To Sin by Silence

June 7, 2018      Roger and Nick

“To sin by silence, when we should protest,/Makes cowards out of men.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The time: January 2016.  Two venerable news organizations were taking on the practices of the Wounded Warrior Project.

I’ll defer to the learned and studied words of Doug White’s report on the allegations against Wounded Warrior Project (WWP).  Suffice it to say, that if the term “fake news” had been en vogue at the time, this would have been it, with several statements fabricated and others misleading.  Add in a splash of overhead-based bashing from Charity Navigator, and you have a hit job on Wounded Warrior Project.

The Better Business Bureau validated WWP and condemned CBS News and NY Times reporting, showing that many of the statements made by the media (e.g., the organization paid for alcohol, the organization understated its overhead, they spent $3 million + on a conference) were false.  That report came almost a year too late for the executive team, many of whom were let go by the board because of the report.

We are now two years beyond the sale reports and have two years of financial results.  Program expenses (an imperfect measure if ever there were one) went from $262 million in FY15 to $166 million in FY17, meaning these news reports cost almost $100 million in funding for veterans’ services per year.  Even if you feel that fundraising costs matter, the scope of this loss is devastating.

And, adding irony to injury,  the New York Times has a section on their site about the challenges veterans face with PTSD, failing to mention their role in slashing services.

I was asked by a fellow nonprofit executive at the time what I thought of the news pieces back in January 2016.  I said they were largely what could be said about either of our nonprofits or almost any large nonprofit.  Take innuendo, mix with unhappy ex-employees, and garnish with a false narrative on how nonprofits spend, and need to spend, money, then serve.

Neither of our organizations came to Wounded Warrior Project’s defense.  Few, if any, did.  The prevailing attitude was “there but for the grace of God go I.”

This is our usual mode.  When the New York Attorney General’s office condemned charity telemarketing back in 2014, it tsked-tsked how many charities were losing money on telemarketing.  They of course didn’t mention that this telemarketing was sustainer upgrade calling and that they were only counting the first month of revenues.

By the same logic, babies are worthless because, at one month, they can’t talk.

Nonprofits did not call the AG’s office on this.  After all, it’s not the worst thing a New York Attorney General has done, from the present day all the way back to when one of them shot the Secretary of the Treasury in the nation’s first rap battle.

We all knew they were wrong.  But none of us wanted to be the organization who tied the bell around the cat’s neck.

As a sector, we need to be able to be able to repudiate charges that stem from a misunderstanding or misstatement of who we are and what we do.

What strikes me is that, so far, these have been trial runs.  Yet, currently only a  minority of US adults trust nonprofits, according to the 2018 Edelman Trust Index.  In a time when some political ideologies require the tearing down of all structures, eliminating trust in all institutions but that of the ideologue, a wave could be coming.

Our foes have their playbook down.  Rick Berman, noted for attacking the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) … said:

“People always ask me one question all the time: ‘How do I know that I won’t be found out as a supporter of what you’re doing? We run all of this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don’t know who supports us. … They characterize us in a campaign as being the guys with the black helicopters. And to some degree, that’s true. We’re doing stuff to diminish the other sides’ ability to operate.”

Not surprising, the most recent blog post on the Berman-funded Humane Watch, slams HSUS for having a D rating from Charity Watch, which – to bring this full circle – relies on the misguided overhead ratio as grist for its mill.

This is what we are up against.  In the words of Ben Franklin, we must hang together or we will most assuredly hang separately.  And at the same time as we weed out the truly bad actors in our sector, we must defend those who are doing the good work of nonprofits, lest we be next.

Roger and Nick

10 responses to “To Sin by Silence”

  1. Jackson says:
    June 7, 2018 at 6:06 am

    Totally agree. Today it’s me tomorrow is someone else.

  2. Simone Joyaux says:
    June 7, 2018 at 6:37 am

    Thanks for this, Nick. A 2-sided street. Speak up for the good (and against the stupid overhead crap!) Speak up against the actually bad. (Because there are bad performers in every kind of work. And in the nonprofit sector, bad performance on the part of one affects all.

  3. Shannon McCracken says:
    June 7, 2018 at 7:18 am

    Good agitating, Nick. I was in my previous role in early 2016 and I, too, chose not to jump into the media fray and put my own organization’s name in a media quote. Interestingly, in late 2015 WWP was one of two organizations that sat down with our then-new Charity Navigator CEO to constructively discuss joint cost allocation. That conversation led to Charity Navigator reinstating JCA into financial evaluations for qualifying organizations in 2016, a few months after the WWP story broke. Although WWP leadership then was outspoken about their antipathy for evaluator ratings, they were advocating for the same sector that, when things got hot, didn’t speak up for them.
    During the post-media recovery period, WWP’s new leadership worked closely with our Charity Navigator analysts to not only consider JCA in their financial assessment, but also strengthen their accountability and transparency practices. As a result they are now a highly rated organization. That matters because two years later, WWP is still one of the top two most visited nonprofit ratings pages on CharityNavigator.org. I take that as a sign that donors – both long-time loyalists and, dare we hope, first time givers – are cautiously optimistic that WWP is coming out stronger than ever. And there’s more. While fellow nonprofits weren’t jumping up and down to defend WWP, they weren’t just counting their lucky stars either. At Charity Navigator we saw countless organizations taking a page from WWP’s lesson book and making some changes of their own, particularly around proactive transparency to donors about their use of funding and quantified impact of their work. As a sector we may have been silent, but we weren’t still.

  4. Tim Kersten says:
    June 7, 2018 at 8:13 am

    Outstanding, Nick. I agree in every respect. Thank you for speaking the truth.

  5. Anita Robertson says:
    June 7, 2018 at 9:14 am

    Thank you. Brilliant – if sad.

  6. Jay Love says:
    June 7, 2018 at 9:18 am

    Thank good not a single commercial business, even those providing governmental services, are held accountable for “overhead percentages”.

    Funding growth and innovation to create a fully sustainable business model at scale seems to be well understood and supported by their executive teams and boards.

    What happens to this logic and sense of direction toward sustainable scale and lifetime value of the donor/customer when they help make quorum for a small or medium size nonprofit board meeting?

  7. Susan Rappaport says:
    June 7, 2018 at 10:10 am

    Thanks Nick. I agree – every day we are faced with new challenges and must work collectively. I hope everyone is paying attention to the new California Privacy Iniative that could impact our ability to fundraise as well.

  8. Robert Tigner says:
    June 7, 2018 at 11:09 am

    Speaking out aggressively for eminently defensible fundraising practices ought to be the EXPLICIT task of our sector’s umbrella groups. It is one of the good reasons we have them. On the other hand, when one sniffs a smear job underway, it would be not just understandable but reckless (Shannon) to put one’s individual organization in the line of fire. Sadly, many in mainstream media cannot be bothered to drill down enough to really understand what we do and why we do it.

  9. Nick Ellinger, VP of Marketing Strategy, DonorVoice says:
    June 7, 2018 at 11:09 am

    Thanks all. Shannon, thanks for greater context on this history of this – it’s very helpful. And for those who don’t know about the California Privacy Initiative that Susan mentions, DMA is doing a webinar on it today at https://thedma.org/webinars/advocacy/california-consumer-privacy-initiative-webinar/

  10. Denny Meyer says:
    June 7, 2018 at 2:22 pm

    Right on Nick!

    “First they came for the …then they came for the …then they came for me and there was no one left to speak up.”

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