Things are challenging enough with adapting work to the challenges of COVID. Feeling unsafe at work— harassment whether from coworkers or others—simply shouldn’t be added to the mix. It is a violation of human rights.

And yet, it is the reality for at least one in four female fundraisers and 7% of male fundraisers who have experienced sexual harassment in their work, as well as the 48% of respondents to a 2018 Harris Poll survey by the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), AFP Foundation, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy who said they had personally experienced, witnessed and/or heard about sexual harassment connected with their work.

It’s easy in 2020 to feel overwhelmed by challenges and to stay in our lanes. That’s why we might skim past this article, to see it as not impacting us.

But this is something that impacts you and your work, and there is hopeful action being started about it.

Last fall, several fundraisers in the Canadian nonprofit sector created a National Day of Conversation (NDOC) to raise awareness about the issue of sexual harassment of fundraisers in the charitable and nonprofit sectors. The event was held immediately before the annual AFP Congress. It received excellent response with requests to expand the conversation. The second NDOC digital conversation will take place on November 26, 2020. To find more information and to register, please go to dayofconversation.org

Because people who would benefit from being part of this event might not recognize the relevance of it to them and their work, we wanted to put a human face to the issue, in hopes that people reading this might understand that the issue of harassment and sexual harassment in the nonprofit sector is shockingly pervasive, sometimes disturbingly subtle, and always a complex challenge to navigate. We talked with people who have experienced sexual harassment, but also with a manager who faced harassment complaints from one staff member about another. For reasons of privacy we changed the names of those who agreed to speak with us, but their anonymity also points to the fact that their stories could be those of your coworkers or employees or you yourself.

Nora’s Story

Nora’s experience was like a dripping tap that turned into a leak and eventually a flood. From day one on the job, her older male office mate made intimidating comments to her. A few months in, he made a sexual joke about her in front of her coworkers. Then one day, he cornered her and insisted on hugging her in a sexualized way.

For some time, Nora brushed off the comments. “I came to notice that many women who experience microaggressions do this as a coping mechanism, you let it go all the time, that’s how you make it through the day. People brush it off and say, ‘He’s just a product of his generation. He doesn’t mean it that way.” But it bothered Nora enough that she talked about it with a friend. That friend convinced Nora to document incidents of harassment, putting dates, details and witnesses in a document.

Even still, Nora says, “When I first reported, I was so afraid of making a big deal – it was embarrassing. I didn’t downplay the report but I didn’t want to make a big deal of it. When my manager asked what I wanted, I said I just needed the behaviour to stop.”

Nora’s manager believed her. The challenge, however, was the organization’s inadequate response. “My manager was well-meaning but unprepared to know how to deal with it. They were looking out for the organization and felt they had to be a neutral party. They talked to the harasser, checked that box and wanted to move on.”  After her complaint, Nora’s organization offered respect in the workplace training, but it focused on extreme examples of sexual harassment and putting the onus on the victim to speak to the harasser if something made them uncomfortable, rather than identifying certain harassment behaviours as fundamentally wrong and creating a structure and supports to prevent and address them.

The experience was demoralizing, affecting her work and her mental health, although Nora had a good support system and coping tools. She spent significant time online trying to understand her rights and responsibilities, as well as what the organization could or should do.

For Nora, NDOC was important. “The biggest thing was that it gave me access to resources and support. I also think it shows management and HR how they can help employees facing this. It also provides really practical training for bystanders. My manager told me she hoped she would do better the next time and that time would heal this, but that’s not true by itself: you need to learn how to be better and NDOC provides this.”

Lucy’s Story

Lucy inherited a harasser when she began working as the executive director of a small nonprofit. This person was a long term employee with a history of behaviour concerns noted in performance records, but because the person was good at the job in other regards, the behaviour was never adequately addressed.

“I would expect if I was being harassed and went to my boss that something negative would happen to harasser,” Lucy says, “but the sense was that our organization had legitimized and excused [the] behaviour. That’s just the way that person was.” Staff who made complaints to Lucy asked her not to do anything about it, afraid of retribution.

Lucy began to update the organization’s workplace safety and harassment policy but says, “The policy wasn’t enough. It had zero tolerance for harassment, but that wasn’t what was being done. I had to tell staff I was going to act on their complaints by documenting and responding to them. My worry, though, was that staff would stop telling me what was happening.”

She did worry. “People don’t hire leaders to be HR managers but it is 50% of my job. It was emotionally difficult to deal with. When I addressed the issue with the employee, [the employee] accused me of creating a toxic environment. I questioned myself in the process.” Lucy made use of the counsel of an employment lawyer and provincial labour standards as she documented the employee’s behaviour, and eventually fired the the employee.

What happened next was a big learning experience. “I discovered what I had been told was only the tip of the iceberg. The long term impact of this person’s behaviour had been enormous in terms of performance of other staff. But with the departure of this person, immediately other staff blossomed, shared ideas, stepped into leadership, enjoyed themselves and each other at work without a cloud hanging over them.  

“I learned to trust my gut, not to brush off concerns, that harassers hide their behaviour. I learned the importance of open conversations with staff, and drawing firm lines about expectations of behaviour. I learned that no one is irreplaceable and that having a policy isn’t enough.

“As a manager, I think any learning that has to do with HR is useful, and especially responding to conflicts like this so NDOC is a welcome resource. I only think I should have had some of the conversations about accountability and consequences sooner.”

Sinan’s Story

Sinan’s experience with sexual harassment reflects the necessity of changing the culture of a sector that has often failed to respond to harassment.

“When I told my employers, managers, staff and about my harassment, it was treated as an anomaly – I was told, we’re doing our best, of course we’re going to make mistakes.” Assuming benevolence in the sector, Sinan gave the organization the benefit of the doubt and spent hours writing new sexual harassment protocols and policies for the organization, developing gender training and organizing circles to discuss the issue.

Eventually, however, in attempting to hold the organization accountable to making structural change, Sinan came to see the need to dismantle the idea of nonprofits and NGOs as saviours of good because too often this leads to a refusal to call out bad behaviour and an acceptance of a damaging status quo.

Sinan began to recognize that if people come together through movements like #MeToo or NDOC, an individual reporting assault or harassment can’t be vulnerably singled out, and the voice against injustice is stronger.

“We can’t be silent. We need to do a better job of checking our assumptions about who we generally believe is right, who we are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to. We need to stand together as folks who witness [sexual harassment and assault], call it out, get it documented. We need to remember that what we are fighting for is not the validity of our experience—how bad it was or whether it was harassment— but the response to it and how things need to change.”

Sinan’s call to the sector to address these issues begins with three actions:

• See and improve your clarity of vision to understand what misogyny and sexualized violence is so you can call it out
• Analyze your power and leverage that to get justice for folks, uplifting stories especially of those who don’t have platforms
• Recognize this is a lifelong journey of learning, that we will always be complicit in the violence, that we need to be called out every time we contribute to these societal beliefs.

Sinan says, “I like to push on people’s ‘this hasn’t happened to me’ exceptionalism– because it just has. This is relevant to every human being. We need to undo the learning so we can see that we all participate in structures that enable sexualized violence. This means that we are all empowered to end harrassment in the sector.”  The National Day of Conversation on November 26, 2020 is a helpful next step for anyone in the nonprofit sector wanting to undo that learning and do better.

Founded in 2019, the National Day of Conversation is a full-day of digital sessions to raise awareness about the sexual harassment of front-line fundraisers in the non-profit and charitable sectors.  In a 2018 Harris Poll survey, one in four female fundraisers report being sexually harassed by a colleague, board member, or donor.  Our goal is to make that number zero. 

This article was sponsored by Agents of Good on behalf of the National Day of Conversation.

Susan Fish is a writer/editor at Storywell, a company that helps individuals and organizations tell their story well. She has written for the nonprofit sector for more than two decades and loves a good story.