A few months ago, Mike Geiger, the head of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, asked me what the Chronicle could do to promote October as ethics month for people engaged in the work of seeking resources to advance the common good.
October seemed like a good month to do this, he said, to get ahead of the busy year-end fundraising season.
That timing turned out to be more prescient than anybody in fundraising or the rest of the nonprofit world could ever have imagined or wanted.
But as Heather Hill, a fundraising veteran, writes in our opinion pages this month, signs of ethics trouble have been brewing for a long time. It should come as no surprise, she said, that MIT was embroiled in controversy for accepting money from Jeffrey Epstein — and trying to conceal that fact from the public. Her ideas for fixing the problem are essential reading.
Lack of professional development and poor management in fundraising offices is a problem, she notes. So is the fact that donors too often exert their power over fundraisers in the form of sexual harassment or worse. Both of those findings came from Harris polls of development staffs that we conducted in partnership with the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
Ethics and trust in different forms are the topics of two other pieces in this month’s opinion section. William Schambra, who for many years ran the Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy & Civic Renewal, examines the challenges cultural institutions have faced as they come under attack for the business dealings of their big benefactors, such as members of the Sackler family. As a prism for understanding the dilemma, he looks at Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation — who has both supported museum protesters and urged them not to demonize the wealthy.
Meanwhile, Melissa Berman, head of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, urges foundations to take action to tamp down growing mistrust in how foundations and their wealthy benefactors use their power.
Questions about how donors, grant makers, and nonprofits can best operate ethically and in the public interest are among the most important topics the Chronicle covers. Your insights on how we can do better in tackling these issues are valuable to us, so do drop me a line with your thoughts.
In journalism, transparency is one of our core ethical values — and I am delighted to share with our readers the news that we have received two generous unrestricted grants from the Heinz Endowment and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Those dollars will allow us to find new ways to serve readers like you better. To learn more about the values we use to decide whether to accept grants, please see our gift-acceptance policy.
— Stacy Palmer, Editor