Donor Codes of Conduct to Fight Sexual Harassment of Nonprofit Fundraisers Are Growing More Common

When Sandra Hawken was a young fundraiser, she experienced potential donors groping her, trying to undress in front of her, bringing her gifts, and asking her out on dates. All of which was inappropriate, yet when she complained to her bosses, she seldom got support.

“As a young female fundraiser, I was told, ‘OK, well, next time, just make sure you don’t go alone’ or ‘Next time, just be aware of your body language,’” Hawken says. “So classic victim blaming.”

Today, as CEO of Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation in Toronto, Hawken doesn’t want any of her young fundraisers to go through what she did. Her nonprofit is one of the few that have instituted a donor code of conduct. It’s part of a small but growing movement to demand more accountability of donors and provide better working environments for staff through codes of conduct.

Some fundraising observers believe donor codes of conduct reduce sexual and other types of harassment, something more than a quarter of fundraisers say they encounter, according to 2022 research. Experts say nonprofits need to make donors more accountable and set limits to reduce problematic donor behavior — including donors pushing organizations to take on projects that are outside their mission or trying to involve themselves in nonprofits’ day-to-day operations.

Courtesy of Jessica Rose

“A donor code just sets a tone for what the organization is willing to tolerate,” says Jessica Rose, who is director of philanthropy and development at the CNIO, the Spanish National Cancer Research Center, and also conducts fundraising research. “At so many organizations, nobody wants to do anything that will endanger the gift. That’s a real shame because it’s hard to work in an organization where the gift is the most important thing.”

Reasons for Donor Codes

This spring, Rogare, an international fundraising think tank, called on nonprofits to implement codes to reduce sexual harassment. Rose, who helped craft Rogare’s recommendation, says fundraisers often work in non-office settings, making donors more prone to misconceptions.

“It strikes far more into the personal for the donor,” Rose says. “If someone’s talking to them about making a major gift, this is not their work. It’s not their business. And someone’s talking to them, often in their home or at an event, about their passions and their desires and interests. And it strays away from the professional for them, but not for the fundraiser.”

Rose says a code helps remind donors this is a professional relationship. Codes also signal to fundraising staff that the organization recognizes harassment as a problem.

“Organizations are in denial about this issue,” Rose says. “They know it happens, but there’s this terrible discourse around it. They say, ‘It’s just part of the job. It just happens. You have to have a thick skin.’”

But Rose wants to quash that thinking and normalize the fact that harassment is always inappropriate. “I’ve been a fundraiser for a long time — coming up on 20 years,” she says. “There has never been [a donor code of conduct] in any organization I’ve ever worked in. There haven’t even been policies and guidelines around sexual harassment internally to deal with donor dominance and donor harassment.”

Nonprofits hope donor codes of conduct will also curb other types of problematic behavior: donors who try to fund passion projects that don’t align with an organization’s goals or who want to micromanage a project they’ve helped fund.

Sue Cunningham, CEO of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, says accepting money from donors whose passion projects don’t align with the organization’s mission is a mistake but that she understands the temptation.

“When a college or university is relatively early in their journey around encouraging philanthropic engagement, it’s really, really hard to say no,” Cunningham says. “Yet having that rigor is critically important because it really doesn’t do yourself any favors in the medium to long term if you don’t show rigor.” Accepting such donations sometimes leads to students openly disparaging a gift as unnecessary, leaving both the donor and the college unhappy. CASE offers guidance on curbing donor influence through its Global Reporting Standards, but not on donor codes of conduct.

Rose says she’s seen situations in which donors contribute to a project and then harass staff about day-to-day operations. “All of a sudden, [the donor] was calling the executive director of the center once a week, demanding updates,” she says. “He was acting like the center reported to him. These types of things happen all the time. One thing that we don’t do as well as we could as an industry is have some of these conversations upfront.”

Another reason to consider adopting a donor code is to improve staff retention, says Mallory Mitchell, a fundraising trainer who co-founded the consultancy Aligned Strategy Group.

“When staff feel protected, they stay longer,” Mitchell says. “I hear people complain all the time about the 18-month average tenure for a fundraiser. It’s easier to stay when it’s a place where you feel like you can name problems, where you feel protected, and where people have your back. The longer a fundraiser stays, the deeper those donor relationships get, the more sustained they are.”

She adds that having a “donor code of conduct is part of having a good and thriving fundraising program.”

What a Donor Code Looks Like

There aren’t a lot of donor codes of conduct out there, so it’s hard for nonprofits to get a handle on how to write one and enforce it. Rogare offers a sample code, which is a list that covers issues of sexual harassment and attempts at donor influence and control.

The organization Hawken leads took a slightly different approach. Its donor code of conduct is a short letter to donors the organization spent more than a year crafting and testing before rolling out. When other nonprofit leaders ask Hawken about implementing a donor code, she says a couple of questions invariably pop up: “What if my board thinks I’m being too radical? What if my board thinks we’re going to turn off funders?”

Hawken says the group has had zero complaints from donors about the policy. She also said her board fully backed the initiative. During discussions to approve the policy, some board members showed unwavering support.

“Someone asked, ‘What if a donor sees this and is offended?’” Hawken says. “I didn’t even have to answer that question because the chair of my governance committee quickly said, ‘Well, there’s nothing offensive about this. We don’t want money from people who are going to be harassing or oppressing our staff in any way.’ They felt really proud as a board that they were early adopters.”

Enforcing a Donor Code

One worry about implementing a donor code of conduct is how to enforce it. Under Holland Bloorview’s policy, fundraisers take the lead in how complaints are handled.

“Our promise to our staff is that if something happens that would be in conflict with our donor code of conduct that you, as a staff person who is on the receiving end of harm, have control over what happens next,” Hawken says. “You have a voice in your story, so that you’re not exploited and that you can feel safe in the sharing.”

Since adopting the policy, the organization has had to enforce it twice. “Neither has resulted in going all the way to removing someone’s name off the building,” she says. “But in both instances, what having a donor code of conduct did was give an additional layer of confidence to our staff team. So people were coming forward with things that they might not have come forward with before and said, ‘This feels like a donor code of conduct issue. Let’s talk about it.’”

Another concern nonprofits have with enforcing a code of conduct is that the donor might sour on the group and stop giving. That has not been Hawken’s experience.

“In one example, the donor increased their giving,” she says. “We had a really frank conversation, set some parameters around their communication with us, and they appreciated our honest, strengths-based approach to that communication. Then they decided to hold a fundraising event for us. So that was one positive outcome. The other one was a neutral outcome. They didn’t withdraw or increase, but they continued to be part of our donor community. “

In the instance in which the donor gave more money, Hawken says that when the donor made inappropriate comments, the fundraisers involved said right away that the comments were not all right. The donor did it again, which led to Hawken talking to the donor, as called for in the code of conduct.

When having these difficult conversations, Hawken says, “it’s important to be able to delineate intention from impact and to just be clear and strengths-based and brave.” She says it’s also important to know that the donor might be unhappy and choose not to donate but that the board will be OK with that.

“You have to have your board support,” she says. “It’s important for them to be able to say, ‘OK, so you didn’t meet your fundraising goals this year because you had to return that gift. Well, that’s the right thing to do because that’s true to the ethics of our organization.’”

Can You Have Accountability Without a Donor Code?

There are some people in fundraising who aren’t convinced a donor code of conduct is necessary. Peter Hayashida, a consulting partner at Marts and Lundy, is in that camp but says organizations do need to support their fundraisers.

“At the end of the day, I don’t think you need a donor code of conduct to say that if someone sexually harasses my gift officer, I’m not going to take their gift,” Hayashida says. “That just feels to me like common sense and human decency.”

He believes organizational leaders need to let staff know that harassment won’t be tolerated and train them on what to do if it happens.

“The thing that’s most important is, it’s got to come from the leadership,” he says, noting that at his last nonconsulting position, he oversaw a university team of 130, including 55 development staff. “The fundraiser has to know that the organization has their back.”

Mitchell of the Aligned Strategy Group thinks training in how to deal with donor harassment should be a part of the process for all of a nonprofit’s new hires.

“Managers can say, here are some common situations that will feel sticky, and here’s how I, as your manager, have navigated it in the past,” says Mitchell. “And here’s where I felt like I went wrong or what I would do differently, and I want you to learn from that. Setting people up for the what-ifs is super important.”

Hayashida agrees, noting that giving clear examples of what to do and acknowledging the organization will support the fundraiser are crucial.

“It’s perfectly reasonable to say to a donor, ‘I’m not feeling well. I’m going to have to excuse myself, but we’ll follow up later on’ and then just leave,” Hayashida says. “This is where role-playing can help. I can play the obnoxious donor. Then have them think about, ‘OK, what would I say in that situation?’ Or decide, no, I really just need to go.”

Before implementing its donor code of conduct, Holland Bloorview had a policy to train new staff on harassment but felt more was still needed.

“Every new staff member that joins — part of their orientation includes a conversation with me as the CEO with a promise to them explicitly that there’s no donation of any size that is more important than their safety and outlining the escalation process in our anonymous reporting process,” Hawken says. “We regularly have training on issues around sexual harassment, antiracism, antibullying. But we felt that we still weren’t doing enough.”

Whether through a donor code of conduct or internal measures, fundraisers agree that it is key to communicate expectations about appropriate behavior to donors.

“It harms the whole sector when we let a donor with bad behavior get away with it because then they just go to the next organization and do the same thing, if not worse,” Mitchell says. “When we set that boundary and say, ‘Hey, we’re actually not going to engage with each other in that way,’ it saves everybody from them doing that again.”