efforts and the use of funds. Transparency and candor are expected traits of nonprofits, without which trust declines.
3 Tainted money, when conflicts arise between an organization's mission and values, or social mores in general, and the source of donated monies. For example, a number of universities and museums were forced to reckon with gifts from the Sackler family, owner of pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, which helped to fuel the opioid addiction crisis (Cascone 2020a).
4 Donor privacy, when the confidentiality of donor information is violated, shared with those who have no need to know, or when fundraisers or consultants take donor information with them from one job to the next. Donor privacy is sacrosanct, protected by the AFP code of ethics, and donor relationships belong to the nonprofit, not the fundraiser.
5 Compensation, when excessive salaries and benefits awarded to senior staff or perks to trustees and high‐level volunteers fall outside of what is acceptable to the IRS or breach a nonprofit's duty of care responsibility for prudent management of assets; or when fundraisers are paid a commission on monies raised, which contravenes AFP standards.
6 Financial integrity, when restricted funds are not applied as directed by patrons or are accepted with compromising strings attached; or when holdings in investment portfolios are at odds with institutional missions or values.
Applying Ethics
While it is vital to understand moral philosophy and to have good moral character and judgment, that is often not enough to ensure ethical behavior. Ethical issues can be complex and cause even the most principled person to falter. A disciplined approach to ethical decision‐making can help prevent missteps while determining the best outcome for the circumstances.
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University offers a useful framework for ethical decision‐making in fundraising (Harrington and Varma 2020). First, objectively state the ethical issue at hand. Is there a conflict of interest or the appearance of one? Is there an ethics code violation or a legal compliance concern? Has there been a misappropriation of funds or lack of transparency in reporting? Does the situation present a controversial donor offering tainted funds?
Second, summarize all the relevant information and consider everyone with a stake in the issue – trustees, staff, donors, volunteers, beneficiaries, and the public. Confer with stakeholders, determine if the concerns of some carry more weight than others, and discuss why this might matter. “Good decisions take into account the possible consequences of words and actions on all those potentially affected by a decision” (Josephson 2002, 18).
Third, articulate various alternatives for action and their probable outcomes, assessing each relative to organizational mission and values, plus institutional relationships and one's own personal integrity (Fisher 2000).
Fourth, decide how to act and apply intuition to the decision. If it becomes front page news, can the decision be defended to one's peers or children (Levy 2013)?
Finally, take action, monitor the result, and then reflect on the outcome. Doing this in a consistent manner helps to build ethical muscle, which can be relied upon when the next ethical dilemma arises.
Just because something is legal does not make it ethical. Billionaire Leon Black, former chair and CEO of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, was forced to step down from his corporate role, as well as his chairmanship of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, when it was reported he had paid convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein $158 million, which saved Black $2 billion via tax avoidance schemes (Pogrebin and Goldstein 2021). While his actions were not illegal, some view them as unethical.
Ethics and Social Justice
Contemporary society perceives deep disparities and bias in the world's economic, political, and social systems (Edelman 2020), with calls for those in power to combat structural inequities, including within the voluntary sector. Ford Foundation President Darren Walker (2019) urges philanthropists to use their capital to address systemic imbalances that create the need for charity over giving to institutions that support their privilege. Grantmaker Edgar Villanueva (2018) favors dismantling colonialist structures inherent in the foundation world by utilizing Indigenous customs that share power and foster participatory decision‐making around wealth redistribution. Poet, scholar, and institutional philanthropist Elizabeth Alexander has refocused the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation from conventional arts and humanities funding to social justice initiatives that support community libraries, reading and literacy programs, and educational opportunities for the incarcerated (Florsheim 2020).
Applying social justice perspectives to nonprofit leadership and fundraising means generating new resources that offer the potential to succeed to those lacking opportunity. It means building inclusive workplaces with diverse boards and staff that reflect regional demographics and communities served. It means pursuing equity‐based prospect research and cultivation programs that prioritize women and people of color alongside traditional white male corporate donors. It means retooling the annual fund as a catalyst for community building. When fundraising and philanthropy is shared by many, “… collective action enables people to achieve results through building equal and mutually‐supportive relationships” that advance organizations and causes (Klein 2016, 3).
The field of fundraising has long taught that philanthropy is a donor‐directed choice, motivated by the interests and intentions of the giver. The astute fundraiser finds the fit between organizational need and donor passion. How might fundraising change to enable justice‐focused philanthropy? What if fundraisers are also taught to be beneficiary‐directed, helping donors use their privilege to focus philanthropy on the root causes of inequity and its symptoms? Here, the lessons are about humility, empathy, listening, learning, deep community engagement, and trusted partnership.
Community‐Centric Fundraising, guided by leaders of color and their allies, offers these core principles of socially‐just fundraising practice:
1 Fundraising must be grounded in race, equity, and social justice.
2 The collective community is more important than individual organizational missions.
3 Nonprofits are generous with and mutually supportive of one another.
4 All who engage in strengthening the community are equally valued, whether staff, donor, board member, or volunteer.
5 Time is valued equally as money.
6 Donors are treated as partners, and this means being transparent, assuming the best intentions, and occasionally having difficult conversations.
7 Collaborative voluntary actions foster a sense of belonging, not othering.
8 Everyone personally benefits from engaging in the work of social justice – it is not just charity and compassion.
9 Social justice work is holistic and transformative, not transactional.
10 Healing and liberation require a commitment to economic justice (Community‐Centric Fundraising 2021).
Reorienting fundraising from donor‐centered to community‐centered encourages power sharing in philanthropic relationships in ways that foster racial and economic justice. The authors propose the following “Beneficiary Bill of Rights” (see Exhibit 2.1) to ensure that the recipients of benevolence have agency and are active participants in collective community enrichment.
EXHIBIT 2.1. PROPOSED BENEFICIARY BILL OF RIGHTS
Beneficiary Bill of Rights
Philanthropy is based on longstanding global traditions of offering assistance and support to people and causes beyond oneself. It is a human activity that brings individuals together around common concerns that seek to enhance the quality of life for all. To ensure that philanthropy best serves those intended to