Nonprofits and Ethics

In the nonprofit world it would seem that unethical behavior does not come into play. Non profits are working for the people. It would not make sense, to do something that would hurt the very people they are aiming to help. Unethical behavior however, does exist in the nonprofit community. In fact many nonprofit agencies are falling behind when it comes to ethics. An example of this is seen in the article  “Ethics and Nonprofits”. This article focuses on unethical practices in nonprofit organizations. One organization in particular that the article focuses on is the Red Cross. The Red Cross is a well respected organization. I have donated to the Red Cross in the past because I felt confident about where my money was going.  I however did not realize that the Red Cross has not always been accurate with telling the public where their money is being placed. An example of this occurred after September 11. Many people donated money to the Red Cross. They believed that their money was being donated to families of the victims. Not all the funds however were sent to the victims’ families. In fact the Red Cross put aside more than half of the 564 million that was donated for other operations and future reserves. People were unaware of this until the Red Cross issued a report detailing this. People were outraged by this and as a result the Red Cross image took a hit. This is because the Red Cross did not do a clear job of showing were the funds were being placed until after the funds were donated. Their report was not properly made and thus many people were not aware of where their money was actually being placed.

Another area where ethics comes into play is in the research phase. Research ethics focuses on proper conduct during the researching phase.  This means that when nonprofit agencies conduct research they need to adhere to certain standards. An example of unethical research would be surveying people on why they do or do not donate and then changing the answers to please your boss. Another example could be misleading people on what the actual survey is about.  Although the Red Cross example does not exactly focus on the research phase it does show the end results of research which is a report. Since the Red Cross report was unclear and also unknown to many people it led to unethical behavior. People who were doing research on where the money was going did not know that it would not all go to victims families. This is because the report was not published and previous research on where donations go was not available. The Red Cross then in essence withheld certain parts of their research and was also not clear in their practices which are unethical.

The idea of people being unethical in nonprofits is a very scary concept. Non profits are the organizations for the people by the people. If these organizations are unethical it leads me to believe that other more business orientated organizations are unethical as well.