Take it or leave it - the ethics of gift acceptance and refusal
Rogare - The Fundraising Think Tank
Independently rethinking fundraising, linking academics and practitioners, and turning research into actionable ideas.
If you read a blog about or go to a conference session on fundraising ethics, the so-called ‘tainted money’ dilemma is almost certain to be a major part of that. In fact, if you think about an ethical dilemma you are currently confronting (or have recently confronted), there is a good chance it will be whether to accept or refuse a donation from a dubious source.
Yet considering this matter dominates the discourse around fundraising ethics, the ethics of gift acceptance and refusal is still seriously underthought.
Too often, we try to resolve these dilemmas with a strict adherence to the gift acceptance policy. If it’s a well-written policy, that should work most of the time.
But like all policies – including guidance and codes of practice – it can’t cover every conceivable situation you’ll face. There might be gaps in the policy, or its guidance is ambiguous in some specific cases.
And remember that it is just a policy – words on paper of a computer/phone screen. It can provide guidance about what to do. But it can’t actually make a decision about whether to refuse a donation.
Only a professional fundraiser can do that.
There can be a temptation fill those gaps in the policy, and make decisions to accept or refuse a donation, based on a personal opinion about what would be the right thing to do.
Sometimes that will be a good guide. Other times, it won’t be.
What fundraisers really need to make the best, most consistent, and most easily-defendable ethical decisions is a full understanding ethics of gift acceptance and refusal, an understanding that goes well beyond what is written in a policy.
领英推荐
Rogare - The Fundraising Think Tank has been working with the Chartered Institute of Fundraising to develop a richer ethics of gift acceptance/refusal, as a companion piece to the CIoF’s guidance on what how to construct and write acceptance/refusal policies.
We'll be launching this at a webinar on Wednesday 6 November, 4-5pm, after which it will be available from the Rogare website.
The webinar will briefly introduce fundraisers to the ideas contained in the new paper, then move on to a panel discussion to delve into and pick apart, and perhaps disagree with, some of those ideas.
The panel comprises:
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.
So if you are from outside the UK, this webinar and the published paper will almost certainly have something to offer you, and we have chosen a time for the webinar that should be convenient for fundraisers in Europe and North America.
To register for the webinar, click here – https://ciof.org.uk/events-and-training/event/2024/ethics-of-gift-acceptance-and-refusal