Transparency, accountability over perfection

The year 2018 felt like a particularly hopeful time for actresses and women everywhere. In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the resulting #MeToo movement, over 300 women in Hollywood banded together to form Time’s Up — an anti-sexual harassment organization promoting gender safety and equity in the workplace. They had high-profile supporters like Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey, and Ashley Judd, and managed to raise over $22 million in their first year to provide legal aid to survivors.

As of last January, however, Time’s Up ceased to operate. A series of missteps related to program delivery and unethical leadership decisions led to the loss of its credibility. In an interview last week, founding member Natalie Portman mourned the eventual dissipation of the movement: “I think a lot of people made mistakes, but mistakes are deadly for activism. You have to be so perfect in order to demand the change that you want to see.”

The narrative of perfection is one that largely permeates activism and nonprofit work. It is a narrative that assumes those undertaking activities seeking societal change must always be flawless in their goals and execution. The pressure is even stronger in the Philippines where the public image of the nonprofit sector is still recovering from the pork barrel scam. The reality, however, is that just like in business or politics, activist and nonprofit groups operate in a gray world. And they, too, are constantly navigating compromises and difficult decisions where the best course of action is not always as clear-cut.

An unintended consequence of this narrative is that organizations are incentivized to be overly concerned about optics. The prevailing attitude is that mistakes and failures should be hidden, and that program impact is often exaggerated to signal success. Of course, this is a short-sighted approach. Once inconsistencies come to light, it connotes a lack of integrity and erodes public trust. As the dissolution of Time’s Up had shown, this is a disservice both to the beneficiaries and to the cause—leading to disillusionment and undermining the legitimacy of the work.

This month is my 15th work anniversary of leading a nonprofit. What experience has humbly taught me is that it is easy to pontificate about idealism when you’re observing the work from a distance, but things look different on the ground where you are constantly exposed to situations in which morally ambiguous choices could be seemingly justified by a higher good. And while ethical dilemmas arise in all types of organizations, the limited resources and dependence on fundraising give nonprofit and activist groups an added challenge of learning how to manage pressure from partners without compromising one’s mission.

Instead of the unsparing standards of perfection, perhaps what we should call for is greater transparency. We can hold organizations accountable to the values they stand for, without being naive about the gray areas that anyone seeking to create systemic change must contend with. Adopting this mindset might enable us to differentiate which mistakes are “forgivable” from those that are a clear violation of trust. Greater transparency can also encourage organizations to openly discuss failures, and how they overcame them. After all, these are also valuable lessons for other groups trying to address the same social problem.

There are many existing best practices for instituting openness and accountability, particularly those relating to finance, governance, and reporting. I highly commend the Philippine Council for NGO Certification for giving nonprofits access to a rigorous external evaluation to ensure their operations are aboveboard, as well as guidance on how to continually improve. When I was a much younger leader, I used to feel quite nervous about their accreditation visits to Mano Amiga. I have now come to enjoy them as an opportunity to learn and demonstrate accountability to our stakeholders.

Apart from an external pair of eyes, what really helps me and my team is to constantly revisit our ways of working alongside an ongoing and honest assessment of what it means to truly act in accordance with our values; not just whether it is legal or ethical. Translating insights from these discussions into concrete policies and guidelines, especially to govern fundraising and resource management, helps keep our internal compass in check and provides clarity when the best way forward is not as self-evident.

Portman lamented that the most painful thing about closing Time’s Up is that an entire movement no longer exists because of the mistakes of a few people. Hopefully, the lessons that we could carry moving forward from this, will ensure that its unfortunate end was not in vain.

eleanor@shetalksasia.com