For Some Social Watchdogs, Success is not an Option

The SPLC is far from the only organization attempting to criminalize normal behavior. 

George M. Perry | April 26, 2026

Some scammers run pyramid schemes. The DoJ’s indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) outlines a circular scheme: use donor money to fuel hate groups and then leverage the hate groups to solicit donors for more money.

This is not uncommon among advocacy-oriented nonprofits. Success is their biggest threat. If the organization slays their dragons -- racism, poverty, homophobia, environmental destruction, drug abuse and addiction -- they face an existential decision. They can either wind down operations, perhaps leaving being a rump element to ensure the dragons stay dead; or they can create new dragons to slay.

The iron law of institutions tells us that the second option is a near-certainty: the people who control these organizations “would rather the institution ‘fail’ while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to ‘succeed’ if that requires them to lose power within the institution.” The stakes are even higher for organizations like the SPLC, which embedded itself within the federal government, law enforcement, corporate media, and major corporations. The power such people wield outside of the organization dwarfs what they enjoy within it.

Unless a board and executive suite are full of Cincinnatus-type characters, mission creep becomes part of the mission.

The SPLC maintained their money, power, and prestige by expanding and diluting their definition of a hate group, exaggerating the threat from hate groups, and -- we now know -- funding people at some of these hate groups.

The SPLC’s “hate map” is the most potent expression of these dynamics. As the Washington Post described it in 2018, “For decades, the hate list was a golden seal of disapproval, considered nonpartisan enough to be heeded by government agencies, police departments, corporations and journalists.”

It also highlights how remarkably adept the organization was at reframing positive developments to produce the illusion of failure, and therefore, continued relevance.

The SPLC’s 2024 Year in Hate and Extremism report, for example, reported only four active neo-Confederate groups in the U.S., the lowest the SPLC has ever observed. But rather than present this as evidence of Americans rejecting failed and hateful ideologies, the SPLC says “the adoption of neo-Confederate ideas into public policy may have helped to render the movement obsolete.” Ironically, if that interpretation is true, then the neo-Confederates resisted the iron law of institutions in a way that the SPLC couldn’t.

The SPLC is, de jure, fully independent. Despite its close ties to state actors, it has no government warrant or authorization.

But another advocacy-oriented non-profit displaying the same aggressive mission creep operates under a federal grant of nearly limitless, unreviewable authority. Given its jurisdiction over 11 million Americans, it is even more dangerous to Americans’ civil liberties.

The Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act designated the U.S. Center for SafeSport the “national sport safe guarding organization” in 2018. Congress and President Trump brought the Act into law in response to the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal involving hundreds of young gymnasts. The law requires the Center to publish and maintain the sports industry’s version of the “hate map”: an online, publicly accessible database of everyone suspended from sport. A single accusation to the Center can land someone on the database a few scrolls away from Larry Nassar himself, no judicial system required.

Americans fall under the Center’s authority mostly through their membership in sports federations. This includes parents volunteering for their kids’ sports clubs, the kids themselves, weekend warrior triathletes, all the way up through the athletes, coaches, and staff of Team USA.

Originally intended to prevent the sexual and physical abuse of minors in sports, the Center’s remit has grown to where they now regularly suspend adults who engaged in a consensual relationship that, at some point, turned sufficiently sour that one partner took steps to ruin the life of the other. Facilitating this mission creep are quietly expanding definitions of “grooming,” “power imbalance,” and “boundary violating behaviors.”

Even more insidious is how the mission creep fuels and funds itself.

The Center bills each sport's national governing body for every case in which a member of that federation is accused of wrongdoing. The Center's lowest level of involvement -- basically taking a pass on the case -- nets them $150. Temporarily resolving a case on administrative (as opposed to investigative) grounds is worth $1,500. And any case that results in a sanction, a finding of no violation, or an "informal resolution" -- their version of a plea -- brings in $3,000.

This payment structure is not authorized in either the Ted Stevens Act or in the contract that subordinates the federations to the center. It was revealed publicly for the first time in the 2024 report of the Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics (CSUSOP).

The incentives explain the paradox that the Center, whose stated mission is to prevent abuse and educate sports people in addition to its punitive function, feels encouraged by a continuous increase in complaints in each year of its existence.

The CSUSOP report worries that "this incentive structure certainly does not lend itself to governing bodies supporting victims and removing those found to have engaged in misconduct." But the report overlooks the incentives going in the other direction: more accusations result in more money and more power for the Center.

Success is a threat when you’re getting paid per dragon.

The number of reports increased by 2,000 each year from 2021-23, climbing over 8,000 in 2024. The year-over-year growth slowed in 2024. But that was before sports people were put on notice that behaviors such as “initiating a hug with an athlete,” “[b]ecoming close with a youth athlete’s family,” and “[c]ommunicating with an adult athlete privately outside of official team channels” were boundary violations.

Problematizing common and, in many cases, positive interactions will increase the number of reports, and therefore the Center’s revenue, without doing anything to address actual abuse and misconduct.

The full spectrum of the U.S. Center for SafeSport's critics find common ground in the Center's seemingly random case selection. Credible complaints of abuse of youth athletes can go unprocessed for years, while cases based on "boundary violating coaching behavior" between a coach and an adult athlete provoke quick and devastating action. The incentives explain this well, and augur for the problem getting worse.

As with the SPLC, we see that failure -- or at least the illusion of failure -- is lucrative. And so the Center surrenders itself and American sports people to the iron of law institutions, conjuring new dragons on every sideline, locker room, and pool deck in American sport.

George M. Perry is a sport performance coach and writer in Houston, TX. He writes about cancellations in the sports industry at AbuseOfProcess.com

Image: U.S. Center for SafeSport

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