If I wanted to balance a wire, I would have joined the circus

Just over 10 years ago I found myself in an internal ethical debate.

I was working for an international corporation as an outside sales rep. To say I hated it would be an understatement and to say I was not good at it would be putting it mildly.

I needed a new career.

I decided to go back to school to become a fundraiser – a profession that I saw as a middle ground between extreme do-gooder and extreme “used car salesman”. Yes, I am aware that fundraising is really sales of another name, but I see a huge distinction – I was “selling” something I believed in.

Back then I naively thought that working for a non-profit would be easy. I would believe in what I was doing, and everyone else would too. Therefore we would always be putting someone else’s needs above our own and do “the right thing”.

Oh to go back to a simpler time.

Working with children in Vietnam

During this time I have worked for four remarkable non-profits, all child-focused, and I have met and worked with some amazing – and some not so amazing - people. With this track record it’s not a far stretch to imagine a similar future filled with children.

And when it comes to children, there is an endless list of ethical issues.   

·       Is the child accompanied by a guardian?

·       Have they signed a release to be photographed?

·       Do we tell their specific story or do we present a composite story of multiple children?

·       Do we name the child in the story or do we give them an alias?

In my current role, I work with children who have a serious illness. With this comes a whole new set of ethical (and legal) issues, making it an almost daily balancing act between promoting the cause (necessary to raise awareness and ultimately funds for the work we do) and respecting the child and their family in the process.

One of our core philosophies is that children are not an illness, they are a child first and their medical condition is only one component of who they are. In reality, we are a non-profit that raises money specifically for programs that support children with a medical illness. Not children who are homeless or who have a special athletic or musical talent; children who are sick. Therefore, in the eyes of some, it is imperative that the illness be placed first – an action that is in direct competition from our core philosophy.

So when a situation arises, such as a gala or a direct mail campaign, the ethical question becomes “how do we promote the cause while simultaneously respecting the child and their family?”

The first question I always ask myself is, “what will this child/parent think when they see/read this?” Will they be pleased to be the face of the campaign? Or will they be embarrassed / mortified / disappointed? I never want a child or parent to feel ashamed of their condition as a result of something we did.

According to Patterson & Wilkins (Media Ethics Issues& Cases), as a member of the program staff, I would come to a different conclusion than our development staff, as I have a different duty and a different constituent to whom I owe those duties – and that would be “OK”.

However, this only brings us so far – two opposing sides with no solution.

Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative tells us that we should not be overlooking the child’s rights as a “means to an end”.

In direct competition to this is Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill’s philosophy that the end is more important than the means, and therefore, the rights of this one child is less important because in the end we’ll be raising money for a larger group of children who would benefit immensely. More similarly, Communitarian ethics tells us that “community interest trump individual interests but does not trample them” (Patterson & Wilkins, page 14). Of course the solution is somewhere in between.

Which is why I think the Pluralistic Theory of Value is much more realistic in the real world as it allows for variables, and let’s face it, life is made up of shades of grey.

It’s a tricky thing ethics.

Moving forward, having the tools to wade through the “grey” in life and at work, most importantly with superiors who often have the last say regardless of your ethics, will be very helpful.