Tips on Ties to Corporate Sponsors

When the International League for Human Rights announced that the chief executive of Philip Morris would chair the league’s annual dinner this year — and had contributed $50,000 to the event — the decision caused quite a stir. So outraged was one organization, the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, that it took out an advertisement in The New York Times that asked, “Want to Wreck a Good Dinner?” and answered with a picture of a dinner plate containing stubbed-out cigarettes and the words “Invite the Marlboro Man.” Yet despite the furor, the dinner was as successful as ever — even attracting a few extra contributions from supporters angered by the ad.

The question of what type of public and financial connection non-profit groups should have with corporate donors is one that many charities, particularly in the social-justice field, are facing with greater and greater frequency. As more and more corporations look to establish links with charities, non-profit groups would benefit from a set of principles they can look to for guidance in deciding whose contributions to take, and for what purpose.

Above all, charities need to ask themselves whether public knowledge of the gift would create — or would appear to create — a conflict of interest or violation of integrity. My organization, Amnesty International, is often critical of the transfer of arms to countries that are committing human-rights violations. Therefore, we are unwilling to take any contributions from arms manufacturers, for fear that someone might accuse us of pulling punches for mercenary gains.

That guideline, however, is not helpful when the question concerns corporations that operate in fields beyond a non-profit group’s own mandate. One of the defenses offered by some supporters of the International League for Human Rights for accepting Philip Morris’s help was that, while individual league members might disapprove of smoking, the league itself took no position on the issue. In those cases, on what basis should a charity accept or reject a corporate offer?

The answer is relatively simple if the company has been involved in scandal and is using the charity largely to improve its tarnished image. But if the donor in question is a law-abiding company that just may happen to make a controversial product like tobacco or liquor, or whose corporate practices have been criticized by others, the decision becomes trickier and far more subjective.

That is so not only because the complexity of today’s corporate world means that a perfectly reputable company may be a subsidiary of, and hence share its profits with, a parent company regarded as an “ogre.” Non-profit groups must also ask whether identification with a particular company will do more harm with their donors than whatever financial gain can possibly come of it. But if the issue at hand is beyond the mandate of the non-profit organization, few organizations really know what their donors think.

Contributors to the American Cancer Society would presumably be highly offended if the organization took money from Philip Morris, but they probably do not care very much about Freeport-McMoran’s labor and mining practices in Indonesia. For the Sierra Club to take money from Freeport-McMoran, on the other hand, would be worse than injudicious, but one has to wonder whether Sierra Club members have a unified opinion about liquor companies.

Because no single non-profit organization has the capacity to monitor every corporation, Amnesty International and other charities have to rely to some extent on our colleagues. If those colleagues have solid reputations and have singled out a company or group of companies for censure, it would be wise not to undermine them by associating a charity’s good name with the companies in question — even if the companies’ fields of operation lie outside the charities’ own areas of expertise. For one thing, it is good for corporations to know that citizens’ groups really do have some clout, and for another, charities never know when they might want their fellow citizens’ help.

This is similar to the personal advice I give when I am asked whether tourists should boycott a country because of its human-rights record. To that I say: Only if local human-rights leaders are asking tourists to stay away as part of a larger political campaign. In the absence of an organized effort, the act of avoiding countries because of their human-rights problems usually ends up being an empty gesture.

By limiting the hands-off policy on donations to those companies that have earned a degree of organized opprobrium, charities don’t guarantee themselves clean hands. Some miscreant companies may well slip through the cracks. But that approach does lend charities a relatively clean conscience while allowing them to take support from the vast majority of corporations.

The Rev. William F. Schulz is executive director of Amnesty International USA.