Unilever is probing the finances of Ben & Jerry’s charitable foundation with a focus on its grants to progressive and pro-Palestinian groups, including to an organization with ties to two of the foundation’s trustees, people familiar with the matter said.
It’s the latest escalation of long-running tensions between Ben & Jerry’s and its corporate parent over the creamery’s progressive bent. Unilever is spinning off its ice cream division, which includes Ben & Jerry’s, into a standalone company.
As part of that process, Unilever plans to audit the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, according to a letter sent earlier this month to the foundation’s president, Jeff Furman, and seen by Semafor. The results “will inform decisions as to future funding of the foundation by Unilever and, post-separation, by” the new company, called Magnum.
Unilever has given the foundation between $1 million and $6 million annually since it bought Ben & Jerry’s in 2000. The nonprofit funds hundreds of left-leaning groups.
Unilever executives have privately identified a series of grants to the Oakland Institute, a nonprofit that promotes global aid and is critical of the World Bank and Israel, the people said. One Ben & Jerry’s Foundation trustee, Anuradha Mittal, is a salaried employee and founder of the Oakland Institute, which has received more than $200,000 from the foundation since 2016, according to tax filings. Furman, the foundation’s president, is an unpaid adviser to the institute, other tax filings show.
