# Does fundraising need an ethics committee?

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2014/05/30/fundraising-need-ethics-committee/
- Published: 2014-05-30T10:33:17+01:00
- Author: Ian MacQuillin

**Opening Instinctiv’s [Science of Response](http://www.instinctiv.co.uk/events/)
conference last week, the company’s managing partner Emily Gore quoted one director
of fundraising as saying such a conference was well overdue. And he was right (and
in the audience).**

Fundraising often lags behind developments in commerce, other professional fields
and other academic disciplines. And when our sector does finally come to embrace
these ideas, perhaps five, 10 or even 20 years later, it often does so at a rather
superficial level, devising its collective professional view of the subject based
on the metaphorical equivalent of reading the executive summary but not the whole
report (and then disseminating that through the 140 characters allowed by Twitter,
so the whole issue is distilled into a simple soundbite such as ‘people give through
emotion, not reason’).

> Faced with this influx of behavioral insights, are fundraisers ethically equipped
> to know which one to use in which circumstances?
> 
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There is nothing new in behavioural insights: although two of the most influential
books – Daniel Kahneman’s [_Thinking, Fast and Slow_](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0141033576/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401352698&sr=8-1&keywords=thinking+fast+and+slow),
and Richard Thaler’s and Cass Sunstein’s [_Nudge_](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/0141040017/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401352748&sr=8-1&keywords=nudge)–
were published within the last six years, they of course draw on research and ideas
going back much further than that. But conferences such as the Science of Response–
and I also have to say, the work that the fundraising think tank Rogare intends 
to do at Plymouth University – will help to ensure that now these ideas are gaining
traction in fundraising, they will do so in a comprehensive, in-depth manner.

The conference speakers presented such a wealth of insights, research findings and
titbits – many in the audience were scribbling these down furiously – that you could
almost feel professional practice transforming there and then in the room.

Some of these were that people are more likely to:

 * donate if you can prime their sense of reciprocity by giving them a small gift
   first
 * act if other people like them are also acting (this is called social proof)
 * give to an appeal if they can see the appeal is close to its target (usually 
   with 15 per cent of its target)
 * give to charity if they feel they (or the person they are giving to) have(has)
   had to go through some sort of exertion, pain or ‘martyrdom’
 * donate money if you first introduce the idea that they could also give time by
   volunteering.

All of these – and the multitude of other insights I haven’t listed here – have 
very practical applications. Some also have ethical implications. So it’s not just
a question of how could we use behavioural insights in our fundraising; it’s also
a question of ought we use them. Or more precisely, in what circumstances ought 
we use them?

Suppose you know that people are more likely to sign up to a Direct Debit on their
doorstep if their neighbours have already done so (social proof). Should you therefore
tell them that this is the case, even if it is not true? Suppose lots of people 
in the next street have signed up, but none in the road you’re currently door-knocking.
Are these people still ‘neighbours’? What about people in the adjacent postcode?

Suppose you know that if you tell someone on the phone that the last person you 
spoke to made a donation of £25, this has a significant likelihood of getting the
new prospective donor to exceed that gift. Should you do that, even if it was the
person three calls ago who gave the 25 quid?

In advertising terms, would such appeals be legal, decent, honest and truthful?

I was chatting a few weeks ago about the fact that people are more likely to give,
and more likely to give more, as you get close to the appeal target. I pointed out
that was only useful if you actually were close to the target and the fundraiser
I was discussing this with replied that you would adjust the figures so that it 
looked like the target was almost reached. She said you could cut the appeal into
various segments where each segment was, lo and behold, almost reached and you needed
just a final push to get it over the line.

Is it ethical to use such creative accounting to ensure that every prospective donor
is part of a mini-appeal (that doesn’t actually exist) that is always just short
of its target?

Now that they are about to be faced with this sudden influx, almost a plethora, 
of behavioural insights, are fundraisers ethically equipped to know which ones to
use in which circumstances, or is there a likelihood that some of these insights
will be used inappropriately and unethically, with the ends justifying the means?

## Fundraising’s ethics are drifting out of alignment with recommendations for professional practice

Perhaps fundraising needs an ethics committee – some sort of body that can assess
and advise on such issues (assessing ethical implications will be a key component
of the projects Rogare undertakes).

The are two fundamental approaches to ethics – deontology and consequentialism.

[Deontology](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/) is duty-based
ethics – very simply, is this the right thing to do, as a matter of principle, irrespective
of the consequences? An example of duty-based ethics is Kant’s injunction against
[lying](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/lying/lying_1.shtml).

[Consequentialism](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/) explores
whether some action is ethical based on the effect it has (for example, Utilitarianism
aims to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number).

I would argue that arbitrarily segmenting an appeal so that donors were always presented
with a target that was just within reach would be unethical from a deontological
position. But the consequentialist approach is very important too, and cannot be
dismissed out of hand, because segmenting the appeal this way would deliver more
income for the charity and therefore improve services to beneficiaries. However,
I’ll leave it to the reader to consider what would happen if the _Daily Mail_ ran
a story about how a particular charity had been ‘manipulating’ people into donating
by ‘fabricating’ its appeal target – a potential consquence of such an approach.

Understanding the difference between between deontololgy and consequentialism is
important: about 10 years ago, a major cancer charity tied itself in ethical knots
trying to defend its refusal of a donation by repeatedly switching between deontological
and consequentialist justifications of its decision.

So, a fundraising ethics committee would be able to give broad-brush advice on how
to apply ethical theory to fundraising.

The question of reciprocity highlighted at the conference is an interesting ethical
case. This came from Michael Sanders’ work with the [Behavioural Insights Team](http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/about-us)
that found giving a small packet of sweets to employees at a city firm increased
the chances of them [giving a day’s salary to charity](http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/sites/default/files/BIT_Charitable_Giving_Paper%20%281%29.pdf).

> Consider what would happen if the <em>Daily Mail</em> ran a story about how a 
> particular charity had been ‘manipulating’ people into donating by ‘fabricating’
> its appeal target

Yet this is already out of step with professional best practice, at least in terms
of direct mail, as the Institute of Fundraising Code of Practice prohibits such 
gifts in mail packs if the enclosure is intended to cause “financial guilt or…embarrassment”
and does not “enhance the emotional engagement to the cause”.

So one of the key behavioural insights (contained in a government-funded report 
and presented regularly at conferences) is on ‘dubious’ ethical ground. Of course,
a charity could argue that a gift of sweets in a mailing was intended to prime a
sense of reciprocity in the recipient rather than induce “financial guilt”. But 
that distinction is an interesting question in its own right, and I’d like to be
a fly on the wall when the FRSB board were adjudicating on any complaint where this
was the charity’s defence, especially since in any adjudication, “emphasis will 
be given to the perception of the recipient [of the mailing]”, and the term ‘financial
guilt’ isn’t actually defined in the code or its guidance.

My point with this specific example is that it’s the deontological ethical guidance
that is not aligned with the consequentalist recommended practice, not the other
way round, and the profession’s ethics and best practice are likely to drift further
out of alignment unless something like a fundraising ethics committee can assess
cases such as this and provide advice on how ethical principles should be applied
in practice.

Emily Gore said at the conference that she felt fundraising was now at a tipping
point for acceptance of behavioural insights into professional practice. If that’s
so, and I suspect she is right, we must ensure that any insights we do press into
service are used appropriately and ethically.

In the year of being proud to be a fundraiser, we must also ensure we are proud 
of continuing to fundraise in the right way.

## More from Ian MacQuillin

 * **[Same as it ever was – fundraising and the media](https://fundraising.co.uk/2015/06/12/same-as-it-ever-was-fundraising-and-the-media/)(
   12 June 2015)**
 * **[Are you really proud to be a fundraiser? A new manifesto for fundraising](https://fundraising.co.uk/2014/04/11/really-proud-fundraiser-new-manifesto-fundraising/)(
   11 April 2014)**
 * **[Time we ditched fundraising’s personality cult](https://fundraising.co.uk/2015/10/01/time-we-ditched-fundraisings-personality-cult/)(
   1 October 2015)**