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Alphabet’s venture arm wants you to give money to the ACLU

GV, or Google Ventures, has added a button to its website for donations to the civil liberties defense nonprofit.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai 
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The venture capital arm of Google parent company Alphabet is helping to raise money for the American Civil Liberties Union.

GV aclu donation Screenshot

Visit the firm’s homepage, known as GV, formerly Google Ventures, and you’ll be greeted by a prompt to donate to the nonprofit.

“Please join us in donating to the ACLU, which defends American values of liberty and equal opportunity,” the site reads.

Above the donate prompt is an enlarged, bold-lettered quote from Google CEO Sundar Pichai: “Let’s not let fear defeat our values.”

The quote links to a December 2015 Medium post from Pichai about emigrating to the U.S. from India more than 20 years ago. He described his concerns over the growing intolerance toward immigrants and minority groups.

“Let’s not let fear defeat our values. We must support Muslim and other minority communities in the U.S. and around the world,” Pichai wrote in the 2015 post.

The plea comes as tech companies have organized to oppose President Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Uber, Stripe and others are drafting a letter in opposition to the immigration and travel ban.

The draft letter states, “As entrepreneurs and business leaders, our ability to grow our companies and create jobs depends on the contributions of immigrants from all backgrounds.”

The executive order was a central topic of conversation at a dinner for GV portfolio founders and CEOs Monday, according to Adam Ghetti, CEO and founder of GV-funded Ionic Security.

He said GV CEO David Krane announced to the 150-200 people gathered at San Francisco’s Ferry building, Alphabet CEO Larry Page among them, that the firm had made a “significant” donation to ACLU and that the unspecified sum “would be the most important investment that they made this year.”

Krane reportedly went on to say founders, including founders who are themselves immigrants, had reached out to GV with concerns about how the order would impact their companies. Ghetti also said GV was offering special immigration legal services to its portfolio companies.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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