“That has settled down now and we’ve been allowed to come back in and continue the distribution and so we have now distributed 52,000 pounds of food, 24,000 liters of water to about 500 families who were in desperate need of this kind of support,” Courtney says in the video. In reality, said Irwin, Courtney was 200 miles away from the violence and edited his narration into footage of the event.
Another video shows Courtney near a bombed-out mosque in Mosul when the sound of an air strike is heard, followed by an explosion and shaky footage of people taking cover. Courtney tells the camera that there was an explosion a few meters away and that “shrapnel flew everywhere.” That too was edited — the strike landed at some distance away. Raw footage posted by Irwin shows people milling about, relatively unconcerned.
“He didn’t need to sensationalize it,” said Irwin.
Fisher told RNS that both Courtney and Irwin approved the edits.
“The time-stamped raw footage from the trip in question indicates that this video was intentionally edited to have a broader interpretation by the viewer than the actual events that transpired,” she told RNS, adding that the board “has already begun implementing safeguards to ensure that this issue is never repeated.”
Fisher also told RNS that Preemptive Love is committed to transparency about its work. She admitted that the group’s leadership had not always presented information in the most transparent way.
“As a Board, we have determined that while the impact of the actual work by the field teams and partners often exceeds the public narrative, there have been some instances where leadership has made the decision to present material in a way that is ambiguous and potentially allows for some misinterpretation of context or surrounding events,” she said in an email.
Gene Tempel, founding dean emeritus of the Lilly School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, said storytelling is an essential part of fundraising. Stories draw people in and help them connect with those being helped by a charity, he said.
“But we would like to see honesty in the storytelling and not exaggeration,” he said.
Tempel advocates for brutal honesty and transparency in fundraising — telling people how their donations will be used and why they are needed.
Tempel said that fundraisers who stretch the truth don’t only hurt their own organization, they undermine other charities by sending a message to donors that nonprofits can’t be trusted.
“Transparency and accountability are the two buzzwords in philanthropy,” he said. “So be transparent and hold yourself accountable.”
This article originally appeared here.
