A Minneapolis-based marketing company canceled the production of direct mail pieces for a conservative group apparently because some board members were “offended” by the content.
Charlemagne Institute, a Minnesota nonprofit that runs Intellectual Takeout and Chronicles, was collaborating with Bolger Inc. on a fundraising letter and a direct mail piece about the organization’s new projects.
“We actually had multiple fundraising letters and postcard campaigns planned for the next four to five weeks. They canceled it all, with the fundraising letter production halted,” Charlemagne Institute CEO Devin Foley told Alpha News.
According to Foley, Bolger canceled production of the items just a few days before they were scheduled to be mailed.
“I tried calling you today, and would desire a conversation with you about the projects we’re currently producing. I was calling because we are electing to stop production of these two items. I understand this will cause an inconvenience for you, and I’d like to discuss this sensitive matter,” Erik Norman, Bolger’s senior vice president of marketing and sales, told Foley in an email last week.
“As you know, we are exceedingly disappointed in Bolger as a print company. It’s one thing to receive our creative and to decline, it is another thing entirely to accept the creative, tell us it is in print with a few days before the drop, and then to halt production,” Foley responded.
Foley said Norman told him over the phone that two of Bolger’s board members “were offended and ordered the shutdown.”
“I was quite disappointed when Bolger called to tell me production was halted on our letter to thousands of our members. It is one thing to be offered a project and to say, ‘No thanks.’ I can respect that. But I can’t respect taking a project several weeks prior and then deciding that due to the ‘sensitive’ political climate your company is halting production because you suddenly don’t want to work with conservatives,” Foley said in a statement.
Bolger describes itself as a “print and digital technology company” and boasts of treating “people in the same manner in which we wish to be treated” in its vision statement.
“This is not the first time we have seen cancel culture up close and personal. We’ve had insurance policies canceled, weathered Big Tech censorship, and seen businesses close their doors to conservatives,” Foley added. “As a country, we are going down a very dark path, led by those who claim the mantle of tolerance, but are anything but tolerant.”
In the days leading up to November’s presidential election, Foley’s organization was prevented from publishing new content on Facebook. Google Ads also stopped running advertisements for Intellectual Takeout, according to Foley.
Alpha News reached out to Bolger for comment, but did not receive a response.
Anthony Gockowski
Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and wrote for the Daily Caller.
