.

That effort, however, has been thwarted by Disney shareholders, who overwhelmingly voted down a push by Bowyer Research to require Disney to report back on its employee-matched donations program.

Dana Tuggle, who represented Bowyer Research at the shareholder’s meeting, accused the company of not being transparent and having “arbitrary standards” to decide which organizations benefit from Disney’s philanthropy.

“Let’s get Disney away from biased corporate policies and back to creating more of those happy moments,” Tuggle said. 

Ultimately, Tuggle’s shareholder proposal only received 1% support from Disney shareholders during the annual company shareholders meeting Wednesday.

The vast majority of shareholders stood by Disney, which urged shareholders to reject Tuggle’s proposal. In a company filing, Disney called the proposal “materially false and misleading” and related to “matters that are not economically significant to the Company’s business.”

In brief remarks before the vote, Tuggle described herself as a longtime Disney shareholder and a theme park fan.

“Disney’s gift match policy should be politically and socially neutral. They shouldn’t recommend or restrict charities based on their religion or viewpoint,” Tuggle said. “We want to know, for example, whether Disney favors groups such as the Human Rights Campaign that subjects conservative organizations like Turning Point USA and Family Research Council to extra scrutiny to be eligible for charitable matching.”

Turning Points USA is an organization pushing conservative politics and was co-founded by Charlie Kirk, whose assassination made national headlines last year.

The Bowyer Research-backed proposal also accused Disney of excluding homeschool support organizations in its match giving.

Bowyer Research is run by investment firm manager Jerry Bowyer and his wife, who push conservative causes in corporate America, like fighting religious discrimination and rejecting climate change. A Bloomberg story last year described their goal is to empower conservative investors and pointed to their successes.

“Institutional Shareholder Services Inc., which influences how millions of shares are voted each year, offers Bowyer Research’s guidelines among its categories for voting. Egan Jones, another advisory firm, is doing the same for the first time this year,” the story said. “State-run funds in Republican-led Texas, Louisiana and Wyoming also are users of Bowyer Research.”