Dear ProPublican,
Among the questions raised as the horrors of Jeffrey Epstein have unspooled in the weeks since his arrest and death have been questions around his philanthropy. These questions, about how nonprofits should think about their donors, are serious ones, and I want to tell you a bit about how my colleagues and I think about them.
Refusing Epstein’s money, I would argue, is an easy case. But there are hard cases as well.
Nonprofits, from large universities like MIT to much smaller nonprofits like ProPublica, depend on philanthropy — gifts large and small — and will almost surely do so in perpetuity. That is a strength of this country: We have built a wealth of institutions unrivalled in the world, from private universities to private hospitals to cultural institutions including museums and performing arts organizations to social welfare and advocacy organizations, that enrich our society and make it more humane, thoughtful and just. All of them depend on the generosity of the American people. In recent years, it has been clear that some types of journalism will increasingly need to be supported in this way as well, and people like you have stepped up to do that.
In general, it is not reasonable to expect these nonprofits to be responsible for the views and behavior of their donors, so long, of course, as these donors do not undermine the independence of the nonprofits.
ProPublica, for instance, had more than 29,000 donors last year, almost all of whom provided unrestricted general support. The views of such a large group of people will necessarily vary widely — and we see that as a virtue. Their behavior will also vary: Many will lead entirely admirable lives, more than a few have done things most of us would regret (as most of us have done things we regret). In accepting this support, we embrace neither our donors’ views nor their behavior. (Gifts for a limited purpose — often called “program support” — raise different issues. It’s critical that they not compromise the nonprofit’s principles, or place it in a position of conflict of interest. These are complicated questions, but I’d like to put them aside for now, for consideration in another note sometime in the future.)
We’ve been appreciative, over the years, to have received some support from the Open Society Foundations endowed by George Soros, whose philanthropy has done so much to bolster freedom here and elsewhere, especially the former Soviet bloc. Soros has become a bogeyman for some right wingers in this country in recent years, frequently, I believe, as a way to “dog-whistle” anti-Semitic appeals. While Soros’ foundations will provide about one-half of 1 percent of our funding this year, voices including that of the governor of Kentucky have invoked this connection to undermine confidence in our work. We’ve rejected these attacks, and occasionally called them out.
But by the same token, some on the left have attempted to demonize the recipients of the philanthropy of the Koch family. This is no more reasonable. I would welcome Koch support for our work, assuming, of course, that it came without strings, and with recognition that we could well publish reporting critical of their activities, as we did last month and have before.
The point is precisely not whether you prefer the politics of George Soros or Charles Koch. You have every right to make that choice — or to place yourself on a range of issues somewhere between the two. The point is that, as a journalism organization, ProPublica reports facts, not opinions, and needs funds in order to pursue that work. Our conclusions are our own, and they derive entirely from our reporting. Our donors do not know any more than the general public about what we are working on, ever.
That said, there are lines which should not be crossed, which brings us back to Jeffrey Epstein.
At ProPublica, we consider any donation of $10,000 or more in a year a major gift. We look into any donor at this level, mostly, to be candid, in the hope of communicating with them effectively and extending their support in the future. But we would not knowingly accept gifts from any donor who was known to be a serial sex abuser, or had committed some other heinous crime. Epstein had failed that test since at least 2008.
Nor, as some have suggested recently, would it have somehow been better to have taken Epstein’s money anonymously. The only anonymous donations we accept are those where we ourselves do not know the identity of the donor. In our view, conflicts of interest are impossible in the absence of such knowledge. But we are also prepared to refund any anonymous donation if the donor’s identity becomes known to us and their conduct would have precluded accepting their money had we known about it.
We go to some lengths to disclose what we do know about our donors publicly. All tax-exempt entities of our sort are required to file a public tax return each year on what is called a Form 990, but most keep the part of the form listing their donors and the amounts contributed a secret, which the law permits. We post the entire form on our website each year (you can find all of our returns since our founding here), listing each donation at or above $5,000, and have also built what we think is the best vehicle for searching such returns, Nonprofit Explorer, which we offer as a free service.
We engage in this transparency about our donors precisely because we know that not everyone will be willing to simply trust us to do the right thing, or share all of our views about these practices. We acknowledge that some of these questions (although not about Epstein) are those on which we think reasonable people can and will differ. Openness makes such discussion possible.
And even if you agree with me that the Soros and Koch, and Epstein, cases are easy ones, there are, to be sure, harder cases. The Sackler family, I’d submit, is a good example. When New York’s Metropolitan Museum accepted the gift of the Sackler Wing that houses the Temple of Dendur, which opened in 1978, no problem was apparent to anyone; Oxycontin did not go on sale until 1996. Today, as the Sacklers acknowledge that their company had become something close to a criminal enterprise and prepare to surrender it and some of the money they reaped as a consequence, the situation is entirely transformed. Clearly, sometime between 1996 and 2019 everything changed. But exactly when? This will likely be debated for years (and we’ve been proud to help inform the debate).
I’ve gone on at greater length than usual this week, and just scratched the surface. Complicated questions like these do not, at the margin, lend themselves to lots of hard and fast rules. They must be approached case-by-case, with thoughtful discussion. What I’d like to leave you with is our appreciation of the philanthropy that makes ProPublica possible, but also our commitment to think carefully about the challenging questions that will always surround this business model. Every serious enterprise needs to conduct itself with sensitivity to the moral questions its business raises. Nonprofit journalism should be no different.
Best, Dick