Ethical issues in agency resource development: Implications for social administration

ETHICAL PRACTICE

Abstract

As nonprofit human service agencies become increasingly Involved in financial resource development they will face issues that can potentially compromise the ethical conduct of such activity. The authors discuss six issues that can potentially compromise ethical resource development and they examine the Implications they may create for social administration. The six Issues are (a) the ambiguity of organizational Identity, (b) the portrayal of the agency's cause and its relationship to fund development strategy, (c) resource development as cause-oriented advocacy, (d) the potential vulnerability of the donor, (e) the nature and content of the resource development plea or request, and (fl the provision of adequate information to potential donors. An agency can empower potential donors by respecting their personal situations, Including their vulnerability to manipulation, and by equipping them with the understanding and information they need to make good decisions about whether and what to contribute.

INCREASINGLY, NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS engaged in the provision of human and social services are searching for financial resources to advance their causes and missions (National Society of Fund Raising Executives, 2000). As the retrenchment of public financing of human services escalated in the early 1980s, interest in fund development expanded (Hirschhorn, 1983). It continues to be an important focus of social administration in the nonprofit sector. Growing involvement in resource development comes at a time when there has been considerable privatization of social welfare (Salamon, 1989, 1995; Smith & Lipsky, 1993) accompanied by increased expectations for the performance of nonprofit social and human service agencies (Chambre, 1989; Salamon, 1992; Poppendieck, 1998). Expanded roles and heightened expectations for performance accentuate the limited resources most of these organizations possess, demanding of nonprofit agencies considerable ingenuity in the development of resources to find and support their missions (Garr, 1995).

In their rush to garner funds, social welfare agencies may not be mindful of subtle and difficult-to-discern ethical issues that can threaten the propriety of resource development, making the execution of right or proper find development an administrative challenge. Administrators and others responsible for fund development (e.g., board members) may be unaware of these issues or may neglect to address them as they invest more time and energy in the acquisition of donations, gifts, and grants. In this paper, the authors identify issues that can potentially compromise the propriety of agency resource development programs as the acquisition of funds and other resources dominate the attention of most nonprofit human service agencies in the foreseeable future.

Background and Nature of the Problem

Many nonprofit social and human service organizations perform at financial margins that would prevent any true business from entering social markets (Wolpert, 1996). In particular, small grassroots organizations may often find themselves in administrative dilemmas "to make ends meet," something they often try to address through strategies of fund development that include campaigns, events, and direct appeals for charitable gifts and donations (Lipsky & Smith, 1989).

Historically, philanthropic foundations have been a source of funds to fill the "mission gap" of these agencies formed by the discrepancy between increased expectations, spiraling social needs, and limited ongoing funding. But even though foundations can afford to invest more in the nonprofit sector (Johnston, 1999), many of them have pulled back from doing so. Many foundations no longer fund the operating costs of agencies; nor do they readily underwrite the capital equipment and infrastructure needs of non-- profit organizations.

Foundations often interpret their own social role as finding innovative programs to test and evaluate responses to emerging social issues or problems. Many foundations now prioritize the support of new types of service approaches to address issues communities face that go either unrecognized or ignored by established or traditional private or public funders. Their commitment tends to be short-lived making it difficult for nonprofit organizations to identify sources of long-term support. These agencies may look to external resource development as one solution to this challenge but nonetheless such activity requires the investment of considerable energy that can rob time from more primary mission-based service activity.

Privatization requires nonprofits to increasingly perform within competitive social markets that may not operate as true markets in the economic sense but do require higher levels of performance, more innovation, and more information management than in the past (Donahue, 1989). Regulatory systems increasingly judge agencies not only against standards of quality but also against benchmarks of performance for their service areas. Engagement in resource development not only can be predicated on an organizational need to recoup shortfalls in funding, it also may be predicated on the need to generate resources that enable agencies to fund innovation, expand services to new constituencies, and achieve more autonomy from established funders. Nonprofit social and human service agencies may see resource development as a strategy to gain a competitive edge in highly demanding and uncertain policy environments that increasingly value performance, results, and a modicum of competition.

Resource development has grown to be an important if not critical function of most nonprofit organizations, many of which feel that they can no longer afford to go without an investment in such a function (Lord, 1988). There is considerable variation in how agencies raise resources apart from contracts and grant writing (Gronbjerg, 1993). The scope of this variation is quite broad. It compasses estate planning, the donation of real property or investment assets, appeals for cash (Lauffer, 1984), membership campaigns (Herron, 1997), the sale of products (Crimmins & Keil, 1983), the engagement in for-profit entrepreneurial activities (Emerson & Twersky, 1996; Johnston, 1999), and the sponsorship of entertainment events, including gambling activities. Agencies may create new structures to accommodate the raising of these funds including endowments, subsidiary corporations, and foundations.

A new nonprofit discipline found in the resource development professional has emerged within social administration that is responsible for the formulation and management of fund development strategies (Gelatt, 1992). The emergence of professional associations of fund developers, credentialing systems for fund developers, marketing companies to support fund development in the nonprofit sector, consultants who offer technical assistance and expertise to nonprofit organizations, and training programs in philanthropy and resource development reflects the growing institutionalization of this function within the nonprofit sector. Fund development is now a normal and expected element of nonprofit administration.

Resource development by nonprofit agencies has created its share of controversy among regulators, in the media, among state and federal legislators, and among the public at large (Hodgkinson, 1989). Some members of the business sector consider nonprofit entrepreneurialism a threat to their interests. Business associations have argued that, given their favored tax status, nonprofit organizations can engage in unfair business practices and obtain advantages their for-profit counterparts do not enjoy (Weisbord, 1989). The movement of nonprofit organizations into competitive business enterprise has been recognized as problematic by some lawmakers who argue that it is a potential if not outright abuse of their charters under the Internal Revenue Services Code and a violation of the intent of Congress. But despite these criticisms, nonprofit entrepreneurialism is growing as foundations foster the application of the business model and values to nonprofit organizations (Emerson & Twersky, 1996).

Certainly the abuses of fund development within the nonprofit sector have been made visible in the media, which may make appeals for financial support suspect in the minds of the public. Contributors may learn that their donations were consumed by administrative overhead, misallocated to enterprises and purposes contributors did not intend or were not aware of, or stolen or put to improper use (Doing good or doing well, 1999; Watchdogs warn fundraiser on methods, August, 1999). In light of these abuses or suspect practices, state attorneys general have required more stringent licensing and reporting requirements on part of nonprofit organizations that seek to raise finds through direct appeals, events, and membership campaigns.

Nonprofit organizations are vulnerable to these exposes since the public considers them to be social institutions that stand for a cause and that are to be trusted with the proper raising and use of resources in whatever form they may come (Independent Sector, 1991). It is likely that few nonprofit organizations commit these egregious violations of the public interest. Indeed, the ones that misuse finds may be readily detected given the public accounting and regulatory requirements with which such agencies must comply. However, a more serious problem may lie in resource development practices that are subtle in their potential violation of propriety.

Agencies with zealous resource development programs and activities may not reflect on their practices. They may surrender to the pressure exerted by external funders, board members, and competitors to raise more funds. And, they may surrender to their own expectations for growth and innovation without much regard to ethical considerations and standards of propriety. The authors do not question the overall propriety or legality of resource development practices in this paper. They focus on potential ethical issues and practical implications that increased involvement in solicitation may create for nonprofit social and human service organizations.

The authors have a particular concern about non-- profit social and human service organizations because of the likelihood that these agencies will serve members of society who often face stigmatization, oppression, and abuse, and who often are not valued by the general community (Poppendieck, 1998). Resource development interacts with agency marketing activities to influence how a community may come to perceive the espoused beneficiaries of the agency's resource development activities. Thus, resource development does not merely involve raising funds but also involves an agency's interpretation of mission, purpose, and social legitimacy to potential donors and contributors, something that is increasingly difficult for nonprofit organizations to undertake given the many competing and diverse pleas donors receive.

Resource Development Issues

Nonprofit social service agencies face numerous issues when undertaking resource development. If agencies do not address these issues, they risk a serious breach of ethical practice that can, in turn, potentially undermine their missions. Six of these issues can jeopardize ethical practice. They are: (a) the ambiguity of organizational identity, (b) the portrayal of the agency's cause and its relationship to fund development strategy, (c) resource development as cause-oriented advocacy, (d) the potential vulnerability of the donor, (e) the nature and content of the resource development plea or request, and (f) the provision of adequate information to potential donors.

The Ambiguity of Organizational Identity

Perhaps one of the most serious issues pertaining to propriety expanded and zealous resource development activities may create lies in the contemporary policy, legal, and social context in which nonprofit social and human service agencies must perform. There is now a certain ambiguity that surrounds nonprofit work. Under privatization, nonprofit service agencies become an extension of government either at local, state, or federal levels. Their identity can be subsumed under the policy umbrella of government that measures their merit and worth by their impact on the aims of public policy. Alternatively, when nonprofit service agencies make appeals to the public to garner more recognition and awareness of their missions, and additional resources to advance their causes, they become more like charities that are seeking the identification of the public with their issues, concerns, and needs. And, when they seek to offer a competitive product that creates "profit" they operate as business entities. So, what is their identity? Are they quasi-governmental entities, charities, or businesses?

This ambiguity may create considerable ambivalence among potential donors whose motivation to give is established through the donors' evaluation of the consonance between their own values and those of the agency. Does the agency approach each donor with a different organizational face, only to find that the potential donor is confused about the identity and intent of the organization? An agency, for example, knows that certain individual donors are very concerned about the plight of the mentally ill and so it bases its "statement of cause" on appeals to these values noting that the agency is committed to serving these individuals. However, perhaps the agency then excludes members of this population from certain services because governmental reimbursement does not fully fund their participation. How does the agency interpret these decisions to potential donors? The donor might be told, "From a charitable standpoint, we value the same people you value. But from a business standpoint, we restrict their involvement in certain services." Some donors may simply think that the agency lacks integrity, while others may think that the agency engages in opportunistic if not false fund-raising practices. The agency, however, unaware of the discrepancy, finds that donors are not sympathetic to its cause, or finds that donors are confused about the motivation and intent of the organization.

Portrayal of the Cause and Its Relationship to Fund Development Strategy

Integrity in resource development also can emerge as an issue when the agency is not sensitive to or ignores the relationship between its portrayal of cause and the selection of its fund development strategy. Here an agency may espouse values that prioritize virtue on part of the people they serve. For example, an agency is interested in reducing addictions, in helping people to engage in gainful employment, to escape poverty, and to achieve autonomy as adults. The organization's value base can favor approaches to treatment that promote recovery and empower people through the provision of a diverse range of services that help them to get back on their feet.

A fund development strategy, however, may appeal to more base human activities which is not consistent with the service culture of the agency. The agency that invests in bingo and garners considerable resources through this kind of activity may have a difficult time justifying its strategy to the public (Carbone, 1993). One agency, for example, allows the very people it serves to participate in bingo games, a source of recreation and social involvement for these individuals. But these participants may be dealing with addiction and with poverty but the agency still capitalizes on their frequent participation in games. The entrepreneurial ingenuity of the organization extends to concessions where selling food and drink garner even more resources for the agency than what the regular bingo game produces.

A media expose may suggest that the agency is tempting the very people it serves and failing to help them gain the virtues the community believes are important to the achievement of adult autonomy. The press may indicate that the agency is taking advantage of vulnerable individuals who are being helped on the one hand to "escape poverty" while on the other hand failing to practice the virtues they need so they can become independent and autonomous. The media may be the first to point out the lack of congruity and label it as hypocrisy. Agency personnel may suggest that the media is overstating the problem. After all, such gaming brings in resources for the organization to support its mission and its contributions to the public good.

Integrity is essential to the identity and image of any organization. It is particularly critical to the fund of public support that a nonprofit social and human service agency requires in its community. This fund of support is limited, precious, and easily squandered in an environment that lends itself to zealous resource development. The precarious nature of community perception and support makes the achievement of integrity in resource development a central objective of any strategy that seeks to garner resources from new sources, particularly from pleas made to various public audiences (Carbone, 1993).

Resource Development as Cause-Oriented Advocacy

The engagement in agency resource development is, in a sense, a form of advocacy as cause-oriented organizations make requests of various sources to garner support, recognition, legitimacy, and ultimately resources in the form of dollars and tangible and intangible assets. This advocacy typically makes claims about the extent of a social need and the relative seriousness of a problem in relationship to other causes and other issues. Certainly, American society faces numerous issues that go unfunded or underfunded. This is due to considerable competition among social causes and social movements, underfunding of societal responses in relationship to the magnitude of need, overfunding of certain issues in relationship to their actual prevalence and incidence, and the vulnerability of resource allocation processes to political influence and control.

Agencies that engage in the advocacy of their cause may find themselves in direct competition with other causes, requiring them to achieve a competitive edge that sets them apart within their communities as distinctive, more deserving, and perhaps more acceptable than other non-- profit organizations. Thus, they imbue their resource development programs with strategic attributes designed to set them apart from other nonprofit agencies (Dove, 1988). Within many communities, federated funding systems such as United Ways attempt to deal with this competition by centralizing donations as well as by centralizing planning, allocation, contracting, and evaluation functions. Although federated systems may justify the need for this kind of control in the name of reducing potentially wasteful redundancy it may actually serve to curb the level of autonomy member agencies can exercise over their own resource development. These federated finding systems may require participating organizations to refrain from certain types of resource development practices. They may place blackouts on part of the year or restrict the scope and amount of fund development; recognition that individual agencies may compete with the control federated systems seek to exercise over a particular community's philanthropic resources.

However, there still remains an impetus for agencies to foster their own resource development enterprises and they may undertake specific tactics that help them to achieve a competitive edge. One of these tactics involves the recruitment of celebrity spokespeople who endorse the cause, legitimize what the agency does, and take the message of the agency to the general public and to public decision-makers, particularly at budgetary time. On a national level, celebrities have expanded the budget of the National Institutes of Health through their pleas to federal legislators and to their testimony before committees of Congress. High-profile celebrity spokespeople have been instrumental in increasing funds for spinal cord injury, Parkinson's Disease, and other medical conditions. The relative absence of spokespeople of such high stature in other areas can result in a shortfall of resources for addressing serious social issues.

On a local level, athletes, newscasters, and actors may sponsor causes and rally people and groups to endorse fund-raising events that enjoy high visibility and high legitimacy within certain communities. However, such advocacy may set one agency against another. Each organization may calculate new approaches to resource and fund development and seek the most visible local celebrity candidates to call attention to and endorse publicly its particular social cause.

On face such activity may appear benign. Yet, celebrities may be quite careful in the selection of what they are willing to endorse, only championing a particular social cause when they or their families are touched by the problem, or endorsing a cause that reinforces their own identity and image in a positive way. They may select those causes that people have some sympathy for while distancing themselves from other, less attractive issues. Such endorsements do not mean that the most deserving problem as measured by epidemiology or severity will rally the concern of a particular community. Certainly, very serious problems such as domestic violence, homelessness, or HIV infection were ignored philanthropically before they obtained funding through public programs that made these issues less of a private concern necessitating charity and more of a public issue. Or, if celebrities selected issues based on their severity, they would become quite outspoken about some of the most serious issues communities face even though the majority of community members may attach considerable stigma to such issues. Unfortunately, resource development is not a rational process, particularly when it is subsumed within celebrity culture.

Entrepreneurial action in resource development may skew resource allocation by making one cause more visible and successful than another and, consequently, drive some very serious or emergent problems out of the public mind. Thus, cause-oriented advocacy may misallocate the energy and resources of a particular community, making collaboration across groups almost impossible to achieve because of the competition among social causes. Perhaps cause-- oriented advocacy will be more entrenched in those communities that do not have state and local solutions to finance adequate levels of service delivery to multiple populations.

Zealous resource development on part of nonprofit agencies can make them partisan advocates of specific groups and approaches to service and reduce their commitment to the advancement of a common good of broad scope. In a society without such a broad definition of the common good, and the financing of social resources and utilities to support its attainment, competition over philanthropic dollars most likely will become intense. The scope and amount of agency-based resource development may be a symptom of the inadequacies of social welfare financing in the United States.

The Potential Vulnerability of the Donor

Agencies engaged in zealous resource development face many issues that the status of the donor creates. Making pleas to potential individual donors pose some significant ethical concerns. Some potential donors may be quite vulnerable to certain pleas and some agencies may play off of this vulnerability to secure donations. For example, take the apparently benign situation of the nonprofit human service agency that prospects upper income individuals within the community and "reaches out" to them through personal contacts. Aged individuals who are alone and who feel isolated may be quite receptive to such contacts and the visits they produce.

An agency representative visits and quickly forms a relationship with the potential donor. The representative talks about the person's family and personal history perhaps identifying and elaborating on commonalties that exist between them. Nothing about a donation may be even broached since the agency representative is building a relationship or, put more crassly, grooming the donor. The potential donor is impressed with the warmth and interest of the representative and invites the person to return for another visit. At no time does the representative say that he is only visiting to appraise the person's interest in the agency's work and his or her willingness to make a gift. However, this plea is eventually made and the potential donor is ready to make a pledge, perhaps because the person has a strong interest in the agency's work, or perhaps because he or she wants to maintain the relationship with the representative. It is difficult to know the donor's rationale.

Certain indicators can flag the vulnerability of a potential honor including age, health status, family situation, and relative level of isolation. The presence of these indicators suggests that the agency should treat this "donor situation" as high risk, and implement a protocol that prevents the use of blatant or even subtle coercion. The formulation and use of such a protocol may be important when resource development personnel operate under incentive programs that require meeting specific contact and/or monetary objectives, something that marketing tactics may inadvertently promote.

There are other indicators of donor status that require sensitive ethical consideration on part of organizations that are reaching out to develop and groom potential donors. Potential donors who have recently lost loved ones may be easily manipulated by an agency given their desire to cope with their grief by remembering those who have passed on. These individuals may have heightened susceptibility while grieving and may be more willing to donate than if they were not mourning a loss. Those individuals coping with complicated grief may be quite susceptible to a sales-oriented pitch by an agency representative who may not be sensitive to the type and problematic features of grieving. These individuals may be susceptible to pleas about sustaining the memory of their loved ones through planned giving, estate planning, and large donations that can result in the naming of buildings after loved ones, the establishment of large endowments, and the sponsorship of major programs.

Illness and disability are also other special circumstances that require sensitive ethical consideration on part of nonprofit agencies that are undertaking resource development. Like the aged person who is isolated or the person who has recently experienced the loss of a loved one, people coping with illnesses and disabilities may be quite susceptible to pleas that recognize their pain and suffering. These individuals may conclude that the agency is the only entity that understands their plight and that it alone deserves their contributions and donations because other people in a similar situation can get help there. Indeed, individuals coping with debilitating and long-term illnesses may come to understand the work of the agency through the portrayals and assertions made by resource development personnel who are under no obligation to offer a balanced and critical evaluative perspective on the work of the agency.

Of course it is not wrong to reach out to individuals in these situations, but it is wise to keep in mind that they are vulnerable and that they should be treated in a manner that may be quite different than other types of donors. The status of the donor becomes critical as nonprofit agencies increasingly engage in systematic programs of marketing and donor relationship management (Carbone, 1993). Much of the contemporary literature on resource development suggests that one-shot donations are not in themselves efficient ways of conducting campaigns. Indeed, such donations do not really help an agency to develop and sustain a donor base. Best practices in resource development suggest the management of the "lifetime value" of donors who give multiple gifts of progressively higher value over time.

Donors, therefore, can become objects of management that are the focus of systematic marketing efforts that legitimize prospecting, relationship formation and cultivation, induction into the role of the donor, solicitation, maintenance of relationship, and preparation for future requests. Who is present to protect the interests of the potential donor, or is there the assumption that such individuals have the capacity to protect themselves? In normal situations the assumption of donor autonomy and self-protection is quite valid as it is in most contractual or market-oriented transactions. However, when vulnerability factors are present, agencies must take extra care in engaging donors and using particular pleas and solicitations. Sales-based or marketing-oriented resource development programs may heighten the potential violation of donors who possess certain risk factors. The risk of exploitation is high. Agencies that engage in zealous programs should be conscious of such a possibility, particularly when they formalize a program, attach high expectations to its performance, productivity, and outcomes, and offer incentives for its success to resource development personnel.

The Nature and Content of the Plea

The plea has fundamental ethical considerations in any resource development program. The plea frames why the agency is seeking contributions and donations, and it can be critical to motivating an otherwise reluctant donor to contribute money or other assets. The plea can be misused particularly with potential donors who possess certain qualities or experiences. The matching of the plea to the circumstances and situations of individual donors may be critical in any ethical resource development effort. It is also important to consider how certain pleas shape the image potential donors hold of the people the agency serves. An ethical resource development effort not only considers the status of the donor but of the potential beneficiary of the donation whose image can be sacrificed to inappropriate portrayals of people in need and, consequently, contribute to negative stereotypes.

To shape the image a potential donor holds of the recipient of agency services, resource development personnel may use pleas to invoke in donors pity for the plight of the person or fear of the issue the agency seeks to address. The person with Down's syndrome, for example, may be portrayed as angelic or as a perennial child. Various marketing materials may reinforce these images as potential donors see pictures of adults with Down's syndrome who look playful, dependent on staff, or needing high levels of supervision. Pleas to potential donors to support a rehabilitation program for people coping with serious mental illness may portray them as quite ill and as quite dependent. Still another example is the family counseling center whose billboard advertisement in a community showed an attractive woman in a bridal gown, while her husband, dressed in a tuxedo, was lurking behind her looking like an evil monster. The wording on the billboard read, "After marriage, people sometimes change."

Even though these images may reinforce negative stereotypes, nonetheless, some agencies may feel they are necessary to invoke the desired response among potential donors. The assumption that pity, fear, or dread stimulates charitable impulses may be operative here. These feelings or attitudes may be well ensconced in the American psyche as archetypes of "people in need," particularly of those individuals who cope with disabilities. A resource development program may induce stereotypes that do not contribute to either the donor's accurate understanding of a person's situation or of the social issues that create or otherwise reinforce the person's situation. A contributor may think: "I have to give, because I am fearful." Or, "I need to become a contributor because of the plight of these individuals."

Of course, resource development programs do not have to induce or otherwise stimulate such stereotypic portrayals and the feelings and attitudes that accompany them. Programs can portray people in empowered roles such as the agency that shows in its brochures, annual reports, and other materials people with developmental disabilities operating complex machinery and computers. The caption of this agency is empowering: "Join us in building the talents of our people." Here the archetype is one of the competent person who is able to perform effectively but who also may possess some kind of limiting factor that demands support and service. The plea "to join us" even empowers the choice of the potential donor.

Pleas are critical to any resource development program. Yet, agency personnel must carefully scrutinize the pleas they frame and use. Often the culture of the agency can create blind spots among decision-makers who may not readily perceive the values that form the pleas they choose and the consequences of these values for shaping the potential image of the ultimate beneficiaries of fund development. Having external reviewers examine the pleas an agency uses in its resource development program may serve as a simple check and balance and that enable administrators to identify inappropriate stereotypes.

Nonprofit agencies do face a challenge in shaping pleas that advance resource development and that do not place service recipients in a negative or inappropriate light. Accordingly, the agency has to match its values with those of potential donors in order to foster the act of giving (Grace, 1997). And, so if an agency builds an empowered image of the people it serves, it must prospect for potential donors who share this image, and who want to contribute to an organization that puts these values to use. Matching agency and donor values is a difficult but productive tactic that can result in an effective program of resource development (Grace, 1997). However, such matching is also a double-edged sword in that an agency can appeal either to the base or the higher values that potential donors hold of people in need. Because an agency is able to attract donors by matching values with them, it does not mean that the organization is appealing to high values that will valorize the image of the people it serves. Agency administrators have a responsibility to steward this image, not to exploit it in the name of resource acquisition.

The Provision of Donor-Based Information

Still another issue facing resource development involves the information agencies can provide or are willing to provide prospective contributors. If organizations increasingly refrain from using particular pleas based on emotionality to establish congruence with potential donors, how do they then build a productive relationship with such individuals? Agencies do want to foster the identification of individual donors with their missions and with the needs and concerns faced by the people they serve (Drucker, 1990). Developing this identification among potential donors is a fundamental aspect of resource development and likely predicts the long-term sustainability of such relationships. However, it is unlikely that potential donors have adequate information on which to base their decisions to become donors.

The extent to which agencies are committed to helping individuals to make decisions to become donors may be one of the most salient ethical challenges these organizations face. Like with any critical decision, evaluation becomes important to making an informed and insightful judgement. If agencies refrain from inducing participation through emotional or coercive pleas, what must they rely on? Certainly information becomes a critical resource to many decision-makers who require insight into the quality and results of the services the organization offers (Gronbjerg, 1993). Many agencies may not be able to offer such information because they fail to see the linkage between their resource development and evaluation systems or they rely on coercion rather than education and enlightenment of donors.

The availability and provision of this information can change the status of contributors. Providing donors with adequate and useful information suggests that the agency approaches them as individuals who will make conscious and critical decisions about their contributions and who will chose between various options. They are not to be coerced or manipulated into giving but rather informed about the potential consequences and effectiveness of a gift. They are investors who not only want to align themselves with good causes but with causes that produce good results in the lives of people, results potential donors must appraise as to whether they are meritorious and worthy of their support.

An information approach to donor development suggests that individuals are bombarded with good causes and that they are relatively uninformed about the potential consequences of their contributions. This is probably why celebrity status is so important to resource development campaigns. Celebrities can literally create "brand names" by endorsing particular organizations or causes giving great legitimacy to the agencies with which they align themselves. In the midst of a great deal of uncertain information, through their endorsements, celebrities can reduce ambiguity and offer some clarity to people who are puzzled about what is the most deserving or reputable cause. But the motives of celebrities themselves should be suspect, something the typical donor likely will not consider.

Many donors probably are not the recipients of clear information about the consequences or relative effectiveness of their contributions. Some donors want information about the consequences of their gifts for recipients of agency services while other donors may want to know the overall outcomes their gift helps the agency achieve. Still other donors may want to know the overall impact of their contributions on the problem in the community. Information may mean something different to various donors since information itself may reflect the relative values of donors.

Perhaps one of the most important attributes of a good agency-based resource development program is its ability to reveal the kind of information individual donors desire to help them to make decisions about becoming or continuing as contributors (Wolf, 1984). Such information can change the substantive content of the pleas agencies make to potential donors. Agencies can incorporate into their pleas information that reveals the social significance and effectiveness of their work using information that enlightens donors.

Conclusion

Whether agencies undertake resource development to meet needs that will otherwise go unfulfilled or to obtain discretionary resources that will enable them to be more autonomous, agency-based resource development is well established in the nonprofit sector. The ethical practice of resource development, therefore, is more important than ever. Although there are numerous ethical issues to be addressed, we identify a handful to highlight the importance nonprofit social and human service agencies must assign to the protection of potential donors and to the promotion of their informed decision making. One of the most powerful ways to ensure proper resource development activity is to empower the status of the potential donor. An agency can do this by respecting personal situations of potential donors including their vulnerability to manipulation and by equipping them with the understanding and information they need to make good decisions about whether and what to contribute.

Empowering the status of potential donors means educating them about agency purpose, clarifying any ambiguities that may exist in how an agency gets and uses resources, informing them about why the agency wants them as donors, and informing them about the consequences of their contributions. The success of resource development programs is not to be measured simply by the amount of resources the agency garners. Criteria of success must also incorporate the proper execution of those programs that seek resources through pleas, requests, and promotional campaigns.

Manuscript received: August 28, 2002

Revised: March 13, 2002

Accepted: March 15, 2002

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David P Moxley is professor, School of Social Work Wayne State University, 314 Thompson Home, Detroit Ml, 48202; e-mail: [email protected]. Laurie Bueche is senior manager, development and public relations, Volunteers of America of Greater Lansing, Lansing, Mi.

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