July 28 — Bob Rosenbloom leads a discussion on the ethical questions that arise when nonprofit organizations decide to pursue (or reject or return) gifts from ethically questionable sources.
In May of this year, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it would no longer accept gifts from members of the Sackler family, the family behind Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. This decision followed similar actions by the Tate Modern Museum in London and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, as well as noisy protests against the family at the Sackler Wing of the Met, the well-known wing of the museum that houses the Temple of Dendur. Following a story on the Met’s decision in the New York Times and a subsequent opinion article on the subject, the Times devoted an entire Sunday “Letters” section to letters it had received on the ethical debate the decision set off. The section was titled “Good Causes and Bad Money.” One letter writer, for example, took exception to the Met’s decision, saying that turning down tainted money “would deprive many charities that are often in dire need of funding, and the beneficiaries of these charities.” Another writer, however, said that “the Sackler name is tarnished” and that therefore accepting money from them “will threaten the integrity of the Met’s own brand.”
Here are some of the questions we can consider the day of our discussion on the subject:
1. In your view, did the Met make the correct decision in announcing it would no longer accept money from the Sackler family? What was the ethical thing to do in this instance?
2. What are the ethical considerations a nonprofit should keep in mind when applying for and accepting money from private as well as public sources?
3. If it’s important for nonprofits to examine the sources of potential and actual contributions, how far back in history should research go to look for tainted money? For instance, as one of the Times’ letter writers asks, should a nonprofit forego money from the Ford Foundation, since Henry Ford was a known anti-Semite?
4. To carry this further, should people who feel strongly that nonprofits ought to refuse tainted money also boycott the David H. Koch Theater of Lincoln Center (assuming they believe that the Koch brothers oil businesses are promoting global warming and their contributions to political action committees undermining our democracy)? And, should these people also avoid Rockefeller State Park here in Westchester County? How far should such logic go?
About the speaker:
Before his retirement, Bob was a senior grants officer specializing in community development philanthropy at the JP Morgan Chase Foundation. Following his retirement, he worked part-time at a nonprofit housing organization.
Articles for further reading:
Opioid Protest at Met Museum Targets Donors Connected to OxyContin (New York Times 2018)
The Met Will Turn Down Sackler Money Amid Fury Over the Opioid Crisis (New York Times 2019)
Opinion: When Your Money Is So Tainted Museums Don’t Want It (New York Times 2019)