Facing a massive public relations campaign against it, the nutrition sales company Herbalife has adopted an intriguing strategy in recent months: Donating to local chapters of the Latino rights nonprofit whose national leadership is seeking its demise.
The Herbalife donations have sparked controversy within the charity, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation’s oldest and biggest Latino rights group with 1,000 chapters in the United States and Puerto Rico. LULAC is holding its ritzy week-long annual convention at the Hilton in midtown Manhattan this week, featuring appearances from Mayor Bill de Blasio and Michelle Obama, and boasting some 20,000 attendees.
Dissent has been brewing over the LULAC leadership’s aggressive fight against Herbalife, and questions about whether it fits into the broader mission of the nonprofit, founded in 1929, to fight discrimination against Hispanics. LULAC’s muscular response has been to crack down on Herbalife’s attempts to donate money to LULAC’s cash-starved state chapters.
“Frankly speaking, no, I don’t think that LULAC should be involved in this,” said Elia Mendoza, LULAC’s Texas state director. “We’ve got much bigger things to worry about.”
Herbalife’s donations came as the The New York Times reported in March that William Ackman, the founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, had placed a