News
Don't tar with the same brush
When one nonprofit leader is caught in trouble, people wrongly assume that all are in the same boat.
By Laura Otten, published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 6, 2007
Integrity may be the most important characteristic an organization possesses. It may even be at a higher premium in a nonprofit organization, where public trust is so intertwined. The entire nonprofit sector received a body blow recently when it was reported that the former president of the Independence Seaport Museum had been accused of defrauding the organization of $2.4 million to support his extravagant lifestyle. By exposing that one suspected bad apple, every one of the nearly 22,000 nonprofits in the Philadelphia region got tainted.
The entire nonprofit sector received a body blow recently when it was reported that the former president of the Independence Seaport Museum had been accused of defrauding the organization of $2.4 million to support his extravagant lifestyle. By exposing that one suspected bad apple, every one of the nearly 22,000 nonprofits in the Philadelphia region got tainted.
The overwhelming majority of nonprofits locally and nationally are trustworthy organizations working hard, often under adverse conditions for far less remuneration than they are worth, providing valuable services to people and communities. These organizations and their good works should not become suspect because of one individual who may have betrayed a trust, or because an organization's internal financial controls weren't enforced, or because new board leadership came too late in the game.
Unfortunately, the Independence Seaport Museum is not the first example of a nonprofit gone astray. We have seen the American Red Cross exposed more than once; United Way of America and several of its outposts around the country have been deservedly criticized. In any local community, sadly, we can probably find an example of a nonprofit that has not done what it should.
But let us stop the knee-jerk reaction that we now see, especially since Sept. 11. According to an August 2006 survey by the Organizational Performance Initiative at New York University, 90 percent of Americans had a fair to great amount of confidence in nonprofits before 9/11. That number was at 60 percent a year after the attacks, and has only slowly been recovering, now at 69 percent.
Despite this, in the aftermath of 9/11, Americans gave to, and got involved with, charities in record numbers. Nonprofits stretched their missions, and many worked 24/7 to respond to the full array of human needs that resulted. Nonprofits were facilitating new involvement in volunteerism, bringing diverse people together for a common good, helping to build community.
The American Red Cross was accused of misusing donated dollars. Suddenly, in the minds of too many, all nonprofits are discredited. That includes the local soup kitchen run by volunteers, the domestic-violence shelter that operates around-the-clock, and the community center with its multiple services.
We should no more stereotype all nonprofits based on the performance of one or two than we should stereotype people. We must judge each nonprofit on its own merits - of which there are many. That is the lesson we must take from this situation: We must not see the well-publicized missteps of one organization as a black eye for the whole sector, but rather as an appropriate tainting of one. Instead, we must learn to look at each nonprofit and determine whether this particular nonprofit is deserving of our trust, our time, our dollars, our faith, etc.
Systems exist to prevent the unchecked power of one executive. We call on all nonprofit board members to recognize that with their name on the letterhead comes responsibility. Every nonprofit board member must be willing and able to execute all of his or her roles and responsibilities, not least of which is oversight of the executive director and the finances.
As board and staff, we must adhere to a code of ethics that does nothing to violate the public trust and everything to protect and honor it. We must be willing to challenge our colleagues when things don't look right, when behavior does not make sense in the context of our organization's work. And as potential donors and volunteers, we must look beyond reputation and broadly stroked pictures, and into and at the details of a nonprofit's actual work and operations, from the finances to the impact of its services to the performance of its board. We cannot allow the loss of faith in one organization to spread and be an excuse to withdraw support to the thousands of nonprofits laboring daily in the trenches.
Integrity it too important to be taken away based on mere association. While board members must hold themselves responsible for their actions and their failings, we should not, however, hold all nonprofits responsible for the actions of one.
Laura Otten is director of The Nonprofit Center at La Salle University (www.lasallenonprofitcenter.org) in Philadelphia.
