Donors take sexual harassment at charities very seriously, according a new poll designed to gauge how the public responds to reports of problems at nonprofits. More than one in five donors stopped giving to a charity after hearing of an incident there, while just over 17 percent said they decided to give less, according to the poll released today by Give.org, an arm of the Better Business Bureau.
What’s more, the effect on charities that aren’t accused of wrongdoing is significant: Among donors who either gave less or stopped giving to a charity once they learned of a sexual-harassment allegation, nearly 39 percent said they abstained from giving their intended contribution to another charity with a similar mission and better reputation.
The new study was based on data from more than 3,100 people in the United States and Canada and has a margin of error of 2 percent among U.S. respondents and 3 percent among Canadian respondents. For both groups surveyed, the study’s confidence level is 95 percent.
Among the other key findings:
- Close to 9 percent of U.S. respondents said a charity would lose their support for good if a sexual-harassment allegation came to light.
- Among U.S. donors who decreased or ended their donations to a charity after learning that harassment occurred there, more than 47 percent said they gave instead to a different organization with a similar mission.
- Slightly more than 13 percent of those who lessened their gifts or stopped giving said they contributed to a different cause altogether after learning about the incident at a charity.
The sweeping response from donors means “this is something that affects the charity but also the cause and then, more broadly, the sector,” said Elvia Castro, manager for regional charity reporting at Give.org and one of the authors of the report.
She also said the findings underscore the importance of maintaining a donor’s trust. “If you see a flag that tells you, ‘No I can’t trust,’ then that will throw you off.”
How Widespread the Problem Is
In addition to examining the impact on donors, the study found a stunning percentage of people who work at charities knew of at least one incident of harassment. Fifty-two percent of nonprofit workers said they did.
That is a significant contrast to how the other people in the poll view the charity world. Just shy of 16 percent of U.S. survey respondents said they believed sexual harassment was widespread at nonprofits. Nobody has studied the nonprofit world as a whole, but a study of fundraisers by the Chronicle of Philanthropy and the Association of Fundraising Professionals found that one-quarter of women fundraisers have experienced sexual harassment.
While people may be underestimating the extent of harassment at charities, they appear to be overestimating it elsewhere. Slightly more than 40 percent said the offense was pervasive in government.
That is far more than the evidence suggests. About one-seventh of government workers said they had been sexually harassed at work at least once during a two-year span, according to a U.S. Merit Systems Protections Board survey.
“There’s kind of a halo effect in some sense with nonprofits that — because they’re so mission driven, because they’re so focused on service — there’s not that same issue there,” said Heather Hill, chair of the board for Rogare, a research group that studies fundraising. People in the nonprofit world are well aware of sexual harassment at charities, she added.
Why Awareness Matters
During the height of the #MeToo Movement, nonprofit professionals turned the spotlight on inappropriate sexual behavior by their colleagues, leaders, and major donors.
A whistleblower accused aid workers at the British human-rights charity Oxfam of hiring prostitutes as they carried out relief efforts in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Former staffers at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation — an organization popular with tech-industry titans — told the Chronicle about sexually inappropriate and emotionally abusive behavior by the group’s top fundraiser, Mari Ellen Loijens. Fundraisers and grantees at several Jewish nonprofits accused Michael Steinhardt, a billionaire and established benefactor of Jewish charities, of making lewd comments and sexual propositions to them while they were on the job.
The poll shows that these news reports didn’t lead to greater awareness of the problem at charities. But to better understand what would happen if more donors knew about harassment at charities, researchers asked potential donors how they would respond to seven hypothetical allegations of sexual harassment at a nonprofit. While the circumstances of each allegation differed, awareness of the allegation alone was enough to discourage 44 to 61 percent of survey participants from giving.
In each scenario, the study found 10 percent of potential donors said they would continue to contribute to the organization despite the allegation.
“That’s not necessarily the same as actual behavior,” Castro said of participants’ responses to the scenarios. Even so, the responses indicate that many potential donors consider sexual harassment a serious offense, she says.
When donors lose confidence in nonprofits, they can show their distaste with their pocketbooks.
“At the end of the day, a nonprofit is a public trust,” said Amish Mehta, a partner at Friedman LLP and a specialist in nonprofit financial reporting. “Nonprofits don’t pay taxes, and in order to receive that benefit from the public, the expectation is transparency in their activities and their financial reporting.”
One Nonprofit’s Lessons
While some donors will not give to charities and causes where harassment has happened, many expressed willingness to make another gift if the charity addressed the allegation satisfactorily. Thirty-eight percent of U.S. respondents said they’d consider giving the same amount they’d contributed before the scandal if they felt the charity had properly addressed the issue, the study found.
But regaining donors’ trust after a high-profile sexual-harassment scandal can be a long road, as the Humane Society of the United States learned.
In 2018, the animal-rights charity’s chief executive, Wayne Pacelle, resigned after three allegations of sexual harassment were made against him. His resignation came after an internal investigation and the board’s vote against removing him from his role.
Seven trustees resigned after the 31-person board gave Pacelle a vote of confidence. Some donors and staff members spoke out against the decision as well, pressuring Pacelle to resign.
After the board accepted Pacelle’s resignation, it had to work to win back the support it lost. The board issued a statement in support of the women who made allegations against the former chief executive. It took responsibility for the trustees’ missteps, recommitted to the charity’s antiharassment policies, and pledged a third-party review of its governance practices.
“We embrace the opportunity to rebuild our internal culture and support our staff in creating a workplace where everyone can thrive,” the statement read in part.
Accepting responsibility for failures in organizational culture is a critical first step for charities emerging from a crisis, experts say.
“You want to be transparent,” said Mehta, the lawyer for nonprofits. “You want to show empathy and concern for all the wronged parties and take responsibility on your end [for] what happened.”
Nonprofits should also outline how they’re responding to the allegation.
“You can’t promise nothing bad will ever happen. But you can say that you have taken every necessary step to put procedures in place to ensure that you have addressed the issues that allowed [the offense] to happen and are taking appropriate steps to safeguard against a similar event in the future,” said Robbe Healey, a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Ethics Committee.
Consistent with the Give.org study’s findings, some donors to the Humane Society hesitated to continue supporting a charity whose name was now associated with a well-publicized sexual-harassment scandal.
After the Humane Society pledged to transform its culture, supporters held the charity accountable, according to its spokeswoman, Anna West. “We had some donors and funders who were very invested in that process and waited to see that our leadership was taking action before making further financial commitments,” West wrote in an email to the Chronicle.
As the Humane Society worked toward its goals, it kept the public and past supporters updated on its efforts — which included consulting third-party experts on workplace culture change, studying pay equity at the charity, and conducting a “reconciliation process,” led by outside experts, to develop stronger workplace policies against harassment.
Despite some initial pressure from donors, the Humane Society’s fundraising has not experienced a long-term impact from the scandal. “Any revenue loss we saw during the crisis of 2018 has since rebounded,” West wrote in an email.
Hill, of the Rogare think tank, says an organization’s response to a sexual-harassment complaint plays a big role in how much the allegation tarnishes the group’s reputation.
“There is this knee-jerk reaction within the organization that it’s going to make them look bad. In reality, when a complaint like that is received and an organization addresses it, it can actually build trust and demonstrate commitment to values,” Hill said. “It’s actually more detrimental when those kind of complaints are placed and they’re swept under the rug or there are workarounds put in place rather than addressing it directly.”
Power Imbalances
Nearly 54 percent of U.S. respondents in the Give.org study said that when a sexual-harassment allegation is made at a nonprofit, the group should launch an internal investigation. A little more than 48 percent of U.S. respondents said the charity should already have a policy prohibiting sexual harassment and take action against people who breech that policy.
Castro, of Give.org, says it’s essential that nonprofits have the tools to prevent and respond to sexual-harassment complaints if they arise. “We want charities to expect these kind of allegations to come forth and to be proactive and be ready for it. To look at their policies, but also to look at their culture,” she said.
One piece of the culture that is especially important, she says, is to make sure that donors are not exerting undue pressure in ways that make it seem that sexual harassment — as well as racism and other offensive behavior — is acceptable.
Hill also points to the effect gender disparity in organizational leadership can have on whether staff members report incidences of sexual harassment.
According to the 2018 Chronicle-AFP Harris Poll, one-quarter of women fundraisers have experienced sexual harassment on the job, but just 7 percent of male fundraisers had. What’s more, 96 percent of the fundraisers who said they had been sexually harassed identified men as the offenders.
When an organization is led by men, a woman fundraiser may be less inclined to report the harassment she experiences at work, Hill says.
“There becomes a sense of vulnerability, where you’re not necessarily going to be believed, where you’re not necessarily going to be valued the same way someone else is, and that you’re often dismissed,” she said.
Castro encourages charities to make it a priority to ensure they have built an inclusive and ethical culture — even if they’ve never had to address allegations of sexual harassment.
“Try to do your homework before it’s a problem because if you address it once it’s a problem, you’re already too late.”
Michael Theis contributed to this article.
