Ethical Investment &Fundraising
There is plenty written on ethical investments, not only for charities but becoming more popular for consumers to appreciate in corporate world too, these investments can be criticised greatly from the Church of England investing in Arms production to Comic Relief owning shares in tobacco firm. These were criticised by the public for going against what they do, however I’d  take this one further – we shouldn’t allow investment of charities into things which other charities fight against, hows is it possible that there are so many charities fighting war torn countries, yet other charities can invest in arms production, what about all those fighting against animal cruelty (hats off to the charities who do not support, condone or fund animal testing), when there are charities pumping massive amounts into companies which fund animal experimentation. This cycle shouldn’t be possible, but i would go as so far as to say there should be one ethical investment charity, which controls the morals which investments can be made – no charity should fund arms, animal experimentation (Support the cause), tobacco, large pharma, salve labour or even invest in countries whos human rights are suspect!
I know there is much criticism on the moral decision to take profits but is it really better to take a donation from an organisation which is ethically dubious and use those funds for good, or is that only ever going to protect that organisation? I believe its the latter
http://www.victimsofcharity.org Don’t Leave a Legacy of Suffering
Issues to think about
- Wealth
- Gender
- Animal Welfare
- Environmental impact
- Worker rights
- Political concerns/connections
- Rate of change/change adoption/flexiblity
Ethical Conduct
How do you confirm a charity is not only using its funds ethically but both professional and truly working for the cause itself? I’m not sure there is an answer here, but I believe complaints and issues within a charity need to be more publicly available, a key statistic would be the number of whistle blowing complaints of the charity (be they investigated or not) that figure would give a better impression of what the internal staff and volunteers believe to be the ethical standard – only those who are suspicious of dubious activity would complain, the more complaints the more its is a reliable figure to require investigation – clearly something is wrong if there are multiple whistle blowing from inside of an organisation. I wonder if the Charity Commission actually has set limits where enough complaints come in for there to be an automatic investigation into the charity, I feel there should be but very much doubt there is any such policy.