Sexual Harassment at Nonprofits: How It Happens and What To Do About It

There was the campaign co-chair who made intimations of sex with talk of Viagra. The major donor who, over dinner in a midtown New York hotel restaurant, proposed heading upstairs for “some fun.” And an outside investigator, hired by a nonprofit, who asked if a fundraiser had applied lip gloss in front of a male colleague, as if that gesture constituted some sort of sexual overture.

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. That’s in part because one in four women fundraisers has been sexually harassed on the job, according to a new survey sponsored by the Chronicle and the Association of Fundraising Professionals and conducted online by the Harris Poll. Only 7 percent of men said they have been harassed.

Among the other findings:

• 65 percent of fundraisers who had been harassed said at least one incident involved a donor; 39 percent cited harassment by a colleague.
• 16 percent of fundraisers said they had witnessed sexual harassment; 26 percent had been told about harassment.
• 82 percent of fundraisers said the #MeToo movement was having a positive effect on workplace culture and policy.
• 27 percent of those who had been harassed took no action. Fundraisers said they didn’t know what to do, worried they were overreacting, or feared negative career consequences. (Harris Poll said this figure should be read with caution because of the small percentage of respondents.)

Because women are the main targets of sexual misconduct, nonprofit leaders say that creating safe workplaces means focusing on broad gender and power dynamics that have permeated fundraising for decades.

Beth Ann Locke, a fundraiser at Simon Fraser University who’s written about sexual abuse at nonprofits, says it’s critical nonprofits take seriously the reports of abuse and send a message to their employees: “We don’t value donor dollars more than we value your personal safety or personal dignity.”

Issues of Equity

#MeToo Hits the Nonprofit World

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.

• About the Chronicle/AFP Poll on Sexual Harassment at Nonprofits
• Ending Harassment at Nonprofits Means Changing Office Culture, Experts Say
• Time’s Up Fund to Fight Sexual Harassment Raises $21 Million From Around the Globe

But equally important, say a growing number of nonprofit and foundation executives, is to focus on the power women hold in the field. While 70 percent of fundraisers are female, according to data from the Association of Fundraising Professionals, chief-executive and board jobs, especially at elite nonprofits, are often held by men.

Of the 10 charities that raise the most in the United States, according to Chronicle data, four are led by women. And none of those four giants are traditional charities that employ frontline fundraisers. All four are donor-advised-fund providers, like Fidelity Charitable, that were created by financial institutions to offer charitable accounts to donors.

Lisa Eisen, vice president of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, announced last month a new effort involving other grant makers to help nonprofits build equitable workplaces. One reason she was able to kick-start the work, she says, is that her fund is led by two women philanthropists, Lynn Schusterman and her daughter, Stacy.

“You start with the issues of harassment and misconduct, but you very quickly get to equity and women’s leadership,” says Eisen. “I’m hoping by addressing some of the more egregious problems that we will start addressing the need to have gender equity in terms of pay and in terms of opportunity and in terms of leadership.”

Mixed Statistics

The Harris Poll survey results indicate sexual harassment in fundraising may be somewhat less prevalent than in other fields, and certainly no worse. A 2016 U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission study found that somewhere between 25 percent and 85 percent of all women experience sexual harassment at work — which would put fundraisers in line with the federal agency’s most conservative estimate.

Fundraisers with decades in the profession tell the Chronicle they are seeing harassment on the job decline. They cite reasons including more wealthy women occupying the role of donor, nonprofit employees increasingly willing to speak up, and the passing of a generation of philanthropists with Mad Men-era attitudes.

But problems persist. The new poll data may somewhat understate the share of people who have been harassed, says Ariane Hegewisch, an official at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research studying sexual harassment in U.S. workplaces, because everyone polled belongs to the Association of Fundraising Professionals and therefore is more likely to have had positive career experiences. Fundraisers who have faced harassment and left the profession would not be included, and those considering leaving soon may not have taken part.

The Harris Poll survey found relatively few instances of outright sexual assault. The most common behaviors cited were inappropriate comments of a sexual nature and unwanted touching or physical contact. The overwhelming majority of perpetrators were men.

Nearly all fundraisers say they are at least somewhat satisfied with their organization’s culture in dealing with issues of sexual harassment, and more than 90 percent say their organization would support them if they reported harassment on the job. The vast majority said their employer had formal sexual-harassment policies in place.

But the responses among those fundraisers who experienced harassment and did report show a somewhat starker picture of how organizations are performing: A little more than half said they were unsatisfied with how their manager or organization responded. Just over 70 percent said no action was taken against the perpetrator. Among those fundraisers who did take some sort of action after experiencing sexual harassment, 35 percent said they suffered negative career consequences.

Did You Put on Lip Gloss?

Theresa C. says that was true for her. Nearly a decade ago, while working as a regional philanthropy director at a major national charity, the longtime fundraiser reported to her female CEO that a male colleague had, during an encounter that lasted a few minutes, placed his hands on her in an aggressive, sexual, and unwelcome manner. Her employer hired an outside firm to investigate. Both parties were interviewed, as were other employees at the organization, including one who verified Theresa’s account to the Chronicle.

“One of the questions that I specifically remembered was, ‘Have you ever put on lip gloss in front of him?’ " says Theresa. “I might have put on ChapStick but even if I did, what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

The organization ultimately determined that the male colleague had indeed violated policy. The disciplinary action? Both he and Theresa were put through sexual-harassment training. The CEO told Theresa it would help her learn how to avoid being harassed.

In no position to switch jobs at the time, she worked with the male colleague in question for three more years. “Really, I wanted him gone. I was worried for my safety, but I was also worried for the safety of my colleagues. The biggest reason I reported it is that I didn’t want that to happen ever again.”

Instead, she says she was labeled a troublemaker by the CEO, who made dismissive comments to others about the fundraiser making “a big deal” of things. The tension affected the dynamics of the entire fundraising team, according to the colleague who confirmed Theresa’s story.

“That is what is so compelling with the #MeToo campaign,” says Theresa, who now leads planned giving at a university in the Northeast. “I finally feel like people are hearing it. They are saying, ‘Wow, this does happen, and this is real.’ "

Power Imbalance

The fundamentals of the job and the makeup of the work force shape sexual harassment in some notable ways, say fundraising experts. Cultivating and soliciting donors happens over restaurant meals, at cocktail parties, and during gala dinners. Some donors forget that such events constitute work for fundraisers and that the relationships are foremost professional.

In the mid-1990s, longtime fundraiser Gail Perry says she was having dinner in a New York City hotel restaurant with a prospective major donor when he proposed they move upstairs for “some fun.” She considered the man a father figure.

“When you’re a young woman starting out, you are just trying to prove yourself,” says Perry, who now heads her own consulting firm. “You are working so hard, and you are thinking about being professional. And then when somebody ups and says something like that, it’s deflating.”

Chronicle photo by Julia Schmalz

Richard Perry, a fundraising consultant at the Veritus Group (and no relation to Gail Perry), says that raising big gifts is a “pressure-cooker job.” Fundraisers are constantly striving to meet performance goals tracked by their organizations, and they care deeply about attracting more money to advance their causes. “So you’ve got that kind of pressure,” says Perry, who conducts training for fundraisers on how to avoid and prevent harassment. “Then along comes somebody who promises to alleviate you of that pressure in exchange for something. So that’s the dynamic that could occur, and does occur.”

While women make up most of the work force, men hold the majority of fundraising leadership jobs at nonprofits. And most big donors continue to be men. That means that the field has “a gender dynamic layered over the power dynamic,” says Deb Taft, who started fundraising in 1987, working primarily at colleges and hospitals, and now is CEO of Lois L. Lindauer Searches, a nonprofit-focused headhunting company.

It used to be common for fundraisers to stay in major donors’ homes to save organizations money, says Taft. Once, in the late 1990s, while at the vacation home of a donor and campaign co-chair, and after the business meetings had concluded, the man began to hint at sex by talking about Viagra, Taft says.

“I politely stepped away into my room and shut the door and luckily was able to lock it,” she says.

Today, things are different — but not entirely, she fears. She put the topic of sexual harassment on her January staff-meeting agenda because not to do so “would have been tone deaf,” she says. She reiterated the company’s policies, which include supporting employees if they ever need to take steps such as leaving a campus or client’s home, switching hotels, or buying a plane ticket. The response from the staff, mostly women, was unanimously positive, she says. Having strict guidelines in place “takes the personal out of it.”

“It is complicated at every age but much more complicated for junior staff who may not have the training to make good decisions and to ensure that they are supported,” Taft says.

Seizing the Moment

The vast majority of fundraisers say they either strongly or somewhat agree that the #MeToo movement is improving workplace culture, the Harris Poll survey found, and that claims are more likely to be taken seriously than ever before. And at least some organizations are capitalizing on the public’s focus on curbing harassment to assess and improve their own practices.

In March, the Association of Fundraising Professionals launched what it calls the Women’s Impact Initiative, a two-year campaign to vanquish inequities in the field.

Also last month, 25 Jewish nonprofits, led by the Schusterman Foundation, kicked off what they describe as a communal partnership to ensure safe, respectful, and equitable workplaces and stomp out harassment and misconduct. The response was fast and strong, Eisen says, with 200 additional organizations signing up in the first 24 hours.

Participants are hammering out a set of organizational standards and a pledge — to be made public in May — that all participants will promise to follow, Eisen says. In addition, participating foundations will support a fund that will provide money to nonprofits for management and leadership training. Eisen says that some colleagues are also conducting their own survey on sexual harassment within Jewish nonprofits, the results of which will be released later this year.

“There is this issue of self-silencing and organizational silencing because people are concerned about losing their jobs, their careers being in jeopardy, losing funding for their organizations,” Eisen says. “Maybe they downplay how big a deal a comment is, or a little this or that, because they don’t want to create a problem.”

Bigger Themes

Patricia Watson, who stepped down in August as senior vice president for advancement at Brown University after a 40-year career in fundraising, says that sharing stories is important, but perhaps more important is dealing with the power dynamics and behaviors behind it.

She makes clear that no matter the seniority or rank of a fundraiser, harassment can happen. Just last year, a male donor insisted on meeting with her one-on-one in New York. On alert, her office proposed morning coffee. He insisted on dinner and then proceeded to drink and otherwise misbehave his way through it. Watson told a number of colleagues about the meeting, including her assistant: “I said under no circumstances do I want to talk to this person again.”

Watson, now senior vice president at consulting firm Grenzebach Glier and Associates, hopes the nonprofit world will recognize that current public dialogue around harassment can’t be only about women, or even sex. “It would be remiss to not take into account that this kind of behavior also happens to men. It could be a woman to a man, it could be a man to a man,” Watson says. “If we focus on one gender or one viewpoint, we are missing the boat.”

With the #MeToo movement, nonprofit leaders and others have a huge opportunity to elevate the discussion to bigger themes, including the wielding of power and how people treat one another, Watson says. Everyone needs to contribute, she is careful to state, but adds she has discussed with her 30-something-year-old children that this is the fight of their generation, like Vietnam, women’s rights, and civil rights were for her generation. Young nonprofit executives have a chance to “take the bull by its horns” and demand the right behavior from their boards and staffs, she says.

“We want to take this somewhere and have our experiences lead to something that is positive for all people.”

Lines Must Be Drawn

Some fundraisers say they see change coming, albeit more slowly than they would like. Sarah Willey, a 31-year-old charitable fundraiser and highly active volunteer in St. Louis, believes that a critical first step is examining who is sitting at the decision-making table. She sees her generation of nonprofit leaders as less tolerant of misconduct, and she wants more young women, especially women of color, in decision-making roles.

Late last year, a nonprofit where Willey holds a leadership position was considering bringing on a new partner for a project. He had excellent professional credentials and connections and was poised to contribute financially and as a volunteer.

Justin T. Gellerson

But he had recently left a big-time job in another state amid serious sexual-harassment claims. The investigation got play in local news outlets and easily turned up in a Google search. So alarm bells sounded in Willey’s ears as the nonprofit’s leaders weighed if they could work with the man without generating a public-relations fracas.

By far the youngest person involved in the discussion, Willey alone raised concerns for those who would work directly with him.

“Is it worth putting staff and volunteers in danger?” asked Willey, who in addition to extensive nonprofit volunteer commitments works as director of development and community outreach at Great Rivers Environmental Law Center in St. Louis.

The nonprofit decided to pass on the man; Willey doubts it would have reached the same decision as quickly without her input. “At some point, we have to recognize that there are some lines that have to be drawn,” she says. “Do we really want to run out of our organizations all these great young women who are going to be the leaders and change makers over the next generation?”

If she were harassed by someone important, she wonders, would people believe her and take appropriate action? Willey worries, too, about what she describes as “a lot of leeway” given to some star performers because they are seen as serving important missions. It is hard for nonprofits to turn down money, Willey acknowledges. But she is tired of older white men being given a pass.

“I suspect that type of conversation is happening at pretty much every organization among people who have decision-making power,” she says of her experience. “I hope at each of those tables there are people who speak up.”