Foundation officers, evaluation, and ethical problems: A pilot investigation

Ethical problems encountered by foundation officers in their evaluation-related work were identified via an email survey of a sample of Council on Foundations member organizations. Of the respondents who had worked with evaluators, one-third indicated that they had faced ethical challenges. Most challenges fell into one of four categories: Evaluation Findings, Internal Functioning of the Foundation, Authorship/Ownership/Dissemination of the Evaluation, and Evaluator-Focused Issues. Conflicts of interest involving a variety of stakeholders were reported. The potential for foundation officers to define “ethical problems” differently from evaluators is raised, and the role that attributional processes can play in descriptions of the sources of ethical conflicts is addressed. The study's findings underscore the practical importance of developing an in-depth understanding of the views of ethical problems held by both foundation officers and evaluators.