The Right Thing

Sunday, April 03, 2016

Should donors have a say in what donations are made in their names?

Should people have a say over what institutions their names are affiliated with, or at least be informed when their names are attached to the organization?

A reader writes that he recently came across a bulletin from a nonprofit institution with which he had an association in the past. He hasn't contributed to it for more than a decade, but he continues to receive literature from the organization.

On the annual list of donors, he saw that someone had made a donation in his name to the organization. There's no indication of who made the donation just that a donation had been made in his name.

It's not terribly unusual for some people in lieu of a gift to send a card or a note to someone letting them know that they've made a donation in someone's name to a charity. The recipient knows that a donation has been made, but they still haven't had a say in whether they want their name affiliated with a specific cause.

The intent of the donors is most likely good -- to give money to a worthy cause and to give credit or acknowledgement to a friend or an associate. But what if, like my reader, the recipient has a reason for no longer wanting to support the nonprofit someone else chose for him?

If the nonprofit is engaged in activities that recipients find morally abhorrent and it's unclear who made the donation in their names, the right thing is to contact the organization and ask that their names be removed from any materials. They should also ask that they be contacted if any future donations are made in their name. If it's clear who made the donation to an organization whose principles goes (should this be "go") against their beliefs, then the right thing is to let that person know as graciously as possible.

If, however, the organization is one about which the recipient has no moral qualms, my inclination would be to let it pass as a well-intentioned effort to do something good while simultaneously honoring a friend. Giving to others in need or worthy causes is a good thing. So is wanting to honor a friend.

The best right thing, however, would be to let donors choose which causes they want to support.

There are various ways to do this. Around the winter holidays, for example, one Facebook user routinely posts that he will donate $50 to his first 10 Facebook friends who post the name of their favorite charity. The only caveat is that the charities must have three- or four-star ratings from Charity Navigator. He makes a generous offer, honors his friends with the donations, but lets them choose who gets the money. His restriction on only giving to charities that are screened by Charity Navigator still lets the friends decide which charities they want to give to.

My reader will never have the opportunity to thank whoever honored him with the donation since it was made anonymously. Fortunately, he has no moral aversion to that organization's mission. He simply has other places he believes are more in need of whatever he (or someone in his name) has to give.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Kids and politicians should avoid lying

When I was a kid growing up in Northern New Jersey, my parents would regularly shop at a supermarket that was next door to a discount department store. The department store had an arcade that consisted of a dozen games. My favorite was a baseball game where you used one button to control the speed of a pitched ball bearing and another button to swing a bat at the ball. The thrill of getting enough base hits to score some runs was enough to keep my 11-year-old self-occupied until my parents finished grocery shopping and came to retrieve me.

On one occasion, I saw that there was an unplayed game left on the baseball machine so I finished playing it. When that game was complete, another game started up. I played that one too. And then another. Finally, after about 10 minutes, the guy who regularly repaired the arcade machines walked over to me and asked, "Did you pay for that game?"

I hesitated, but could only think to respond, "I only have a few hits left."

That was when he pointed to the coin slots that had black electrical tape over them. No one could have inserted any coins to play. He knew I hadn't paid to play. I knew it too.

A question that I've received from readers in one form or another over the past several months is whether it's ethical for politicians to deny responsibility for something they've said or done. I suspect they know it's not.

I was 11 when it was confirmed for me that denying something that clearly I'd done was not the right thing to do.

For politicians, who are adults with rich life experiences, they should know better than to deny the obvious. It's not just that their earlier comments can be trotted out on tape to make them look foolish as they contradict themselves. More than one politician has found himself or herself mocked by Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah, John Oliver, Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, or another late-night comedian who runs rapid fire video clips catching the politician contradicting or denying something he or she had previously said.

Getting caught may be a deterrent, but it's not the reason not to lie. If politicians expect voters to trust them, they should take responsibility for their words.

It's reasonable for politicians to withhold information in the interest of national security. It's a whole different thing when a politician says that maybe a demonstrator at one of his events "should have been roughed up" or says of another that "I'd like to punch him in the face" and then tells an anchor of a network morning news show, "I don't condone violence."

Just as I was confronted by the arcade game worker years ago, panicked, and didn't want to get caught doing something wrong, it's easy to imagine how politicians caught behaving inconsistently or badly might panic and reach for what they think is strength in a lie.

I was wrong, but I was 11 years old. Adult politicians should know better. The right thing would be for them to think about what they're saying before they say it. But when they do say it, they should own their words.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Does donating to charity make a bad act good?

Does giving away ill-gotten gains to charity erase the unethical act involved in acquiring those gains? B.A., a reader from Columbus, Ohio, wonders if she can forgive herself for her actions at her local grocery story.

As B.A. was finishing up her grocery shopping, she decided to use the self-checkout counter. When she began to scan her items for checkout, she noticed that two $20 bills were sitting in the cash return slot of the register. The customer before her had apparently forgotten to take her change.

"I pocketed the money," writes B.A., who admits she made no effort to see if the person who had checked out before her was still within sight. She justified her action by reminding herself of the "finders, keepers, losers, weepers," refrain.

Before she left the store, however, B.A. writes that she noticed a young, distraught woman walking back and forth near the register. B.A. was pretty certain that she was the customer who had left the money behind.

With the two $20 bills in her pocket, B.A. had the opportunity to ask the woman if she had forgotten her change. She even could have asked the distraught woman how much she'd left behind as a way of trying to verify that the money was indeed hers.

"And still I kept the $40," she writes. "I figured it was a lesson learned that she would never forget."

Later, B.A. writes that she realized "the unethical and immoral position of her action." So she donated the $40 to charity.

"My guilt is all too palpable," she writes. "Hopefully, confession is good for the soul and I can forgive myself while not forgetting."

Giving the money to charity might have helped the charity out by fattening its coffers a bit, but the action doesn't diminish the fact that B.A. kept what wasn't hers. An honest shopper might have turned the cash into the store manager. Many readers might roll their eyes over such honesty arguing that if B.A. didn't know whose change it was then it was no more wrong to keep it than it would be to keep extra change dispensed mistakenly by a vending machine. The right thing would have been to turn in the cash to the store's manager.

But B.A. did have a good idea who the money belonged to, so she can't use the excuse that returning the money to the store wouldn't have resulted in getting it to its rightful owner anyway. Without hesitation, she should have asked the distraught woman if she was OK and then to ask her how much she had lost once she disclosed her issue. If the amounts matched, the right thing would have been to return the money.

Giving the money to a charity may have eased B.A.'s guilty conscious, but the contribution doesn't change that when given the opportunity to what was right, she chose to do wrong. The guilt she feels now may help to keep her from engaging in similar acts in the future. But nothing she does, short of the improbable task of now returning the cash to its rightful owner, will make a wrong act right.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin