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How charities should handle the next Jeffrey Epstein

Is it okay to take money from bad people if it goes to a good cause?

Not everybody acquiesced when Jeffrey Epstein came bearing gifts.

Harvard University barred Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor in 2008, a development that frustrated his friends on the faculty, according to an internal review. One physicist, a woman whom Epstein had bragged about and racially misprofiled in an interview that Science published after his death, had pointedly refused a donation just months before his second arrest in 2019. “Would I be interested in receiving funding from a wealthy man who had also been convicted of a sex offense?” she told Science. The answer was no.

But others, many others, said yes when Epstein came calling. Among them: the Palm Beach Ballet, the Melanoma Research Alliance, the UJA-Federation of New York, and MIT Media Lab. Bill Gates once legitimized such giving, evangelizing to other would-be billionaire philanthropists over brunch at the convicted sex criminal’s mansion. Gates has since repeatedly apologized for his dealings with Epstein, but the multi-billionaire’s foundation has authorized an external review examining Gates’s ties and assessing their philanthropic vetting policies.

In recent years, the Epstein files have triggered mass public dismay over the idea that a sex criminal could buy — or, in these cases, donate — his way into elite circles. And yet today, over a decade after most of these checks were cashed, not much has changed about how organizations behave when bad people try to give to good causes. By using his giving to ingratiate himself with the rich and famous, Epstein may have embodied philanthropy at its absolute worst, most craven, and self-serving. But he was far from the only wealthy person wielding donations to win powerful friends, or to weasel his way into the public’s good graces.

Jeffrey Epstein fashioned himself as a philanthropist and fundraiser to his famous friends. Despite the fallout from the Epstein files, most charities still don’t have plans for dealing with toxic donors.

People like Epstein or the Sackler Family give to charity to launder their reputations. By donating to something good, psychologists say, they also may feel entitled to do something bad.

Charities often struggle with when to cut off toxic donors, especially if their behavior falls into an ethical gray area. It’s hard to say no when you don’t have enough money to begin with.

But accepting money from a sleazy source is rarely worth it in the long run. If word gets out that an institution looked the other way, it can lead to serious reputational damage.

“Many organizations will say they know their donors, especially the large ones,” said H. Art Taylor, president of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), the largest network of its kind in the country. “But do we really?”

Obviously, very few people, elite donors included, have committed crimes as vile as Epstein’s. And yet, a 2023 study found that a full half of fundraisers have encountered a donor who falls along a spectrum of unsavory behavior, be it a board member with a sleazy reputation or an environmental philanthropist who has made their money in the oil industry.

Every time such a donor gives, it sparks a difficult trade-off. Is it okay to accept money from a bad person if it goes to something good? There is, after all, not enough philanthropy on offer to go around as is. But if fundraisers inevitably tread into the gray areas, where should they draw the line?

The justifications of the scientists, charities, and academics who accepted Epstein’s donations clearly do not pass the sniff test. Their knee-jerk response should’ve always been a categorical no, something nearly everyone who accepted Epstein’s money now admits.

Epstein demonstrates just how bad the worst-case scenario can be for charities and universities that take money from the wrong person. MIT Media Lab’s association with Epstein ultimately led to an avalanche of bad press, resignations from key researchers, and a permanent reputational stain. Gates could’ve spent this year basking in the warm glow of his foundation’s historic decision to donate itself out of existence, the crowning jewel of his philanthropic legacy. Instead, he will spend it apologizing to his staff, testifying to Congress, and yearning for the one that got away, his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, who reportedly left him in part over his Epstein ties.

But bad donors can still harm good organizations even when they are not as obviously bad as Epstein proved to be. Research shows that organizations that accept........

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