When news of the MIT Media Lab’s coverup of donations from Jeffrey Epstein was revealed by the New Yorker, we saw reactions of outrage and shock.
There’s outrage. There’s shock. Then there’s my reaction: I’m not all that surprised.
And I’m not the only one.
That many seasoned fundraisers reacted to this news not with astonishment but with nodding heads and knowing looks is a reflection of the state of the nonprofit world and the growing need for change.
We face a crisis of ethics at nonprofit organizations and in the fundraising profession.
It’s not that the word ethics is absent from conversations. It’s that it’s often confused with simply following the law. What’s more, discussions on ethics are rare in organizations. This creates an environment where it becomes all too easy to value donations over everything else. The intentional actions to conceal Epstein’s identity and defy MIT’s disqualification of him as a donor demonstrates the absence — or, worse, abandonment — of ethical practice.
To understand the extent of our problems, look at the way Signe Swenson, who worked in development at the Media Lab and spoke with the New Yorker, has been referred to in posts on LinkedIn and Twitter as “courageous” and “brave.”
But we should challenge that portrayal of Swenson, who now says she regrets her actions. She was employed as a development coordinator elsewhere at MIT at the time she interviewed for the role with the Media Lab. She acknowledges that she knew Epstein had been disqualified as a donor to MIT. She also has stated that during her interview Peter Cohen very candidly said that Epstein was a donor to the lab, that his gifts needed to be concealed, and that part of her job would be to ensure that happened. While she expressed concerns about this, she ultimately accepted the job and says she did so because it was her “dream job.”
If your dream job requires you to circumvent organizational policy and violate professional ethics, it’s not your dream job. Period.
A courageous act would have been to go to the head of central development at MIT and report what was happening with Epstein and the Media Lab. Speaking out now, as investigations into Epstein’s finances are underway, isn’t so much courageous as it is necessary.
Donor Power
My bigger concern, however, is whether she was equipped, as a fundraising professional, to make those choices. Did she fully understand the impact of her decisions, and did she have the required knowledge to challenge what she was being asked to do? There is reason to think she didn’t, and that is what should worry all of us involved in the process of seeking charitable donations to advance essential missions.
The research I’ve been doing with the fundraising think tank Rogare on the ways donors dominate nonprofit operations has made clear why a fundraiser early in her career would go along with directives from Cohen, her boss, and Joi Ito, the head of the Media Lab.
As the desire to court major donors has come to consume many nonprofits, we see organizations allowing philanthropists to interfere in administrative matters, encouraging mission creep, receiving special perks or treatment, and even sexually harassing fundraising staff.
Real-life examples include the Varsity Blues scandal, the case against Michael Steinhardt, and the Presidents Club annual charity event.
Nearly 94 percent of fundraisers who have responded to a survey we distributed globally have reported being affected, either directly or indirectly, by donors exerting their power. Given the prevalence of this dysfunction, it would be understandable if an early-career fundraiser was under the erroneous impression that skirting ethical guidelines to accommodate a donor is simply the way things are done.
Ethics Education
But why is this behavior by donors and fundraisers simply accepted? What lies beneath that acquiescence?
Frankly, the fundraising profession has significant work to do in education on ethics. The professional associations have ethical codes, but while a condition of membership is agreeing to adhere to them, there’s no requirement to complete a course of study or attend training on it.
Even if there were, sessions that are simply a review of the code give fundraisers little help in understanding the practical application of ethics on the job. Conferences tend to be heavy on “how-to” and sessions on emerging trends, and it takes effort to find the few sessions related to ethics.
Those of us who have asked to present talks on ethics at fundraising conferences are frequently rejected by organizations that say such sessions have low turnout. When even professional development prioritizes volume and income over leading critical conversations, is it any wonder so few fundraisers are prepared to confront ethical challenges?
No Required Qualification
It is notable and encouraging that in October the Association of Fundraising Professionals is launching a monthlong effort devoted to promoting ethics.
Moreover, the involvement of the Institute of Fundraising in the United Kingdom and the Fundraising Institute Australia to foster a global dialogue on ethics is admirable. What remains to be seen is how that dialogue will be continued once the calendar flips to November. But it is, at least, a start at further raising the profile of ethics among its members.
That said, we must acknowledge that many fundraisers are not members of professional associations, not required to adhere to an ethical code, and possibly not even aware that such codes exist.
Ours is a profession for which there is no established professional pathway. Many fundraisers come into the role as a second or third career. Sometimes they have relevant experience but not always. There’s no required education and no required qualification. On-the-job learning is often the most formal training they receive. This isn’t to say there aren’t ethical, successful fundraisers who found their way into the role from far-flung corners of the professional world. But there is an Achilles’ heel in our profession, and it is lack of formal standards.
The closest fundraising has to a standard is the Certified Fund Raising Executive designation. It is the only accredited certification for fundraisers and is internationally recognized. To earn the CFRE, fundraisers must complete an application that demonstrates relevant education and professional practice, then pass an exam that tests mastery of ethical fundraising practices. Recertification is required every three years to maintain the CFRE, which requires proof of continuing education and practice. The credential serves as an indicator that holders possess a strong knowledge base and ethical grounding. But it’s not required for fundraisers, and there are only 6,722 CFREs globally, compared with the 95,400 fundraisers in the United States alone.
Eroded Trust
Where does this leave us as a profession? Where does this leave the entire nonprofit world?
Plain and simple, MIT fundraiser Cohen should have known better and not gone along with Joi Ito’s directives. Swenson should have known better and reported Cohen.
But that’s all hindsight, isn’t it? How do we, as fundraisers and nonprofit leaders, do better? How do we ensure that others like Cohen and Swenson are informed and empowered to confidently stand up to pressure to secure gifts at all costs? To refuse to compromise for the sake of hitting a revenue goal?
The act of giving to charity is voluntary, and these voluntary actions are based on trust.
Nonprofit organizations and their fundraisers are holders of the public trust. Our choices and actions serve to build or destroy that trust. When stories like those of the MIT Media Lab come to light, they erode not only the trust of donors to that institution but the trust of all donors to all institutions.
Every scandal touches every one of us, whether we want to be associated with it or not. When a well-known, long-established institution like MIT can have this deception happening within its walls, why should a donor think a small, local organization is any better?
We’ve seen the impact that can happen when the public trust has been eroded.
After stories circulated that Olive Cooke, an elderly British woman suffering from depression, committed suicide in part because she felt too much pressure to respond to the more than 3,000 fundraising appeals she received, the British government stepped in and imposed numerous new regulations on fundraisers.
That story prompted fundraisers in Australia to voluntarily develop stricter professional codes to stave off government regulation.
Yet here in the United States, no matter how big the scandal, we continue doing business as usual, which may or may not involve evidence-based best practices, let alone ethical ones. Fundraising has been around long enough as a profession that we should be better than this. It’s not the Wild West anymore. The resources are there, and we have the technology to deliver them widely. Like covering up Epstein’s donations, we’re making a conscious choice to turn a blind eye to professional ethics. The worst part is that those who are hurt the most are the beneficiaries our missions were created to serve.
When donors lose trust, gifts disappear, and organizations close, will we still think those gifts were worth the cost?
Heather R. Hill, who has been in fundraising for two decades, is assistant vice president at KEES and serves as the chair of the CFRE International Board of Directors and chair of the board for the fundraising think tank Rogare.
