DEI finally getting ditched by corporate charities: Heres what theyre pivoting towards instead

The latest trend in corporate philanthropy signals that bosses and boards are finally retraining their focus on what the country actually needs – and it’s a welcome shift away from the woke DEI agenda that has dominated for years, On The Money has learned.In the past six months alone, Google, AT&T, Lowe’s, Meta (the owner of Facebook and Instagram) and Larry Fink’s BlackRock announced they are pumping tens of millions of dollars into various programs to train people in the “skilled trades” – plumbers, mechanics, electricians, pipe fitters and iron workers.To be sure, these corporate behemoths aren’t shelling out all of this cash just to make the world a better place.AT&T says it needs blue-collar tradesmen to expand its high-speed fiber network to support AI buildout.

Indeed, the need to support AI infrastructure is at the heart of the need for skilled laborers.AI still hasn’t automated plumbing and iron work, and it might never.These are also good-paying jobs – many of them in the six figures – that will be earned by people who need to save for retirement.

So you can understand why BlackRock, a major provider of retirement plans, might also be interested in this.That said, it’s nice to see big corporations backing something that’s concrete and hard to argue with.That’s after years of plowing funds into useless nonprofits that graded companies on the intersectionality of their workers, or how they measured up to obtuse environmental standards.And yes, it’s about time.

Since the social justice movement ramped up in 2020, corporate philanthropy has veered absurdly left.The controversial (and some would say, financially suspect) Black Lives Matter movement received funding at the expense of charities devoted to helping vets, as I discovered in researching my book on corporate wokeness, “Go Woke Go Broke: The Inside Story on the radicalization of Corporate America.”  A public backlash coupled with turnover at the White Hou...