Public Relations Commentary

Increasingly, public relations pracititioners have to know not only how to write for the Web, but also how to manage and respond to blog postings. This blog was created to use in my public relations courses to help my students prepare to blog and learn how to respond to others in a virtual yet professional manner.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Ethics and Trust

I got to thinking about the scenario posed in class about the Clean Up the Coast non-profit and the dilemma on whether or not to accept the large donation when reading the article "Ethics and Fundraising" for this week.

In class I was pretty sure that I would have accepted the donation, but after thinking about it, I find myself waivering a bit. The article for this week makes a good point in its conclusion that "Maintaining and enhancing public trust is essential for organizations that want to raise money." It also explains that this trust is not just a function of ethical decision making, saying that it comes from a much broader set of circumstances that make up the organization's perception within target donor groups. In thinking about the scenario presented in class, while taking the donation might not really be unethical, it might send a few ripples through the donors that the organization relies on year in and year out to come up with money.

Because I don't work at a non-profit, its often hard for me to think about all of the considerations that these organizations have to think about to stay afloat. There is so much more transparency with NPOs than in more corporate "for-profit" entities, and they are held to an extremely high standard of decision making and organizational behavior overall.

The point this article highlights for me is that it takes a long time to build up trust within a circle of annual donors, and all it might take is one or two semi-questionable acts before these folks are backing a different or competing organization. This element of communicating trust with each action is a hard thing to do day in and day out, but is essential for survival, as we have read and discussed.

There is an old adage (at least I am told) that one of my undergrad professors at UNC told us in one of the first PR or Marketing classes I took - he said that when it comes to any decision in Public Relations, if at all possible, take the morally high road, no matter what, "Its always easier to clean up a mess if you're on top of it."

This sentiment rings especially true for crisis management as it pertains to NPOs, because if they get caught on the unfavorable side of a moral dilemma, a lot of their funding and support can go right out the window, real quick.

1 Comments:

  • At 11:28 PM, March 31, 2008, Blogger Emily Burnett said…

    Same here! I raised my hand in class last week indicating that I would accept the large donation. My reasoning was that you can't stop accepting donations from people if they have a questionable background, because how are you going to check all donors? But the more I thought about it after reading the article about ethics for this week, the more I don't think the answer is that easy. If building trust is a primary concern for an org, you shouldn't accept a donation from someone who has clearly undermined your mission. But I think the article makes a good point... It's best to have a plan in place so that you minimize questions and uncertainty among staff when decisions have to be made. This plan will serve as proof that ethical and sound decisions are being made. Having policies in place will allow for consistency and will decrease "gut" decisions. If the NPO we discussed last week had a plan and policy about donations, the director could have followed that plan and would have a clear rational for the outcome.

     

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