Answer: 

Adhering to ethical standards in fundraising is especially important because the success of an organization’s mission rests on trust: the trust of clients, volunteers, donors, and the community served. 

The Problem: Doing Good With Something Obtained Immorally 

The conflict in this story stems from the strain between the hospital’s need for the money and the money’s being tainted and coming with a controversial string attached. 

Some questions to ask yourself:

• How large was the majority in favour of this decision? 
• Were other potential benefactors approached and what were their responses? 
• Was the decision forced because without this money there would be no new wing? 
• Was the board approached or did it solicit this donation? 
• How do you respond to the criticism that the money is “ill-gotten” gains? 
• How do you think the public will react. 

Apart from this the facts also need to be filtered through some general principles regarding the uses and abuses of money, and the relationship between means and ends. It also presents a problem of proportionality. What I mean is how much bad is done in the cause of doing how much good. 

Making the Best of a Bad Situation:

In regard to the case presented here, there is no question about the origins of the money. The donor is a convicted mobster and the money is tainted. Now he wants to take his money and wash it by putting it to a socially acceptable purpose. The temptation to take it is great. 

One approach could be:

• If this mobster wants to put his money into helping children, then let him. 
• Take the money, put his name on the hospital and use the money to treat sick children, even save their lives in many instances. 
• But you need to consider the effect of such action that is, will using something bad encourage others to do bad things? 

Short-term Consequences:

• So the problem with accepting the money is that while it may make children healthier and even save lives, the hospital would be endorsing and even honouring criminal behaviour. 
• But won’t children suffer who would otherwise not if the gift is rejected? Yes. Fewer will be treated as well as they could if there were a new and better facility. 
• But if money could buy respectability, if fortunes could clear the names of people who are otherwise contemptible, then all ethical standards and values amount to nothing more than talk 
• It says something about our community that the board would feel compelled to take money from a mobster. Why weren’t others in the community willing to step forward? Is the community so impoverished that there simply aren’t other sources of funds?” 

The Long-term Harm May Be Too High:

• Faced with the choice, the hospital board had to make, the hospital board should have turned down the gift. By accepting it they have become complicit in how the money was gotten and have condoned all such future behaviour. The gift surely would aid children but at the same time, it has helped make a world which honours gangsters who violate the social order equal to doctors who toil to make the world a better place. 
• It is possible that the gangster has seen the errors of his ways and now wants to become a respectable citizen by putting his money to good use. Sainthood is always an option for the sinful but this hardly seems the case here because he wants his name prominently displayed. Is it not publicity rather than charity, which he loves. So if the mobster were sincere, he wouldn’t attach any strings — no name, nothing. There is no change of heart if he insists upon putting his name on the institution. 
• Moreover, if the money comes from the crimes, then it really isn’t even his to give away. He has no claim to it and he has no right to the fame that comes from donating someone’s money. 
• Since the protagonist is identified as a convicted mobster and he has 1 crore Rs. to give away, this isn’t a petty thief. And the gravity of his offence makes a difference to the decision whether to accept the money. 

So the hospital should not take the money from someone who is morally corrupt no matter how useful that money may be.