Ethical Incentives In Nonprofit Organizations

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According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, there are more than 1.5 million registered nonprofit organizations in the United States. These charities rely on the time, talent, and financial support of volunteers to achieve their goals. For many volunteers, the satisfaction of helping others is often enough reward for their efforts. However, for many people, an incentive is a major motivation to become involved within or donate to the charity or charitable event. Is this practice of offering incentives ethical? Should a person donate his or her time and money simply because it is the right thing to do? These potentially unethical incentives can be anything from a few extra points in a class, a free T-shirt, or a federal …show more content…
Regardless of the incentives, they do not get in the way of the success of the charity and often greatly increase the charity’s success. An example of this can be seen in the Hands On Network, which is a national organization that links volunteers to service projects within their community. Recently, they partnered with the Walt Disney Company in an effort to increase their organization’s volunteer participation by one million people. For just a full day of service, volunteers earned a free ticket to a Walt Disney Theme Park. This program was very successful! Currently, the Hands On Network claims to lead 2.6 million volunteers a year in over 236 thousand community projects. These projects greatly improve the quality of life for many communities and could not happen without volunteer efforts. While some people may think that it is unethical to give anything in return for charitable efforts, in my opinion, it is only a small “thank you” for a person’s effort or …show more content…
St. Vincent – St. Mary High School has many food drives, clothing drives, and other types of charitable activities designed to benefit the less fortunate. Almost all of these activities involve some sort of incentive to the students. A specific example of this is the National Honor Society’s Books for Bahamas program. For this program, students bring in a book to be given to underprivileged children in the Bahamas. In exchange for the books, the homeroom in each grade level that brings in the most books wins a special incentive like a free donut. From past experience, the Books for Bahamas program has been very successful in my school. The overall positive impact the collected books make is most certainly bigger than the chance for a student to eat a free donut. So while a person who will only participate in charity if they receive a reward can be seen as selfish, in the end the incentive does much more good than

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