Ethics of donation acceptance and refusal
Think of an ethical dilemma in fundraising that you are currently facing or have faced recently. Pound to a penny it is some variation of the ‘tainted money’ dilemma.
Tainted money – a donation that comes from a morally dubious source – is what often comes to mind when people think about fundraising ethics. Not only are fundraisers continually confronted with this challenge, it’s also what many blogs and conference sessions about fundraising ethics focus on.
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Yet for all this, you only need to casually review recent fundraising history to realise that some nonprofits are still struggling to make sound and robust ethical decisions about when to accept a donation and when to turn it down.
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Rogare has worked with the Chartered Institute of Fundraising to develop guidance to help fundraisers navigate the ethical issues involved.
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Our new paper – Take it or leave it: The ethics of gift acceptance and refusal – is a companion to the Chartered Institute’s guidance on creating gift acceptance/refusal policies.
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While all charities in UK are required to have such a policy, that policy cannot cover every scenario related to acceptance/refusal that a fundraiser might encounter. And as a policy is only guidance, it doesn’t mandate the outcome of the decision process. Sometimes a fundraiser might choose to accept a donation the policy suggests ought to be refused; or refuse a donation the policy recommends accepting.​ Doing that in a manner that is sound and consistent and will stand up to criticism requires the decision maker to have a good grasp of the ethical issues involved.
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The new Rogare paper aims to do just that. It contains sections on:​
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Reasons for refusing a ‘tainted’ donation: whether it is likely to cause harm to a charity, or contravenes a moral principle on accepting it, such as not aligning with a charity’s values. A key contention of the paper is that any decision based on values can also be made based on harm, so values may not be as important in the ethics of gift refusal as many think.
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Are a fundraisers' personal moral beliefs and values relevant to the decision-making process?
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Refusing donations from sources whose actions might harm society (e.g. fossil fuel companies).
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Ethics of returning donations.
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Although the work we have done is in the specific context of the guidance from the Charity Commission as it relates to England and Wales, the ideas we’ve developed in the paper will have relevance and applicability in many other countries.
