Shock Tactics by Charities Are ‘Reprehensible Messaging’

To the Editor:

I’m dismayed at the reasoning that must have lain behind the editorial decision to run an article on the use of shock tactics by nonprofits at all, let alone feature this kind of coarseness on the front page of The Chronicle (“More Charities Give Their Messages a Shock Treatment,” November 17).

Including a photograph of T-shirts demonstrating the implementation of such tactics deepens my disappointment and seems itself an application of the strategy reported.

I sincerely hope that Yael Cohen [founder of the Canadian charity F*** Cancer] will alienate more donors than she attracts with such reprehensible messaging, which actually trivializes the personal and family pain associated with the disease the nonprofit seeks to combat.

Going further, I would question the wisdom of such shock approaches in the first place.

Are there to be no limits? Pause and reflect on that for a moment. Does the end always justify the means? Hardly. How ironic that an industry devoted to advancing society’s common good, and built on the premise of individual and corporate generosity, would contribute to the moral debasement of culture. Aren’t those of us working in the nonprofit industry supposed to be swimming against the sweeping tide of society’s ills?

Robb Hansen
President
Next Level Insights
Arlington Heights, Ill.