If you missed the Ethics and Compliance Committee (ECC)’s presentation “Ask the Ethicist: When Donor Behavior is an Organizational Risk” at APRA Prospect Development 2025, this recap is for you!

The session, presented by ECC members, outlined best practices for relationship management when a donor exhibits values that are misaligned with institutional values, while protecting organizations and their staff.

Values Misalignments:

Beliefs or conduct that exhibit a misalignment with organizational values. These misalignments can be found in publicly available information or experienced privately by donor-facing staff.

Our presentation outlined seven structured best practices for handling donor-related risks. The best practices will be hitting inboxes soon! In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek.

1. Defining Organizational Values: How to identify your organizational values, even when none are formally stated.
2. Evaluating Misalignments: How to evaluate an incident/information to determine whether it indicates a misalignment.
3. Recording and Reporting:
   • How to appropriately record a misalignment in your CRM
   • How to report the misalignment, and to whom
4. Relationship Review: How to determine whether continuing a 1:1 relationship is appropriate, and who should be included in making that decision
5. Assignment Decisions: How assignment should be managed when a misalignment is identified, and how it shouldn’t!
6. Downstream Impacts: What additional factors to consider in the wake of a values misalignment, including:
   • Equitable adjustments to gift officer KPIs
   • Additional CRM coding updates
   • Acceptable of future gifts
7. Advocating to Leadership: What to do when leadership is resistant to implementing these best practices

We hope these best practices will help you create or modify your organizational policies!

Huge Thanks To:

• Presenters: Kate McConnell and Stephanie Huggins
• ECC Best Practices Subcommittee: Ivy Collier, Lucy Pastier, Danita Hill
• ECC members: Jennifer Schlager, Emily Winkle, Becca Gonzalez, Sierra Bulson, Crystal Cabral, Jennifer Kehoe, Anna Sheehan, Don Irwin, Kirsten Reece, Matt Morneault
• And special contributor Hannah Horovitz