From the Nominator

Members of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Advancement Solutions team codified a process by which contentious constituents can be coded in the university’s customer relationship management to mitigate both potential harm to university staff and reputational risk to the organization by creating a standing committee to review issues and make decisions. This new committee is a formalization of an informal chat channel that was quickly identified as insufficient. Consulting human resources, university compliance, and university counsel, members of this committee developed a rubric to assist the committee in deciding whether the organization would continue to engage philanthropically with potentially problematic constituents. The committee is empowered to make critical decisions that can prevent members of the organization from having interactions with outside entities that might cause harm and can assist peers in reporting any harm to the correct liaisons. Committee members also developed resources to share with staff should they be unclear on who, where, when, or how to report incidents that might require further engagement with HR or law enforcement. The committee has created a documentation process to ensure decisions are traceable and exclusions made if appropriate. Since the creation of the committee, development and alumni relations staff have been able to easily share information about potentially problematic constituents with the committee and know that these constituents will be thoroughly reviewed and that reporters will be informed of decisions and be given the opportunity to discuss further, if desired. Meeting monthly, in the first quarter of operations, the committee reviewed 25 constituent interactions and removed 12 constituents from the pipeline.

From the Judges

We like this, as it is similar to the Gift Acceptance Committee methodology except for the relationship itself. Institutionally responsible to have a committee making calls on issues and individuals that are potentially harmful, as opposed to leaving more junior members of staff to make decisions which might not be accepted or respected by their seniors or communicated efficiently. This is a sensitive issue to manage, and this team did a good job of bringing in all the key stakeholders and then standardizing the system to ensure all aspects are reviewed from multiple angles.