Session: Fundraising ethics - Doing the right thing? But what is the right thing?

You’ve discovered loads of great ideas at Summer School that you could implement in your fundraising. The question is: ought you implement them?

As a fundraiser, when you go to a conference, you take away great practical advice: ‘Here’s something that will work; you should do it too.’ But do you always consider whether just because you can do it, you ought to do it?

How often do you pause to consider whether they might have unintended ethical consequences from implementing this great idea?

At the Fundraising Summer School, we have tried to embed ethics through the two-days, rather than have a ‘token’ ethics session, which suggests that ethics is separate and optional to fundraising practice.

At this interactive session, led by MacQuillin, we want you to bring to the panel the ethical dilemmas, issues and challenges you have encountered at Summer School (or those that you have been ruminating on for a long time already) so we can engage in a critical discussion around what they are, why they might be problematic, and how we might resolve them.

Meredith Niles

Meredith is an experienced charity leader who is passionate about strengthening civil society organisations.  Professionally, she has served as an Executive Director in the investment banking division at Goldman Sachs, as an Investment Director at Impetus Trust, and as Executive Director of Fundraising and Engagement at Marie Curie.  She currently gives her time as Chair of The SOFII Foundation, Deputy Chair of Plan International, and as a trustee of Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) and the Trust for London.  She recently co-edited a book, Change for Good, highlighting examples of how insights from behavioural science have been used to increase pro-social activity.  Meredith lives in London with her husband and three sons.