Detroit Zoo Board Condones Lying, Sets Bad Example for Future Nonprofit Leaders

July 5, 2007 | Leadership, Nonprofit Management

Well, well, well, isn’t this an interesting follow-up to my post this morning on being ethical leaders and followers in the nonprofit sector. I thought my eyes were going to pop out when I read today’s piece in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Detroit Zoo Director to Lose a Month’s Pay. The issue is that the executive director, Ron Kagan, of the Detroit Zoo lied about having a doctoral degree in zoology on his resume to get the job. Someone tipped the Zoo’s board off about it, and after deliberation, they decided to let Ron keep his job, albeit with the hardly harsh punishment of being docked a month’s pay and a mandate to issue a lame apology on the organization’s website. Say what? You have got to be kidding me. Now I have heard of nonprofit scandals where the CEO did his dirt secretly, without anyone knowing, until the board or the public found out in the end and booted him out or forced him to resign i.e. the Smithsonian Affair. However, in this case, the board found out about Ron’s transgression, but said, hey, we like him so much that we don’t care if he’s a liar. Let’s keep him at the helm of the Detroit Zoo and keep trusting him with the public’s dollars. Good job, guys. Way to run a board.

There is indeed a crisis in nonprofit leadership when we not only have current leaders behaving unethically, but their boards of directors actually condoning their behavior. What the Detroit Zoo’s board has done is essentially given Ron Kagan and all of the other Zoo employees a license to lie. And just like that, we’ve given the public another reason to mistrust the nonprofit sector. Please Ron, for the greater good of the nonprofit community, resign. That is the only action that would make this right.

And let’s not forget the folks on the board who made the decision not to fire the liar:

Gail L. Warden – Chairman
Michael W. Jamieson – Treasurer/Vice Chair
Linda Wasserman Aviv – Vice Chair
Denise J. Lewis – Vice Chair
Stephen R. Polk – Vice Chair

The scary part is that these folks also serve on other nonprofit boards including The Jewish Women’s Foundation (Linda Wasserman Aviv) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Gail L. Warden). You have to wonder about how their unethical leadership may have or is currently affecting these organizations as well. My grandmother would say of Ron Kagan, “once a liar, always a liar”. I would say of the board members who made the decision not to fire him, “once unethical, always unethical”.

As a young nonprofit professional, I can’t believe these are the kinds of leaders we’re supposed to be looking up to? Without good role models, future leaders have a hard road to follow. Current leaders need to take more responsibility for not just being ethical in managing their nonprofits, but for being good role models for future nonprofit leaders. Especially as nonprofits, we should hold ourselves to a higher standard.

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Tags: Leadership, Nonprofit Management

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Wade G. Burck

Rosetta,
I just found you blog. Brilliant statements, and points. Now the folks can truly decide between what ethical and what isn't, what right or wrong, what's a good fib, and what's a bad fib.
Keep doing what you are doing,
Regards,
Wade Burck
Anonymous

Blowing out another's candle, doesn't make your flame shine any brighter! ...get over it!
Anonymous

Ms. Self-Righteous:

Thank JESUS for forgiveness, grace, and mercy!!!! Strive to be CHRISTlike. Why be so opposed to forgiveness? I pray that you are extended forgiveness for your transgressions...the ones no one has brought out...yet [or might have, I don't know you- however, I know you have sins that you
need(ed) to repent for; everyone does]. Those in glass houses should not throw stones...don't hate the player, hate the game! May GOD bless you with peace, happiness, wholness, grace, mercy, humility, kindness, and love. Rebuke player-hatin; embrace love!
Anonymous

A lie is a lie is a lie.
M

Some more perspective

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/
article?AID=2007707210334

If people really love the place they work for, and I know that Mr. Kagan does, they should remember that to the outside world they are the face of that institution. How they act reflects directly on the organization. if you act like an ass, if you act unethically in one area of your life, it always bleeds through to the rest.

When I was a teenager I volunteered at a Zoo in the midwest during the summers. I'd work in the goat yard, the dolphin pavilion, the reptile habitat. People would hear I worked at the zoo and their faces would light up and they would ask me a million questions. Then years later they would run into me and remember me as "the zoo girl." I was the face of the institution to those people. It is a responsibility. IT IS A RESPONSIBILITY EVERYONE WHO WORKS FOR A NONPROFIT HAS.

This whole Kagan thing went down because someone sent an anonymous fax. I have worked in the Zoo and Animal Welfare Community while I was growing up through just a few years ago, and it is not a big community, so everything gets around.

I can say that it's not likely that it was a fax sent by a former employee, but from a former "friend." If you act like an ass outside of work, karma is going to get you. He just hasn't made that constant effort to remember that no matter what he is doing, he is always the face of the Detroit Zoo.

And everything that Sal said is spot on true.
Rosetta Thurman

Wow, Sal, that last part sure does take the cake for me. Makes me wish that the first job cut that is made will be Ron's so the Zoo might have a chance at restoring public trust and getting the funding they need.
Salvatore Burns

Rosetta,

Your points are very well stated and its good to see that basic morality in the nonprofit world still exists as the norm. The Detroit Zoo Society (DZS) boards support of a director who willingly lied about his credentials for 15 years completely undermined the trust that the community has in the institution they have been chosen to oversee.

The zoo is currently in the process of asking three area counties for support in the form of a millage. Without that support, the zoo is in severe, severe financial straits and facing numerous job cuts as well as sending off a large part of its animal collection. The DZS boards actions to maintain someone the public does not trust in the director position is almost certainly going to cause the millage votes to fail thus devastating an already reeling public institution.

But the aspect of this that hits me the hardest is the knowledge that this past week the president of the Detroit Zoological Society at a zoo senior staff meeting told the assembled staff that if they did not like the board's decision to retain Ron as director that they should leave the zoo. I've heard of surrounding the wagons but really........

Sal
Rosetta Thurman

Yes, the zoo would lose a "wonderful" director...however it would also make a strong statement to the public that the Detroit Zoo board doesn't tolerate unethical behavior. Right now they look pretty loosey-goosey, anything goes - a sure negative that will trump mission every time. Ron Kagan, or any other nonprofit CEO for that matter, is not to be placed above the law no matter how great they are at their jobs. If the zoo board had been given the choice in the first place between hiring someone really great who told the truth about not having a degree yet and someone really great who was a liar, I doubt they would have chosen the latter.

What I am getting at is the bigger picture here...not attacking a particular person. Like I said, I'm sure Ron is great, but we in the nonprofit community have to be diligent in preserving our integrity at every turn so the public knows they can trust us. That includes any level of transgression or misrepresentation of the truth. If Ron really cared about the nonprofit community as a whole, he would resign and let the public know that we are better than that.
Jenay Brooke

I don't think Ron Kagan's stating that he had completed his PhD was taken lightly. He was reprimanded, docked a month's pay, and required to make a public apology. Are you suggesting that he be fired for this transgression? If he were, the zoo, the community, and the animals would lose a wonderful, progressive director.
Jon

I have mixed feelings about this subject. I am sure that Ron Kagan has done great work for the Detroit Zoo. It is a huge accomplishment to earn your Doctorate degree and it is a slap in the face to those who have their degree and struggling to gain entry into the field. There is too many examples of unethical business practices in the nonprofit world behind closed doors for this incident to slide. This case is not to be taken lightly.
Rosetta Thurman

Jenay,

Thank you for your insight. I'm sure Ron is perfectly qualified to perform the duties of his job as zoo director. But, if using different words to describe his education was "all he would have had to do", he should have done it. My 'self-righteousness' comes in when I think about why Ron DIDN'T use the right words...likely because he wanted the Board to think he WAS actually already Dr. Ron Kagan, which he was not. You (as well as others including the Zoo Board) may be OK with certain forms of lying by nonprofit directors as long as they are good at their jobs, but to me a lie is a lie.
Jenay Brooke

I am glad that Ron kept his job. The purpose of a resume is to make sure the right candidate is hired for the job, and I can't imagine a better zoo director than Ron Kagan. He is doing things for animals that people don't even know about, including rescuing exotic cats from private owners and arranging for them to go to a well-respected sanctuary. Additionally, he has completed all of his course work for his PhD, so it is not as though he was a high school graduate stating that he had completed his doctorate. For his resume to be accurate, all he would have had to do was write "doctoral CANDIDATE." But then you would have lost an opportunity to be self-righteous.
Silver Springer

Just imagine how the animals feel!