Jimmy LaRose, founder of the Inside Charity website and co-founder of the National Association of Nonprofit Organizations & Executives, continues to be a controversial figure in the nonprofit sector. However, I have refrained from addressing his statements that trouble me.
Until now.
LaRose recently copied portions of one of my recent blog posts, altered their intention, and purposely misattributed them to someone else in an article he wrote attacking the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
When I confronted him with what he had done, he admitted to and defended his actions. Furthermore, he refused to apologize or delete the article at issue. In his last email to me, despite the fact that I never mentioned NANOE in my communications to him, he wrote, “NANOE’s Board of Directors has directed our staff to forward all your communications to counsel.” Do you think he might have sent me that message in an attempt to intimidate and silence me?
Well, you deserve the truth. Therefore, I will not be silent.
I published my blog post “Are Donors the Hidden Enemies of Charities?” on April 16, 2018. On May 6, 2018, the LaRose article “Is There a Secret Reason AFP (Association of Fundraising Professionals) Is Hating On Donors?” appeared at Inside Charity.
In my post, I reported on the findings of The Harris Poll survey report conducted for AFP and The Chronicle of Philanthropy. While I recognized that most donors are good people, I did point out that some donors do bad things. The Harris survey found that 25 percent of women and 7 percent of men, who are members of AFP and who were surveyed, report having been the victim of sexual harassment. In the cases cited, 65 percent of the perpetrators were donors.
In his article, LaRose attempted to discredit the survey report though he offered no evidence of his own.
Neither AFP nor I are demonizing all donors. We are simply giving voice to the survey respondents who have said that donors sexually harassed them. This is a real problem that some of our fellow fundraising professionals have faced. It’s something that we should not ignore.
Toward that end, I suggested some actions that individual nonprofit organizations should take:
1. Have the organization’s board adopt a sexual harassment policy. If a policy already exists, it should be reviewed with an eye toward improving it. The policy should define sexual harassment (regardless of the source), map the reporting process, and explain the consequences of harassment. The policy should also make it clear that no donation is worth mental or physical harm to staff or volunteers; people should be clearly valued more than money.
2. The senior management team or board of the organizations should set policies regarding meetings with prospects and donors. The policy should include answers to several questions including:
- Where is it appropriate to meet with a prospect or donor?
- When should more than one person from the organization meet with a prospect or donor at the same time?
- When dining out with a prospect or donor, who should pick-up the check?
- What prospect or donor behaviors should not be tolerated?
- How should misbehavior be treated in the moment and following an incident?
3. Procedures should be adopted for providing feedback to prospects or donors who misbehave so that they understand that their missteps are inappropriate and unacceptable.
4. Staff and volunteers (including board members) should be provided with the policies and trained to ensure they understand all of the provisions of the policies
5. As part of training, make all staff and volunteers aware of the problem. For example, share the Harris Polling report with them along with a printed copy of the organization’s sexual harassment policies.
6. Re-assure staff and volunteers that they will be fully supported, and that they will not be penalized or lose their jobs for filing a legitimate complaint.
In LaRose’s article, he lifted the questions I asked in item two above. He then mislead his readers when he introduced the questions by writing, “In response to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s ‘poll’ AFP’s IDEA Committee (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access) has just announced another set of provisions they’re going to burden you with after they determine the proper answers to the following questions.”
To the best of my knowledge, the AFP IDEA Committee has not adopted my questions to guide its discussions. The questions I posed were clearly mine and mine alone. As I stated in my post, the questions are just some that should be addressed as nonprofit organizations discuss their own policies and procedures. I did not ask AFP to impose such a requirement on nonprofit organizations. It would have been foolish to do so because AFP has no mechanism for such an imposition even if it wanted to issue such a mandate.
By twisting the intent of my words and by providing incorrect attribution, LaRose has erected a straw-man.
LaRose writes:
Fundraisers, both men and women alike, can be trusted to make decisions that protect donors, themselves and the organizations they serve. NO THANKS MIKE GEIGER [AFP President and CEO]. Take your snake oil somewhere else.”
Again, no one at AFP, including Mike Geiger, have endorsed or adopted the points I made in my post. However, that does not stop LaRose from suggesting otherwise. What AFP has done is simply share a link to my post with its readers. AFP is an organization that embraces diversity. That means it is willing to expose its members to varying views on a broad range of issues. I assume that when AFP shares content, it is not necessarily endorsing that content beyond suggesting it is a point of view worth considering and discussing.
The other part of LaRose’s statement I want to address is his claim that fundraising professionals can take care of themselves. Well, The Harris Poll report suggests they need some help from their employers. The recent Presidents Club situation in the UK, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation situation, and other cases suggest charities need to do more institutionally to protect people. LaRose’s assertion is out of touch with reality. LaRose’s statement seems to imply that those who are victims of sexual harassment are to blame for not taking care of themselves. Am I reading too much into his statement or is LaRose essentially blaming the victims?
In his article, LaRose summarizes his position quite nicely when he states:
Money is more important than mission. Donors are more important than clients, causes or people.”
While I do believe in donor-centered fundraising, what LaRose promotes is not my version of being donor centric. Let me be perfectly clear:
No donation is worth mental or physical harm to staff or volunteers.
Now, I’d like to take a few moments to summarize the exchange that’s taken place following publication of LaRose’s article.
The Twitter user @nanope tweeted:
Woah! #plagiarize much @jimmylarose? @MLInnovations you’re famous! @nanoecentral stole your words and stuck them in @AFPMikeGeiger’s mouth! #plagiarism, it’s like writing, but by thieves! #nanope”
I followed up by tweeting a request for LaRose to apologize. I also emailed LaRose who responded via email and Twitter:
“Attribution not Plagiarism
Geiger used an official AFP twitter account to endorse these provisions and publicly announced the formation of a committee to address them. Furthermore, YOU ARE AFP in that you are an AFP member.
No retraction, no withdrawal, no apology.
By the way. I admire you and your work.
Warmly, Jimmy”
As you can see, LaRose admits to the misleading attribution of my work, tries to justify the misleading attribution, and then attempts to further mislead people by saying, “YOU ARE AFP…” It appears to me that LaRose wants readers to think I’m an instrument of AFP. Well, once again, LaRose is wrong!
I am no longer a member of AFP. I dropped my membership some time ago to avoid the potential of a conflict of interest as I am a blogger. I am also not a member of NANOE. I’m free to write about anything I want and share any view I want, supportive or not, without being beholden to any organization.
Simply put, LaRose’s attempt to discredit me by implying I’m simply an AFP mouthpiece fails.
I sent LaRose a follow-up email letting him know I’m not an AFP member as he falsely claimed. I also outlined some of my problems with his handling of my work. He responded:
Michael, in that, you’ve indicated you are a journalist and have created a public record via email and social media making accusations and demands on behalf of Michael Rosen, MLInnovations, Association of Fundraising Professionals and Michael Geiger NANOE’s Board of Directors has directed our staff to forward all your communications to counsel.
Moving forward please direct any further concerns to:
Rupert Janesko, Law Offices, LLP
cyberstalking@lawoffices.legal”
Was LaRose innocently telling me that his hands are tied, and that he is no longer free to communicate directly with me? Or, did LaRose intend his message to intimidate and silence me? In any case, it does confirm that he is unwilling to apologize for what he has done.
While I would like to address the broader content of LaRose’s post in greater detail, I’ll leave that to AFP. You can find AFP’s reaction by clicking here.
I hesitated writing this post. I did not want to put Jimmy LaRose in the spotlight and give him the attention I believe he probably seeks. However, I had to stand up to someone who took my words, falsely attributed them to someone else, and misled people about the intentions behind those words.
Now that LaRose has established that he refuses to take the high-road by apologizing and setting the record straight, it is my great hope that he will make his future arguments on issues without using my material and in a way that promotes civil discussion and advances the profession.
So, what do you think of LaRose’s actions?
That’s what Michael Rosen says… What do you say?
Michael Rosen Says... 