Ask the Experts: Vendor/Client Relationships

The ethics side of this issue isn’t my turf, but the communication side is. My feeling is that, from the nonprofit’s point of view, this was a real failure to communicate effectively. Despite the ease of e-mail and other (often faster) ways of communicating, we always counsel nonprofits to communicate bad news of any kind by voice. This nonprofit should have called, requested a meeting and expressed their appreciation of the corporation’s past support. Then they should talk about the level of commitment they’ve experienced previously from the corp. and others, and discussed why the giving was cut.