It is a common enough complaint. You generally hear it just before the holidays around the Ann Arbor area. When people are getting annual giving appeals by mail, online or lately, by text message. The complaint? "There are too many nonprofits around here. And don't some of them overlap and aren't they offering similar programs?" Why don't they collaborate and work better together?

Ethics and Nonprofits Podcast Series

Sharing Instead of Protecting Turf: How Can Nonprofits Best Work Together?

A2ethics.org is a nonprofit located in Ann Arbor (A2), Michigan. We are very interested in talking with people in our community about their views and ideas on the big and small ethical questions in their working lives and in their community now and in the future. In this series, a2ethics.org talks with several local nonprofit leaders representing health care, food security and foundations, about a range of current ethical concerns, from competition among themselves for funding, philosophical and power-based turf battles, and the debate over turning down donors whose actions do not fit with a nonprofit's mission. In the last conversation of this series, we talk about the ethics of gift-giving during a time when needs are exploding and nonprofits, whose endowments and investments have been falling, are trying to keep up with demand. The main question we are seeking an answer to is: If we have to choose, should we give to people or pets?

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Ethics and Nonprofits Podcast Series