The rise of the #MeToo movement prompted many people in the nonprofit world to wonder: Just how pervasive is the problem of harassment among fundraisers? No poll had ever determined that — but we knew that harassment was probably common in a profession that is 70 percent women.
The Chronicle joined forces with the Association of Fundraising Professionals to learn more and commissioned the Harris Poll to survey AFP members in February. Most of the 1,040 people who responded work in fundraising, either on staff at nonprofits or as consultants. The majority of those polled work in the United States; slightly more than 100 are employed in Canada. The survey was conducted online in February.
Defining Terms
The study’s key finding, that one in four women in fundraising has been harassed, may surprise some observers, as may the fact that only 7 percent of men reported harassment. After all, other polls suggest that harassment, especially of women, tends to be higher.
We asked experts to help us understand whether our poll’s approach could have produced a conservative estimate. Here’s why it might have:
We asked people whether they had been harassed without defining the term prominently.
A U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report notes that some people don’t label certain forms of unwelcome sexual behavior as “sexual harassment.” The EEOC said that when polls ask if people have faced specific kinds of harassment — like unwanted sexual attention or sexual coercion — rates of reported harassment rise.
We surveyed people who were members of a professional association.
It’s possible that people are more likely to join an organization like AFP because they have mostly had positive experiences as fundraisers, experts say. The poll did not capture those who have left the fundraising field because of sexual harassment and related frustrations. What’s more, people who are so fed up with harassment that they are thinking about leaving the profession may not have taken part, either.
As the #MeToo movement reverberates through workplaces across America, nonprofit leaders say it is also triggering a reckoning, and creating an opportunity, in charitable fundraising.
Still, Harris says AFP’s membership list — which consisted of more than 20,000 people — offered a way to poll those who work in fundraising specifically. Without that list, doing such a targeted survey would have been very difficult, says David Krane, director of the Harris Poll’s research team.
Krane notes that an early question did hint at the types of harassment the survey was seeking to capture, but he acknowledges that it was not defined throughout the survey — including in a question where respondents were specifically asked if they had experienced sexual harassment in the fundraising field. It’s possible that if the survey had listed all types of harassment — inappropriate comments, unwanted touching, and so forth — the results might have been different, he says.
That said, Krane also notes that the survey was conducted in the midst of heavy news coverage of sexual harassment — which means that it would have likely been top of mind for many people.
