As a minimum you, as a corporate fundraiser, have an ethical duty to conform to the Institute of Fundraising’s code of practice on charities
working with business, and other relevant codes, especially the code of practice on the acceptance and refusal of donations.
For example, Charities Working with Business stipulates that a charity should not work with two companies from the same sector if this produces a conflict of interest (IoF 2006, p. 5). That would be unethical.
this is not what a lot of fundraisers have in mind when they consider the ethics of corporate fundraising. Rather, they are thinking of ethics according to the first definition; in other words, is it the right thing to do?
According to this way of thinking, when a donation from a defence firm is turned down, for example, it is because it is the right thing to do (i.e. it is ethically correct to refuse donations from companies engaged in the defence industry), not because it conflicts with the Institute of Fundraising code of practice.