GOOD NEWS: Truth Matters
Good News: An enewsletter for donors and nonprofits
on strategic planning, governance, fundraising, and executive leadership.
Truth Matters
Happy New Year!
Before we get too far into 2026, how about a quick look back on 2025? Specifically, a review from the perspective of the fact-checking website PolitiFact naming 2025, "The Year of the Lies." Wow.
A Culture of Lies
While it has always been the case that people have taken statements from politicians, business leaders, and other public figures with a grain of salt, this year seemed different.
Since 2009, PolitiFact has awarded a "Lie of the Year" to political leaders in both parties, various other world leaders, business people, and the rest. They've made these awards to recognize a statement, collection of statements or theme that is worthy of note for its consequential undermining of reality. Their criteria has been how often the claim is repeated, how demonstrably false it is, and above all, how consequential the claim is. After all, when lies are perpetuated and accepted, real people get hurt as a result.
But this year did not yield a single lie to win the award from PolitiFact. Because of chatbots, artificial "intelligence," and the obvious, growing parade of individuals who lie with their words or omissions, the concept of truth seemed so bleak that PolitiFact recognized an entire year rather than just one lie.
It's not hard to see when leaders deny obvious assaults, homicides, starvation, destruction, financial suffering, and other catastrophes here and in war torn regions that they created. Or when employees listen to bosses explain why layoffs happen or compensation gets squeezed. Or when sports teams look the other way when their players commit crimes. Expertly crafted AI outputs are often demonstrably entirely false.
Ordinary people are inclined to imitate public figures so it's no wonder when lower level officials, vendors, teachers, coaches, and even some parents shade the truth in pursuit of whatever it is that they are chasing.
Implications for Funders and Nonprofits
Donors and nonprofits know that so much of what they do depends on having a reputation for honesty, integrity, and credibility. Whether providing direct services, making grants, leading staff or interacting with donors and volunteers, everything revolves around whether people believe what they are seeing and hearing. Monetary incentives and power dynamics tend not to corrupt in their space.
I offer this now as a reminder that even though it seems that there is a reward for obfuscating or obliterating the truth, in the long run, nonprofit and funding folks will shut you out forever if they sense that you are not dealing with them straight. Unlike on the political, business, educational or athletics stage, there may be no second act once you or your organization is caught in a lie or merely suspected of one. In short, do not succumb to a culture of normalized mendacity now or ever.
So at a minimum be sure to report your organization’s financials, outcomes data (almost all of which is self-reported and largely unverifiable), donor lists, institutional achievements, and challenges truthfully and with great transparency. Promise only what you can deliver. When you come up short, admit it. Take the time to memorialize various communications in writing to promote clarity and create a record of your interactions. Let other people speak for themselves whenever possible and appropriate.
Do these things and you will stand out even more in a world that seems to have accepted or at least capitulated to lying as a means to often horrifying ends.
Stuff Steve is Watching, Listening to, and Reading
Let Them, Let Me (3 minute watch)
"The fastest way to have more peace and control in your life is to stop trying to control everybody else. Let them have their opinions, their behavior, and take all of the power and time that you've been wasting on other people, and bring it back here. Let me focus on my thoughts, my actions, and the way I want to live my life." Mel Robbins with Bill Maher
Watch Here
Pebbles, Rocks, Bricks (24 minute listen)
"It's been said that if God wants to get your attention, he'll toss a little pebble into your life. If that doesn't work, he'll throw a rock. As a last resort, he'll heave a brick. Africa was my brick." Ward Brehm, 2008 National Prayer Breakfast
Listen Here
The Year of the Lie (5 minute read)
“Trump and his running mate JD Vance’s claim that Haitian migrants were eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, took the 2024 distinction. (It was Trump’s fourth Lie of the Year award; he was a supporting character in three others.) Other 'winners' include Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2023 presiderntial campaign of health conspiracy theories; Vladimir Putin’s 2022 lies about the Ukraine invasion; 2021 downplay of the Capitol insurrection; 2020 lies about COVID-19; and Barack Obama’s 2013 assurance that under his new health law Americans could keep their health plan if they liked it." Katie Sanders, PolitiFact
Read Here
