Don’t Tell The Donor
Taking Out The Trash – Voluntarily
By “A Fundraiser …”
When I was growing up, my mom used to say to me:
“Little fundraiser. I told you to clean your room. Go in there and do it right now or else, I will take this garbage bag and go clean it myself – and you won’t like what I’m going to throw away!”
It was the scariest threat my mom ever made. Yet, I never found out if she was bluffing or not because nothing motivated me more than the fear of my mom rampaging through my room throwing my beloved toys in the trash.
I’ve been thinking of this personal experience during the past few years as I’ve listened to Congress’s threats that if the nonprofit sector failed to regulate itself then government will stage its own intervention. We all know there are some bad apples within the nonprofit sector. But, there should be a way for the industry to clean its own room first before a bunch of bureaucrats get involved.
In October of 2004, at the urging of Congress, the Independent Sector conveyed the “Panel on the Nonprofit Sector” in an attempt to build consensus around a list of principles that could serve as a guide for self-regulation. The idea was that if nonprofits could find a clean our own house of misbehavior, we could avoid the intrusion of scary government intervention.
The Panel brought together dozens of leaders from charities, foundations, academia, and oversight agencies. They commissioned studies, reviewed existing standards within the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, and even encouraged two rounds of public comments.
Three years later, in October of 2007, the Panel finally released “Principles for Good Governance and Ethical Practice: A Guide for Charities and Foundations.” Unfortunately, not many people inside or outside of the sector even seemed to care. Those who did notice couldn’t help but ask -- what took so long?
The truth is that behind-the-scenes it seemed that hard work was being done to bring reluctant power brokers from various organizations on board.
In March of 2007, Trent Stamp, formerly of Charity Navigator, wrote on his blog that while he didn’t think the suggestions went far enough – he was throwing his support behind these principles. Stamp wrote that he didn’t want to be on the same side of as a long list of groups that opposed the suggestions.
The biggest sticking point seemed to be “principle #33” which read that nonprofits “should not sell or otherwise make available the names and contact information of its donors without providing them an opportunity at least once a year to opt out of the use of their names.
It was obvious that the Panel’s long summer of hard work paid off when The Direct Marketing Association unveiled its plan called the Commitment to Consumer Choice (CCC) – at its annual conference in Chicago this past October. The CCC has three main points, but the influence of the Panel’s original suggestions were clearly obvious in the language of the press release.
Nonprofits will be able to use a special seal of approval only if they agree to “effectively honor consumer requests to modify or eliminate mail” by providing “existing and prospective customers and donors with notice of an opportunity to modify the receipt of future mail solicitations from their organization in every commercial solicitation.”
Pat Kachura, the senior vice president for ethics & consumer affairs at the Direct Marketing Association, has defended the newest self-regulatory program by saying the program was designed to “meet the mounting consumer interests of relevance and timeliness” in order to help “keep the mail medium open for use by direct marketers.”
It remains to be seen whether or not these initiatives by the DMA will provide them with the arsenal of tools they need to avoid the dozens of proposed do-not-mail pieces of legislation that are popping up in state capitols across the country. In addition to these initiatives, DMNews reports that “the DMA will also invest in a consumer outreach campaign to help communicate some of these initiatives that will start to roll out in the fourth quarter of 2008.”
Now that the self-regulations are in place and the public relations campaign is set, the next step will be to ensure that nonprofit groups will follow these changes. That may not be such an easy task.
*Editor’s Note: Don’t Tell The Donor is one of the hottest blogs in the sector. It’s written anonymously because the author is well known in the sector and he/she/its bosses wouldn’t be pleased. Be assured, The NonProfit Times knows the author’s identity, at least enough to write the check. You’re going to have to trust us. |
