SUPPORTING STATEMENT: Dell is a technology company that designs, manufactures and sells computer hardware and software products. As such, shareholders invest in Dell because of its value as a leading technology company, and the Board’s fiduciary duty requires it to create value for shareholders by serving that fundamental purpose.

Dell has partnerships with a number of organizations that promote the practice of gender transition surgeries on minors and evangelize gender theory to minors. Why are Dell shareholders funding the efforts to spread an ideology seeking to mutilate the reproductive organs of children before they finish puberty?

Proponents of gender theory claim that children are sexually mature enough to make permanent decisions such as taking puberty blockers and undergoing gender transition surgeries. However, most people (which includes Dell shareholders) understand that children are not sexual beings and that there is a reason why minors cannot consent to sexual activity.1

This contentious and vast disagreement between radical gender theory activists and the general public has nothing to do with Dell making and selling computer products. Yet, Dell is partnered with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC),2 GenderCool Project3 and Texas Competes4 - all of which are intent on spreading such ideas to minors and which celebrate the genital mutilation of minors.

The burden of proof is on the Board to explain why this particularly divisive and unordinary use of shareholder resources is deemed to be congruent with its fiduciary duty.

As a Delaware business corporation, Dell is required to first serve the interests of its shareholders.5 However, the child gender transition agenda pushed by HRC,6 GenderCool7 and Texas Competes8 is unrelated to the Company’s fiduciary duty.

Recent events have made clear that company bottom-lines, and therefore value to shareholders, drop when companies engage in overtly political and divisive partnerships. Following Bud Light’s embrace of partisanship, its revenue fell $395 million in North America compared to a year prior.9 This amounts to roughly 10 percent of its revenue in the months following its leap into contentious politics.10 Target’s market cap fell over $15 billion amid backlash for similar actions.11 And Disney stock fell 44 percent in 2022 - its worst performance in nearly 50 years - amid its decision to put extreme partisan agendas ahead of parents’ rights.12

Considering that Dell is partnered with numerous radical organizations that advance the very agenda that so disastrously affected Disney, Target and Bud Light, such partnerships pose a clear risk to Dell shareholders as well.