Supporting Statement: Respecting diverse religious views allows Apple Inc. to attract the most qualified talent, promote a vibrant and inclusive business culture and fully engage each of its employees. One proven way to do that is by supporting employee philanthropy to a wide variety of charities that reflect employees’ diverse interests. Sixty percent of employees say it is imperative or very important to work at a company that supports giving and volunteering. Ninety-seven percent of employees want flexibility in where and how they give to causes they care about.1 Yet 30% of employee donors say they do not give through workplace programs because the causes they care about are not made available by the employer.2 Excluding religious charities from gift match programs is driving much of this deficit. Forty-nine percent of Americans give money to religious organizations.3 They are by far the largest recipient of donations, more than double as much as the second category, education.4 They serve every vulnerable population, from prisoners to orphans and the homeless, have large footprints in healthcare and education, and provide all kinds of humanitarian relief both domestically and abroad. Yet the 2025 edition of the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index5 found that 58% of scored companies exclude or threaten to exclude religious organizations from their employee-match programs for the organizations’ religious status, practices, or advocacy. This includes Apple, which uses a third-party giving platform Benevity that screens organizations that allegedly “incite[] hatred” or that hold to traditional religious views of marriage and sexuality.6 Further, the 2023 Freedom at Work survey found that 60% of employees feared employer reprisal for expressing religious or political views at work, and 54% said they feared the same for sharing these views even on private social media accounts.7 Apple can partially address this shortcoming by allowing employees to direct matching gifts to religious charities. Recent Supreme Court decisions in Groff v. DeJoy and Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, as well as guidance from the EEOC on discrimination in the workplace8 make clear that religious protections extend to all terms, conditions, and privileges of 1 https://doublethedonation.com/matching-gift-statistics/ 2 https://www.charities.org/facts-statistics-workplace-giving-matching-gifts-and-volunteer-programs/ 3 https://www.vancopayments.com/egiving/asset-church-giving-statistics-tithing 4 https://www.vancopayments.com/egiving/asset-church-giving-statistics-tithing 5 https://www.viewpointdiversityscore.org/ 6 https://www.viewpointdiversityscore.org/company/apple; https://causes.benevity.org/sites/all/themes/benevity/CausesApp/docs/Discriminate_HyperlinkDoc.pdf. 7 https://www.viewpointdiversityscore.org/polling 8 https://www.eeoc.gov/what-do-if-you-experience-discrimination-related-dei-work employment, including benefit programs. A recent memo from the White House Office of Personnel Management on religious liberty in the workforce9 also signals a growing awareness of the need for employers to take affirmative steps to robustly protect and promote religious liberty in the workplace. Some companies are responding to this shift. In January 2025 for example, Verizon updated its gift match policy to allow employee donations to religious institutions to be matched on equal terms.10 Morgan Stanley also recently disclosed similar gift match policies.1