Date: Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Category: Article
The Epstein Files Are Coming — Seize This Moment to Shore Up Your Due Diligence | By Lindsey Nadeau & Catherine Flaatten
A Pivotal Moment in a Challenging Nonprofit Landscape
Two major developments are about to collide in the nonprofit world.
- First, many organizations are currently facing intense financial pressure. As government funding shrinks worldwide and economic uncertainty persists, some nonprofits may feel compelled to accept gifts they might once have declined in order to bridge budget gaps. Such decisions could expose both these organizations and the broader nonprofit industry to heightened philanthropic risk.
- At the same time, the long-anticipated Epstein court files are expected to be released by December 19. Considering how the original scandal thrust fundraising into the spotlight back in 2019, this release may launch a fresh wave of public scrutiny around philanthropic ties, institutional decision-making, and reputational risk. Even if your organization is found to have no direct connection to the individuals implicated in the files, this case is almost certain to refocus the conversation around due diligence.
These developments are indicative of an overall trend whereby nonprofits are increasingly pulled in two directions at once: towards short-term revenue gains and long-term reputational stability. However, this doesn’t have to be an “either/or” choice—in fact, it should be “both/and.”
Now is the moment to strengthen your philanthropic risk management infrastructure to both support effective fundraising and protect your organization from risk. Not because the threat is imminent, but because the capacity you build now will serve your institution long after this news cycle has passed.
This is not simply crisis preparation—this is strategic readiness. It is rare that we as prospect development professionals know of a potentially landscape-shifting risk event in advance. When these kinds of headlines emerge, stakeholders will look to nonprofits to answer two critical questions: what did we know, and how are we responding?
Build (or Enhance) Your Due Diligence Framework
Consider this a chance to construct or refine the foundational elements every nonprofit should have in place:
- A gift acceptance policy that addresses reputational risk: A clear, board-approved policy is your anchor during moments of uncertainty. It keeps decisions rooted in values rather than driven by urgency or external pressure.
- A transparent risk rubric: A shared evaluation framework creates a uniform approach across cases, protects employees, and ensures risk decisions are accountable and defensible.
- A defined vetting template: Standardized templates ensure due diligence research is thorough, appropriately sourced, and well documented. They help you or a whole team move quickly and consistently. Clear donor privacy and editorial guidelines can also prevent sensationalism.
- Policy-authorized decision makers: A gift acceptance committee or other mix of senior leadership (e.g., chief development officer, chief legal officer, and president or CEO) are common decision makers. Especially in high-risk situations, a group is preferable to an individual; such groups can help ensure fidelity to policy, provide multiple perspectives, right-size the influence of outsized voices, and protect individual staff from blame. Documenting who makes decisions and when keeps prospect development from being inappropriately tasked with this responsibility.
- Push news alerts: Targeted, proactive alerts help you detect and elevate potential issues before they reach your board, donors, or the press. Information moves quickly and can spread before your organization even realizes it.
- An internal communications protocol: Clear guidance on how information flows between prospect development, gift officers, fundraising leadership, legal, communications, and executives prevents misalignment and confusion. It helps clarify what to expect, from who, and when.
- A cross-team procedural plan: A defined workflow ensures that work moves efficiently and consistently across functions, even as volume may ebb and flow unpredictably. This plan should also include initial and ongoing training for staff on their individual responsibilities and how they fit into the overall due diligence program.
- A rapid response communication plan: Even succinct statements influence stakeholder confidence. Pre-approved language and clear sign-off processes empower organizations to respond with speed and credibility.
Data Management: Documenting and Tracking Due-Diligence Assessments, Decisions, and Outcomes
One of the most overlooked aspects of due diligence is systematic documentation. Organizations should build and document ways to:
- Record who has undergone a due diligence assessment and when.
- Reflect the associated risk ratings according to your organization’s risk rubric and policy.
- Capture how and why individual decisions were made.
- Apply contact and solicit codes appropriately given decision outcomes.
- Flag records for future review if they should be revisited.
Your CRM should be the home for all of this. If your due diligence work lives in personal folders, inboxes, or spreadsheets, it is vulnerable to being lost or overlooked. CRM-based tracking ensures decisions are preserved, searchable, auditable, and accessible to those who need them. However, your organization should ensure that access to this sensitive information is governed responsibly and prospect development has clear editorial guidelines.
The Role of AI in a High-Volume, High-Velocity Moment
If your policy necessitates due diligence research on hundreds or even thousands of names (especially in response to current events), prospect development teams may face a volume of information that is impossible to process manually in a short window. Nonprofits that have already incorporated responsible AI tools into their prospecting and research operations will be better positioned to respond quickly, accurately, and ethically.
AI will not replace the nuance of a human-performed risk assessment, but it can:
- Rapidly produce a list of names from one or many files.
- If your organization has its own secure instance of a generative AI tool, it could complete this rapid scan of files against your CRM, flagging potential matches.
- Curate initial public information for review.
- Prioritize cases based on relevance or likelihood of connection.
AI should never make the final judgment, but it can dramatically reduce the time required to direct human expertise where it is needed most.
A Call to Action
Prospect development professionals are often the first to spot warning signs, but we cannot carry this work alone. Fundraising, legal, communications, and executive leadership must work together with us to build a cohesive risk-management culture.
The Epstein file release is disruptive news at an inconvenient moment, right in the middle of Giving Tuesday and year-end fundraising, and during a challenging period for the industry in general. And yet, this timing underscores an important truth: there is no “good” time to build these systems. But the cost of not building them could seriously compromise your nonprofit’s future stability with reputational, legal, and financial damage.
Use this moment not only to prepare for potential upcoming headlines, but to reinforce the trust, values, and stewardship that sustain your organization’s mission for the long term. If your organization needs help creating or strengthening these processes, Apra’s members-only Due Diligence Toolkit is a strong place to start.