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.
Michael Rosen Says... 