The Nonprofit Money Ethics Quiz

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       C   H   I   C   K    P    E    A

For each question below, choose the answer that best applies, then check your score at the end of the quiz …

1.  We should accept money from Philip Morris USA for our Snuff Out Teen Smoking campaign.  After all, the Philip Morris tobacco company doesn’t force people to use its products—each of us can choose to smoke or not.  And even if a grant from the Foundation is blood money, and the company will use its support of our program to convince feeble-minded regulators that tobacco companies prefer to see members of the American public die from other causes, the grant will nevertheless succeed in doing some good for the world.  In any case, the real problem with tainted money is that there’s not enough of it.*

Agree or Disagree?

2.  It’s OK to name our theatre for a major donor who really cares nothing for the dramatic arts—and who in fact snores loudly during each performance he attends—rather than name it for our founder who put every penny of his modest savings into the company.  After all, our founder—now an insane pauper living in a discarded refrigerator—doesn’t want the recognition, and the major donor’s gift will clearly accomplish a lot of good.

Agree or Disagree?

3.  Even though the human rights organization I lead champions the cause of prisoners of conscience and other persecuted minorities, it’s perfectly reasonable for my board, when choosing to invest our modest endowment, not to screen for corporations that invest in China Security and Surveillance Technology, a company that operates surveillance systems for Chinese police agencies.  After all, this company will soon become a member of the New York Stock Exchange, and the tens of thousands of dissidents who are sent to the Chinese gulag every year would want us to hasten China’s entry into the family of nations (including the United States) that marry state-sponsored torture and the denial of basic human rights with the other benefits conferred by free-market economies.

Agree or Disagree?

_____

Check your score: Score zero points for each “Agree” response and one point for each “Disagree” response.  A score ranging from zero to three indicates that you’re probably human.

_____

Image source: Curtis Publishing

*Thanks to my colleague Akwasi Aidoo for this bon mot.

Comments

[Phil]

When you run a laundry, Albert, don't sniff the dirty socks.