Unwanted Advice
(Added 02/10/2022)
I have a longtime donor who regularly e-mails me articles he’s seen and things he’s heard on the news. Normally, it’s either about financial planning, planned giving, or research in his passion area that he supports at our organization. However, in the last few weeks, he has sent a few different articles praising the work of individuals who have been vocally anti-vaccination and anti-Dr. Fauci. Noting that this donor is himself vaccinated, do I, as a planned giving officer, have a responsibility to debunk the material he sends along? Or do I ignore it? If it were just a political issue, he’d be entitled to his opinions, and I’d leave it alone. But the public safety aspect of this concerns me!
Donors, especially major and planned gift donors, can seem like family at times. We can get to know them fairly well over the course of cultivating them and stewarding their gifts, and so the familiarity the closeness generates can seem, to some, a license to talk about or send along any information that strikes their fancy. So it is with issues not directly related to the charitable cause you represent or the one your donor is supporting. You might, for example, get an opinion about the outcome of a sports event or the latest gossip about a celebrity, which, when donors know you’re also interested, can be an aspect of building and maintaining a relationship. But sometimes, when the topic is divisive, it can cause a strain.
My first suggestion is to do nothing. Ignore it. He may just want to share things with you, controversial as they may be, and then just forget that he sent anything, or, at least, it may be that he’s not expecting you to get back to him. But I suspect that’s not where things stand right now. I sense he’s letting you know that he’d like a reaction, some form of a response, and this puts you in an awkward situation, one that silence won’t fix.
The second suggestion, then, is to remind him that, as a planned giving officer, you don’t have an official stance, that your organization is not involved with the political sentiments that have emerged relating to the divisions that have been created on the question of whether a state or federal government has the right to impose restrictions or requirements relating to vaccines. Your donor is vaccinated against Covid, and so it may be that he believes, as many do, that the question should be resolved on a personal level and not the result of a mandate. It may seem counterintuitive, but it’s not, and many vaccinated people do feel this way. (The question gets broader, I know when we take into account that the personal-decision aspect here actually does affect others, but we should stay on point: how you should respond to what he is sending you.)
You see where this is going, and it should come as no surprise that you are best advised not to try to debunk the material he sends along. Certainly, you don’t have a responsibility on the point. It’s not that you don’t or should not have an opinion on the topic — any sentient human on the planet does — but your role as a planned giving officer should not have to collide with controversies that are separate from your organization’s mission.
Which is not to say that you can’t, if the first two steps — silence and staying in your lane — don’t do the trick, respond at all. If he follows up and if your duty as a person with good manners compels, as it well might, you can explain your views on this most important public policy matter in good conscience. The key, however, once the conversation gets going, is to honor him as an individual and, if you disagree with his views, to respect them. A basic tenet of ethical behavior, in fact, is respect. Ethics has never been about getting everyone to agree (a fool’s errand); instead, it’s about, among many other things, acknowledging disagreement all the while respecting another person’s point of view. And that comes as a result of understanding that we sometimes adhere to different values. Where personal freedom meets civic obligation is a line, as we’ve learned so well these past couple of years, is a place as yet unagreed upon.
As for Anthony Fauci, I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here when I point out that he is an accomplished scientist who has served this country honorably for over a half-century. We should be welcome to disagree with him, but we should never feel welcome to treat him with disrespect.