Cultivating Integrity - a lost art?

Integrity is a concept that many organizations can’t afford to cultivate. But it is one of the most important qualities to encourage and promote, for both internal and external reasons. For some, it might be a lost art, too expensive to adhere to and too complicated to explain. I beg to differ

To have and show integrity is difficult under normal circumstances, but it is especially complicated in the nonprofit sector where organizations are dependent on receiving grants from powerful entities such as foundations and wealthy donors. It’s that ‘one-down’ position that set you up to accept terms that often do not agree with an organization’s culture or self-respect. And still it’s happening for pragmatic and other purposes. 

Cultivating integrity when faced with options that are unpalatable at best, and outright demeaning at worst, goes to the heart of an organization’s vision and mission. 

At the foundation that I headed for 12+ years, I tried this out with varying success. With a difficult and challenging area of focus, prevention of sexual abuse and exploitation of children, it was hard to even get anybody’s attention, not the least money. At the time, this particular area of child abuse had not yet entered into the mainstream, and situated on the fringe, the majority of attention was given to salacious stories about brothels being raided and rescue missions of kidnapped adolescent girls, often in third-world countries, far away. It is worth noting that the ‘savior’ role is a known feature nowadays, putting the rescuer in a hero role, and is sometimes still used and exploited for its emotional value when raising funds.

I have continued to promote integrity in roles as advisor and board member of numerous organizations. Here, I have argued for cultivating integrity when not only presenting the organization’s mission and target population, but also overall to shore up ‘mission creep’ and advance the narrative of those supported without compromising needs. My point is that when soliciting support, it is vital to be clear that “this is what we do, and you are welcome to join”, not promoting the organization with persuasive arguments to ‘win’ over funders.  

The opposite of integrity in the nonprofit sector is operating in ‘convince mode’. Convince mode is a state where you are not only compromising the honesty of the organization’s mission, but you are also diluting the self-selection process of soliciting assistance. What I mean is that donors and funders need to come to an organization for their own reasons; and organizations can’t and shouldn’t convince anyone of support as this will quickly erode if not grounded in true and real interest and conviction to the cause and the organization. There are too many examples of abandoned partnerships that have crumbled because of this.

Instead, integrity forms the corner stone of retaining and maintaining sustainable backing from solid and committed supporters, be it volunteers, funders or board members. The art of cultivating integrity has much to give.

It is both difficult and costly sometimes to keep the flag of integrity high for an organization that desperately needs funding to continue doing perhaps lifesaving and necessary work for its clients and constituents. To me, if this flag wavers and is compromised, then the constituents are already deceived. In the end, an organization that is true to its values, its beliefs and its mission will succeed. But more importantly, it will gain in consistency being an organization that puts itself first, not its donors. It will adhere to trust and justice to those they are here to serve. And speaking of trust and justice, they are siblings to integrity.

But more on that at a later time.  

Photo: George Pagan III via Unsplash