AFP Ethics Session for Santa Barbara and Inland Empire AFP Chapters
Date: October 31, 2025
Presenter: Janice Gow Pettey, Ed.D.
Session Title
Reputation on the Line: Ethics as a Fundraiser’s Most Strategic Tool
Subtitle: Navigating Risk, Trust, and Accountability in a Rapidly Changing Philanthropic Landscape
Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Identify key ethical risk zones in fundraising—donor influence, storytelling/representation, and data stewardship—and explain how each impacts reputation and public trust.
- Apply practical decision frameworks to navigate complex, real-world dilemmas involving donor expectations, mission alignment, and accountability.
- Evaluate and strengthen organizational practices (gift acceptance policies, narrative standards, data practices) that build durable trust with donors and communities.
- Recognize shared ethical patterns across different contexts and articulate how universal principles guide decisions from Southern California to global settings.
Session Description
Fundraising today happens under a microscope. In this practical and fast-paced session, ethics and sector leader Janice Gow Pettey, Ed.D. reframes ethics as a strategic asset—the engine of trust, resilience, and long-term donor loyalty. Using Southern California case examples and field-tested decision-making tools, participants will examine three high-risk zones of practice: donor influence, storytelling and representation, and data and privacy. Together we’ll explore how to make tough, values-based choices before crises arise, and how small shifts in policy and communication can protect organizational reputation, align gifts with mission, and build donor confidence in a rapidly changing philanthropic landscape.
Janice Gow Pettey, Ed.D. is a nationally recognized nonprofit leader, author, and educator whose work focuses on ethical decision-making, philanthropy, and social impact. She currently serves as Interim CEO of the Y & H Soda Foundation, a private family foundation dedicated to advancing immigration rights, inclusion, and economic justice. Over a career spanning decades, Janice has held senior leadership roles across the nonprofit sector, taught graduate-level courses in nonprofit ethics and governance, and consulted widely with organizations on strategy, equity, and values-aligned fundraising. She is the editor of Nonprofit Fundraising Strategy: A Guide to Ethical Decision Making and Regulation for Nonprofit Organizations and a frequent speaker on ethics, diversity, and the evolving landscape of philanthropy.
Fees: $15 Members / $25 Non-Members