AmeriCorps workshop: Non-profit Ethics

I recently hosted a day-long workshop on non-profit ethics. This is a topic I care very much about and because of that, I'm sharing the outline with you. Before the day began, I asked everyone to read this article: No one did, which I pretty much expected. :D It was more of an experiment than anything else.

AmeriCorps members are funded through the national service fund (in other words, tax dollars. Politicize that however you would like). A funding agency applies for money from the government. A social service organization applies with the funding agency to get an AmeriCorps member placed at their site. The purpose is to expand a program or develop a program that doesn't already exist and the agency would like to have some numbers for before finding grant/dedicating general funds to that program. Most of the students in my branch of AmeriCorps are in agencies working with children in after-school health/fitness programs. 5 are working at agencies with the same model as mine.

Welcome: questions on white-board

Why non-profit? What attracted you to non-profit?
What values do you think make non-profit different from the corporate world?
What do you value that aligns with non-profit values? What do you value that your site also values?
Do you know your site mission? What the employee handbook looks like?
What kind of culture does your agency have?

We talked for a long time about the differences between the non-profit and corporate world. Many people discussed their feelings of wanting to make a difference, of feeling freer to develop programs to help other people. Many cited their personal life experiences as motivation for working in non-profits (for example, growing up in the south side of Chicago and now working there).

Intro (Executive Director of JARC)

The ED at JARC introduced the way the agency worked for those who weren't familiar with it.

Agency Accomplishments (program director)

My supervisor talked here about her experience -- how she used to work in the corporate setting and why she started working in non-profits. She detailed her hiring at JARC and the challenges she faced. When she was hired, her program staff had less than 3 months of experience in their current position. She also had to deal with some professional issues with staff (the agency fired a key staff member 2 weeks after she was hired) and she had to write the annual renewal of our grant -- due one month after she was hired. After that all got sorted, she has started to incorporate her [ersonal philosophy behind organizational development/institutional knowledge. Often in non-profit, someone does a job (for example, financial coach) and doesn't document how they do it or who they work with. When that person leaves the agency (has a baby, gets fired, takes another position) the knowledge that person developed walks out the door with them. Throughout the talk, she focused on points at which she wasn't sure what to do or how to respond, and she explained how she figured out the answers (or is still figuring them out). This wasn’t to focus excessively on mistakes or victories necessarily, but just to focus on this as the nature of working at a non-profit (new staff, lack of training, and an impending funding deadline) and to explain how we responded. This is an unavoidable set of potential pitfalls for working at an agency ethically, and how we have to know going into it what it’s going to look like and how we want to respond. Obviously no agency or employee is going to be perfect, because it is easy to get sucked underneath all of the expectations.

AmeriCorps 6 Months Review

Once my supervisor was done, we worked through the following questions separately.

What is your favorite thing about your placement site? Most challenging?
What would you do differently if you could start your year over? Would you still apply for AmeriCorps? Would you apply at a different agency?
What would you tell a new LISC AmeriCorps member that you didn’t know when you started?
Earlier this year we discussed what each AmeriCorps member dreaded about going to site. Has that challenge changed? If so, has it gotten better or worse?
What makes you keep going back to your site every day? Or, what engages you about your work at a meaningful level?
How would you describe your duties as a LISC AmeriCorps member on a resume?
What major accomplishments from this AmeriCorps year would you include on a resume?

Philanthropy and Ethics: Grant-writer

Next, a grant-write came in to talk with us about the ethics of fundraising and the donor bill of rights. She went over non-profit responsibilities to donors and went through a couple of examples of non-profit ethics violations from newspaper articles she had found.

Non-profit Ethics: Cumulative Workshop

Next, I talked for a long time, and it sounded something like this:

We’ve looked at a couple of topics that may seem unrelated: our progress as AmeriCorps members, the situation at JARC when my supervisor came on board, and non-profit responsibilities to donors/funders. Now we’re going to try to put them together. This workshop is an accumulation of everything we’ve looked at today. It will tie in ethics with day-to-day work at a non-profit, and hopefully provide you with some practical frameworks as well as push you to consider more abstract concepts of ethics. We’ll be working through some ethical dilemmas together, after looking at some examples.

I related everything we had talked about at the beginning of our day back to ethics, and talked about the importance of understanding our own personal values in order to understand what we valued in a work environment. Values were defined as clear, uncompromising statement about what is critically important that must be freely chosen: cannot be externally imposed. Ethics form structure that converts values into action. Ethics are what bridge value and action; translate values into appropriate or inappropriate behavior in the realities of life. For example, if you value honesty, in order to be ethical and in line with that value, you would disclose contributions to your non-profit. If you value the environment, then being ethical means recycling copier toner.

Next, I considered what we had established at the beginning of the day (what makes non-profits different from the corporate world) and built off of what my supervisor had discussed when she began working at JARC. I explained how non-profits are often ripe for ethical dilemmas because of the conflicting values stakeholders have (clients vs. funders vs. self, for example). I explained that it is important to find an ethical workspace based on what is non-negotiable and said that this is likely different for some people. For example, what are ethical reporting practices when collecting data about clients, how should clients be treated professionally when they treat staff badly, whether or not the agency has sustainable feedback measures (providing services clients actually need, not what your funders think they need, using evidence-based practice, use of funding (cheapest, environmentally-friendly, etc.). I also addressed burn out, because it is next to impossible to act ethically when a person is burnt out; then I highlighted dual-relationships and emphasized the role that agencies play in determining how staff handle these situations.

I then went into some ethical pitfalls that I have experienced working at various non-profits.

1) Understanding that just a desire to do a good thing does not ensure that a good thing will happen (unintended consequences!

2) Getting involved at the wrong level (you’re bad/get burnt out at direct service, don’t do it; it doesn’t make you a bad person. Don’t terrorize clients/colleagues because you think you’re doing them a favor. Get a different job.

3) Messiah thinking (non-profits aren’t above criticism, good people can do bad things, it happens—recognize it and fix it, etc.

4) For-profit standards are not the devil (efficiency, effectiveness, performance measures) but that doesn't mean one should sacrifice client care for effectiveness, either.

Next, we looked at steps to making an ethical decision when faced with a dilemma. Ethical dilemmas were defined as a conflict between two values--two good things, rather than a choice between good and bad.

I used a star to demonstrate.
Establish the facts and goal (first point)
Identify the ethical issues (two side points
Define alternative options (two bottom points
Everyone was split into groups of two and given ethical dilemmas to outline using the star template. They also had to identify
at which the ethical dilemma occurred (is it systemic, organizational, individual, or a combination?)
who the stakeholders are
what would you do and why?

I pushed everyone very hard with the last question, asking whether anyone else would have made a different decision, and then asking the person reading the example what it would have taken for them to have made the opposite decision. I've included my ethical dilemmas below.

Your organization is outgrowing your office space, and one of your strategic goals is to move into a larger place. However, a tight budget is delaying the move because your rent would increase. A wealthy couple approaches your Board of Directors and offers to give you a small office building. It is located in an affluent neighborhood (not on public transportation lines) and is really too large for your needs, but it’s free. They stipulate that your organization cannot use the building for any other purpose including leasing space to other tenants. Most of your clients live far from this area, and many need transportation to your office to use your services.

Your agency is shopping for a new office supply vendor, and the executive director asked you to compare prices. One of your major donors owns and operates ASC (an office supply company) and expressed interest in your business. You found that ASC is considerably more expensive than the others included the information in your price comparison report. Later, you learn that ASC is the new vendor.

Your supervisor, the agency’s employment coordinator, developed a record number of summer employment opportunities for the 2009 program. While preparing data for the end of year celebration, you notice you are only able to recognize about two-thirds of the high school participants. Upon further investigation, you realize that fifty of the people placed in jobs were relatives of agency staff.

You are placed at a local school with a strict client confidentiality policy. You work with teenagers to develop healthy behaviors and fitness. While at your desk, you overhear two co-workers loudly discussing one of the teens in their after-school group. They are complaining about the difficulty this teen has relating to authority figures. One of them remarks on how they would discipline this teen if they were their parent. Later that day, one of your co-workers approaches you and asks whether or not you have had any negative experiences with these 2 teenagers. Alternative: After a long day dealing with a difficult group of teens, your partner asks how everything is going at work. For this dilemma, I pushed the AmeriCorps member to define what confidentiality level he would be comfortable being held to by his employers.

You are employed at a community organization that requires you to collect client data, including addresses and phone numbers. The community has a negative history with social service agencies as well as law enforcement. During your first month working, you meet with a client to fill out an intake form. When you ask for their address, they answer, “123 Sunshine Lane, which you suspect is not an accurate address.

You work at an agency that runs an after-school program for children. The program closes every night at 7. One evening, you notice one child is still hanging around the grounds of the agency. After asking why the child has not gone home yet, you realize the child is scared to go home because of a relative staying with the family. This example is difficult and often creates an involved, and in my opinion very necessary, discussion about the ethics of mandated reporters, who are mandated reporters, what constitutes abuse, etc.

You work for an employment agency. You are also Quaker—a religious group with strong pacifist beliefs. In order to place anyone for employment, your agency’s funders require you to be sure that every male is registered with selective service. The purpose of this was to get at a conflict between individual and organizational values without hitting on something too close to home--someone else suggested an equivalent would be providing services to undocumented immigrants, gay/transgender people, etc.

You are the volunteer coordinator of an agency that relies heavily on its massive volunteer force. Soon after you start your position, you realize the volunteers are in the habit of selecting a few items for themselves while sorting through noncash contributions (products such as shampoo and other toiletry items). You soon realize that other staff members are aware of this because they do the same. I pushed the AmeriCorps member very hard with this one as well to explain how he would go about changing the agency culture when he could lose his job if he did it wrong.

You run an adult tutoring program for individuals with low literacy. Out of gratitude for the program, a client brings you sandwiches from the restaurant where he works.

You screen individuals for assistance with their utility bills. Oneof your clients comes to you with all her verification documents toapply: pay stubs for the last 30 days, utility bill, andidentification. She is a realty officer and her husband has been laidoff. She has sold only one house in the last 6 months, but the saleoccurred during the last 30 days. The commission for the house is exactly $5 over the income limit to get utility assistance. This one suprised me by being the most controversial one, and surprised me by who would have broken the rules for the client. It took some doing on my part to get people to admit that they would have broken the rules, though.

You work in a group home for girls which focuses on positive youth development and strives to utilize a strengths based framework. One night some of the residents are sitting around doing each others nails. One of the clients wants to do your nails and is very excited about it. This one was interesting--those who didn't work with children didn't see this as an ethical dilemma.

Inaugural Post

Hello All,

I am beginning a new project today. This blog will be a culmination of my journey regarding many social justice issues. I want to put together a chronology of how my own ideas and views have evolved.

This is going to mean a lot of copy-and-pasting for me from xanga and other blogs that I have kept previously. Because I want to also keep track of how I have grown as a person, I will likely include a post with significant life events that occurred in a specific year. Posts will be added from 2005 and onward, as that is when I started blogging, and in particular, blogging about how people treat each other. Eventually, I hope to move much of my facebook activity to this blog to streamline my social activist interests as well as to separate it a little more from my personal life. The personal is political, and the political personal--however, I doubt many but my closest friends care about what I ate for breakfast, and I would like to dedicate a space solely to my social activist life. This has been a long time coming, and long encouraged by many.

Please see the information posted on the right-hand side of the blog. I will be adhering to these rules strictly, even as I am opening my journey up in a more public form.

Welcome aboard!

Abusive Religion

Anyone

(who claims to represent Jesus Christ
and argues that a woman, or any human being--documented or not, white or not, straight or not--should stay in an abusive relationship)

is a liar and a fraud.

And if one day they do answer to their God he is going to be pissed.

Monday, 29 August 2005

Strength is not the absence of a weakness.

Strength is determined by how far a person is determined to go in spite of that weakness.

It doesn't matter if I'm afraid. I can persevere and go on. And I will.

It doesn't matter if I don't think I can do it. I can.

It doesn't matter if there are a thousand strikes against me. Long shots still have a chance.

And as long as there's a chance...as long as there exists that drive inside me that says GO...it will be alright. I will make it thru somehow.

You can too. And you will.

Tuesday, 16 August, 2005

Does it tick anyone else off that like, gas is way overpriced and there's nothing anyone's doing/can do about it?

Does it make anyone else tear up because children in Sudan are watching their fathers die and their mothers being raped merely because they're black Christians hated by Arabic Muslims?

Does anyone else want to throw things because a Brazlian man was shot numerous times in a 1st world country for no apparent reason and with no attempts made at retribution? To get even angrier, check out this link. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4159310.stm The man was BEING RESTRAINED while being SHOT by POLICE OFFICERS. Ye gods, it makes me so sick.

Does anyone else get angry cuz Israel gave Palestine the Gaza strip back?

How about that no one can figure out WHY THE HECK a plane crashed and like 300 ppl are dead and their families don't even know HOW COME?!

OH--and now this big controversy over ID. It's all over NewsWeek and Time mag but the articles are written from such a major liberal slant it makes me sick. Yes, I know--what else do I expect? I don't really know, but I'm sick of all this!

Or that Bin Laden is still out there, we're fighting a war with eerie resemblances to Vietnam, and Americans are so OUT OF IT that we haven't talked about 9/11 since everyone realized that they could still go about their stupid lives without really having to change anything?

And I haven't even started. This world is so screwed up it is unbelievable. Except for the unfortunate fact that it's reality, and we have to live in it.

I'm PO'ed and I'm ranting. In case you didn't catch that newsflash.

I just finished reading True Notebooks. It's written by someone who wanted to make a difference. I can't figure out if he really did or not. WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE? I'm banging my head into walls trying to figure it out and last night I got so upset I ate like 3 large bowls of icecream. Cuz that'll help, for sure.