Chipping Away at a Nonprofit’s Credibility
I was recently listening to one of my favorite podcasters, Clark Howard, as he spent some time talking about one of his favorite subjects: how to avoid being scammed. But in this case, it hit a little closer to home. He spent some time talking about fake charities scamming people, particularly during the holidays. As I listened to the several-minute segment, I got sadder and sadder. I do not deny, nor will I try to challenge the notion, that these issues are present… but I’d love to dream of a world where these kinds of situations don’t exist.
Philanthropy, the work nonprofits strive to facilitate every day, is almost entirely built on trust. Some of that trust is pretty easy to obtain, not because of the work the staff or a board does, but because the donors know the organization. They’re actively involved. They volunteer or they give and they know the details. I don’t worry as much about those connected people unless the nonprofit does something dumb.
But stories that seem to be prevalent at holiday time deeply affect those who want to be generous and don’t know a specific or group of nonprofits. The nefarious nature of crime affects our credibility as an industry as well as an individual nonprofit’s reputation. Even if the nonprofit is legitimate and had nothing to do with the illegal activity, they are negatively affected. We live, as nonprofit organizations, on a simple equation of “reputation + trust = support.”
How do we foster more of a positive answer to this reputation and trust equation? We need to spend more time talking about the outcomes and the effects of our work. We need to be more open with our finances. We need to talk more about what we aim to do rather than how much money we raise. We need to give our donors, current and future, direct and easy ways to verify our impact and simple ways to make a contribution. We need to be cognizant that the things we say and do affect our credibility---in ways we may not even imagine.
The more we do these types of positive, informational enriching things, the greater the reputation growth---as well as a nonprofit’s impact on those who need assistance.
