Filthy Lucre: How do Nonprofits Handle Tainted Gifts?

You have probably seen the video of that lying bastard Sean Combs beating up his former girlfriend. I won’t link to the video.  Google it if you want to be thoroughly disgusted.  As bad as it looks, I still don’t think Howard University should let his punk ass off the hook for donations he’s made or has pledged to make pursuant to a gift agreement.  If the gift agreement is enforceable I would enforce it.  Howard is giving it back because it’s sickened by it, I understand that. From the Howard University Board of Trustees:

“The Howard University Board of Trustees voted unanimously today to accept the return by Mr. Sean Combs of the honorary degree conferred upon him in 2014. This acceptance revokes all honors and privileges associated with the degree. Accordingly, the Board has directed that his name be removed from all documents listing honorary degree recipients of Howard University. Mr. Combs’ behavior as captured in a recently released video is so fundamentally incompatible with Howard University’s core values and beliefs that he is deemed no longer worthy to hold the institution’s highest honor. 

The University is unwavering in its opposition to all acts of interpersonal violence. The Board has also directed the University administration to immediately take the following actions: terminate a 2016 gift agreement with Mr. Combs, disband the scholarship program in his name, return his $1 million contribution, and terminate a 2023 pledge agreement with the Sean Combs Foundation.  

No payments toward the $1 million pledge have been due or made by the Sean Combs Foundation as of this date, therefore no funds are due to be returned under the 2023 pledge agreement.” 

If the donations are conditioned on the honorary degree I suppose I would advise the University to yank the degree and return the donations. I would definitely not want him to be an honorary anything. If not, why not hold him to the agreement and announce that it will be directed exclusively to establish a center for the prevention of intimate partner violence? I have four daughters and Howard keeping the gift would more likely prevent a future Combs than returning the gift.  Pragmatism would generate more benefit to the prevention of interpersonal violence than indignation in this instance, it seems to me. But I could be wrong. Here is the abstract to “When tainted money should fund public goods: fundraising professional and public moral preferences, published late last year:

Philanthropy is essential to public goods such as education and research, arts and culture, and the provision of services to those in need. Providers of public goods commonly struggle with the dilemma of whether to accept donations from morally tainted donors. Ethicists also disagree on how to manage tainted donations. Forgoing such donations reduces opportunities for societal well-being and advancement; however, accepting them can damage institutional and individual reputations. Half of professional fundraisers have faced tainted donors, but only around a third of their institutions had relevant policies (n = 52). Here, we draw on two large samples of US laypeople (ns = 2,019; 2,566) and a unique sample of experts (professional fundraisers, n = 694) to provide empirical insights into various aspects of tainted donations that affect moral acceptability: the nature of the moral taint (criminal or morally ambiguous behavior), donation size, anonymity, and institution type. We find interesting patterns of convergence (rejecting criminal donations), divergence (professionals’ aversion to large tainted donations), and indifference (marginal role of anonymity) across the samples. Laypeople also applied slightly higher standards to universities and museums than to charities. Our results provide evidence of how complex moral trade-offs are resolved differentially, and can thus motivate and inform policy development for institutions dealing with controversial donors.

darryll k. jones