WASHINGTON, DC -
How do organizations like the n or the when they are presented with fundraising ideas, how do they determine this is a good thing to do or it’s not a good thing to do?
I think that there are sort of two different questions there. The one that I think poses the biggest question is whether a particular approach to fundraising is going to create a conflict or a challenge for the organization. I think charities really have to ask three pretty simple questions:
Obviously non-profit organizations or social welfare organizations are operating on limited budgets. Let’s say a corporate person comes in and says ‘we want to donate x amount of money to your foundation if you will put us on your website site or if you will say it’s brought to you by this company.’ Are there internal things that these organizations have to do to determine whether something is going to compromise their independence?
Sometimes it’s just transparency that’s important. So the non-profit or the charity really depends on the public seeing that charity or non-profit organization as being completely committed to a particular mission. And if they’re transparent about getting money from an organization whose interest might conflict with the charity, if they’re transparent about it and explain what they took the money for, and why they took it, then that might alleviate the conflict. But sometimes, even with that level of transparency, charities or non-profits that are associating with organizations that may seem to have different interests than those charities do are still going to raise questions. An environmental organization, for example, that is taking money from BP: there may be times when BP and that environmental organization have the same mission. But when BP gets in trouble for environmental issues, is that charitable organization going to want to have that association with BP, even if they have been transparent about purpose?
And that’s got to cause some internal angst for the charities as well because they are looking at not taking a significant amount of money.
Yes. It’s often that way with major corporate donors. The currency of a charity or a non-profit organization is its reputation and the public’s view that the charity believes first and foremost in a particular mission. They want to advance a particular change that the public can rally around. And if they see that organization as taking money from a corporation or an individual who they don’t see as having the same pure motives in advancing that mission it’s going to raise questions. Even if the charitable organization believes that it has vetted the gift and it has made sure that their interests and the corporate interests of the donor align. It’s still going to raise risk that the public may not trust that getting in bed with that corporate funder isn’t going to compromise the organization’s independence in some way.
So if I want to give money what are four of five things that I should look for in one of these charities that would so ‘okay this is a good place to invest my money’?
This is the kind of question that people asked with the ice bucket challenge and it’s a really important question. The first may be ? Is this something that I really care about? When I teach philanthropy at Binghamton University and my students have to give money away --- and they do in some of my classes – the first thing that they ask is ‘does this or is this organization doing something that I care about?’ That’s probably just a foundation level question.
The second question is Do you have confidence that the things that they are doing are actually making a difference with respect to that mission?
A third might be So when you go to the website, does the organization report on its results? Does it tell you where it’s getting its money? What is it doing with the money that it gets? Is it soliciting input from its donors?
Another question might be Is there information on the website or information you can get through social media or other sources that tell you what people’s experiences with that organization are.