If people pay me to (say) kill puppies, is Mozilla obliged to accept my money?
The person turning it down gets to brag on Twitter about turning it down.
At best you can feed a million people for a day (you certainly won't be curing cancer) but you will launder their reputation in the process. These kinds of charitable causes allow for people like the Sacklers to get the attention they crave from their fellow high society despite the awful things they have done, just because they flash their wallets around at a few galas. As long as nothing requires them to change their behavior, they won't.
A bigger problem is that it swiftly undermines an important trait of a charity which is: that it ought to represent ethical action in at least some (palatable) framework that appeals to people who would consider donating toward that work. For example, I donated to Wikileaks years before Assange's choices made that work highly questionable, and like many other observers would now never consider donating to wikileaks again. The damage to Wikileaks' credibility has hit the organisation in both financial and cultural spheres. Their ability to advocate depends significantly on their reputation.
Not every charities end up with a conundrum quite this dramatic, but it's not uncommon they face some. One example is LGBTQ charities, who are offered money by large organisations which those organisation in return use to portray themselves as more progressive. Those same orgs may still have discriminatory hiring practices or a troubled history with LGBTQ community, and where that occurs, the act of taking that money significantly undermines the charities' reputation among the LGBTQ community itself. This isn't hypothetical, I've seen this happen, both with large companies and with police, which for many decades persecuted LGBTQ people—and in some places still do.
Notably, I didn't actually argue above that "taking someones money means you must morally agree with that person", but instead provided concrete examples of how taking money from morally dubious sources compromises peoples ability to act ethically, and further, compromises that charities appeal to people who would otherwise consider donating.
You're also free to ignore what they want if you are dependent, and either seek other funding, reduce your efforts, or dissolve the charity.
> Having your charity financially dependent on puppy killers or (say) weapons manufacturers undermines your ability to act ethically in various situations, which you may or may not see as important. Here you might picture Assange taking Russian money (indirectly) and the ethical swamp he finds himself in when he criticising behaviour that is an assault on journalism in the west while deciding whether or not to cover the astounding number of journalists in Russia that tend to fall out of windows.
You are arguing from a point if view that where it's a given that a charity compromises it's ability to act ethically if it accepts money from an unethical source. That is the entire question. Assange for example could accept the money and simply not let it affect the content he releases.
> A bigger problem is that it swiftly undermines an important trait of a charity which is: that it ought to represent ethical action in at least some (palatable) framework that appeals to people who would consider donating toward that work. For example, I donated to Wikileaks years before Assange's choices made that work highly questionable, and like many other observers would now never consider donating to wikileaks again. The damage to Wikileaks' credibility has hit the organisation in both financial and cultural spheres. Their ability to advocate depends significantly on their reputation.
A charity by definition represents an ethical action. You are internalizing the ethics of donors into the ethics of the charity. If you do this no large charity is safe since most likely hundreds of thousands of people have donated to them. Most likely many of them having ethics you do not agree with. I'm not sure what your point with Assange is. It's an entirely different discussion separate from whether charities should accept money from unethical donors.
> Not every charities end up with a conundrum quite this dramatic, but it's not uncommon they face some. One example is LGBTQ charities, who are offered money by large organisations which those organisation in return use to portray themselves as more progressive. Those same orgs may still have discriminatory hiring practices or a troubled history with LGBTQ community, and where that occurs, the act of taking that money significantly undermines the charities' reputation among the LGBTQ community itself. This isn't hypothetical, I've seen this happen, both with large companies and with police, which for many decades persecuted LGBTQ people—and in some places still do.
Then the LGBTQ is undermining their own cause. They refuse an improvement in their situation for a theoritical best outcome. Perfect is the enemy of good. I think it's great that a company donates to a good cause. I don't particularly care what their hidden motivations are. In fact I would not ascribe any positive feelings to the company because of them donating. The only reason a company donates is because it thinks it will somehow make them money. If in the process a charity receives money because of this then I think this a great construct.
What I think is bad is that if a donor influences the charity or the charity let's the donor influence them. But a charity accepting money from an unethical donor doesn't imply that. It only makes it a possibility.
Now if we remember that Mozilla, the company, is financially dependent on Google money for the deal of making it the default search engine, we see the much bigger ethical issue here.