Can You Give and Receive at the Same Time?
(Added 10/01/2020)
My school seems to be morally adrift. I have learned that we both accept and make gifts to the same person at the same time. We, as all charities, send a statement with gift receipts that say the donor has not received any goods or services in exchange for the gift. (At least when that's true.) Yet we accepted a gift from a donor — and sent the receipt with that wording — while the donor, in the same year, received financial aid. In fact, based on communications I have read, the gift was conditioned on the financial aid. When I asked my boss (the development director) and the treasurer about it, I was told the financial aid was proper because the donor's circumstances had changed for the worse and that the annual gift was also proper because even financially strapped people should be allowed to be generous. This seems hypocritical to me.
We have a couple of things to unpack here. First, the broad idea of what seems to be hypocrisy: a charity giving and getting at the same time from the same person — and calling the getting a gift. As with all ethical questions, facts matter, and we don’t have enough here to make a fully informed decision, or even an informed evaluation. Specifically, it would be good to know the amount of each: the financial aid and the gift. If the annual gift is relatively small, then it’s quite possible that your school is doing the right thing. Allowing even a person on financial aid to be credited for her gift is not unusual or, in my view, unethical. Even those on financial aid have a little discretionary income and you are not in a position to tell her, or your school, how to use it.
It would be helpful to know the donor’s giving history. But, if the gift amount is substantial — “substantial” is a subjective word, so I’ll just use a number for illustration — such as $10,000, and the award is, say, $20,000, then I’d call into question the basis for the financial aid. Even there, though, questions could arise, such as: What if the donor is giving through a private foundation? Those assets are no longer the donor’s; the foundation might have resources to make the gift all the while the donor herself may be struggling anew.
But we have a second important matter to address. You said the gift was conditioned on the financial aid (and I sense this may be the source of your thinking that hypocrisy is at work here). If that’s really the case — and you seem able to back it up with evidence — then there certainly was a quid pro quo and the “no goods or services” clause in the receipt is not true. The financial aid was a good — a tangible good — provided to the donor.
Addressing this question would also be helped by knowing more facts — the amount of the gift, the donor’s giving history, and the donor’s relationship with the school (as well as whether the donor is a person or a foundation). It may be that the school’s leaders want to continue acknowledging her support during this difficult time when, as you say, her circumstances have recently deteriorated; perhaps the donor’s name has been on the giving rolls for years and it would be embarrassing for the name to be absent now. That’s a benign thought, driven by compassionate impulse, but that would not obviate the need to correctly identify the quid-pro-quo aspect of the transaction.
This matter is ripe for a policies manual. Even though legitimate exceptions can be made to most policies, the school should not be caught without having given consideration to the question. At the least, you will have thought through a thorny question. You will also be able to tell future donors in similar circumstances of that policy and why it was adopted.