Discussion Post 1: Fundraising Campaign
In the 21st century, social change agencies have to devise strategic management strategies and resources to ensure they achieve their vision, mission, and objectives. Fundraising is vital to the day to day running of the agency. For this organization, the two main methods for fundraising will be through voluntary contributions and crowdfunding. Voluntary donations will target partner organizations, corporate entities, and individual persons. Crowdfunding will target raising funds through several strategies such as effecting an action plan, developing an easily accessible crowdfunding page, and enabling donors to make decisions easily and quickly. Moreover, it will include combining traditional and online communication methods to convey funding needs (Weinstein & Pamela, 2017).
The temptation to make applications for grants for purposes similar but not aligned to the agency’s goals is imminent due to the several human factors and differences in value systems besides losing track of the agency's real objectives. Effective policies can help keep things in check by ensuring the agency sticks within the confines of its mission, vision, and objectives (Bezboruah, 2020). Development of a policy that will guide matching grant requests with the agency’s goals will rely on the only real facts and stories of the various projects and programs that the agency manages. In formulating the needs statement, strict adherence to defining the importance of the problem at hand, the interests of the agency applicant, and funding sources will ensure minimum cases of such temptations.
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It will be inappropriate to portray untrue positive verbiage in a grant application to suit the potential funding source requirement when the information is not correct. Often, it becomes a problem when the funding enterprises delve into trying to learn about the agency. The information will turn out to be false and ruin the reputation for the agency as well as any possible funding.
While the agency will seek to solicit funding from people and entities that appreciate and share a related mission, vision, and ethics, it may be practically impossible to achieve and still attain efficiency. However, in the funding solicitation campaign, the agency will accept funds from everyone and firms that choose to give. However, firms and persons who work again with the agency’s mission and vision will have their funding rejected. Any acceptance from such firms might work against the firm’s publicity as it may be perceived as an endorsement for the donor’s activities, which could be in sharp contrast with what the agency stands for in its cause.
Discussion Post 2: Ethical Dilemmas in the Fundraising Campaign
The fundraising for social change campaigns will likely come with several ethical dilemmas. Some of the dilemmas may include:
Telling the whole truth to staff, constituents, and donors or not.
Whether or not to state and stick to the intended stewardship plan expressed to donors or changing the use of funds to other good uses
Whether or not to accept tainted money such as stolen money or funds acquired from selling illegal drugs.
The three ethical dilemmas arise, primarily due to difficulty in decision-making in trying to figure out between two moral imperatives, (Love, 2018). For instance, if the agency advocates for the recovery of drug addicts in the community and fights against any more community members getting into drug addiction, would it be right for the agency to solicit funds or even accept funds from drug cartels? On the one hand, it could seem morally right, considering that the drug cartels are part of the problem. However, it could also be counteractions against the agency’s vision, mission, and objectives, such that, while helping in the recovery of some of the victims, many more others may be getting into the same problem.
Creating policies to help avoid such dilemmas, the agency will leverage vital tools in achieving success. Clear expectations on things that are okay and those that aren’t ranging from attitudes, inter colleagues’ behaviors, and towards clients or the public will help set the tone from the start. Modeling and reinforcing desired behaviors will help have a typical acceptable pattern of behaviors among agency members and stakeholders. Other ways to avoid the ethical dilemmas will include providing corrective feedback and providing tools for people to act ethically and focus on skill-building or problem-solving, (Weinstein & Pamela, 2017).
References
Bezboruah, K. C. (2020). Ethics and accountability in nonprofit management curriculum. In Teaching Nonprofit Management. Edward Elgar Publishing .
Love, K. C. (2018). Nonprofit Fundraising Strategies to Provide Quality Sustainable Services.
Weinstein, S., & Pamela, B. (2017). The complete guide to fundraising management. John Wiley & Sons.
