Now What? An Open Letter to the Preemptive Love Board
Founders Jeremy and Jessica Courtney may not be returning, but there is still work to be done.
Note: On Dec. 20, the Preemptive Love board met to hear the findings of the investigation that began last September. Earlier this week, they confirmed founders and lead executives Jeremy and Jessica Courtney will not return to their roles. My Dec. 16 post raising issues at Preemptive Love can be read here.
To the Preemptive Love board of directors:
I was in the kitchen making dinner for my kids when I learned you decided to cut ties with Jeremy and Jessica Courtney. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting it.
I feel raw, as I’m sure you must. I’m tired. Relieved. And I’m sad.
I gave nearly six years to Preemptive Love. I believed in the vision. I still do. I found my people there. I thought I had found my forever job.
The fear of losing that kept me there longer than I should have stayed. It kept me quiet when people I worked with, people I loved, started leaving — hurt, abused, and broken. It led me to disregard things that should have been red flags, until I couldn’t ignore them any longer.
I don’t know what’s next for Preemptive Love. But I do know this: Preemptive Love, both the vision and the organization, are bigger than two people.
You did the right thing this week. It was a hard thing. I can only imagine how much so.
But if Preemptive Love is to do more than survive, if it is to become the fullest, most authentic, life-giving version of itself that it can be, there are a few more “right things” that need to be done.
1. Release the findings of the investigation.
Preemptive Love’s donors have a right to know.
Preemptive Love’s staff — some of whom were told not to worry, it’s just a few disgruntled ex-employees — have a right to know.
Former staff — the people who came forward, dozens of whom shared their experience with investigators — have a right to see their stories publicly validated.
You as board members may be understandably worried about the repercussions and continued loss of donors. But I promise you: transparency is always better than the alternative.
Not only will it help you win some of your old donors back; it might bring new ones to the table, too.
Remember when Preemptive Love used to do those Failure Reports? Remember what the very first one said almost a decade ago?
We neither want to hide nor fixate on our failures. But we do want to purposefully take an account of them, learn from them, and report to you how we are moving forward in light of lessons learned.
As a wise friend pointed out recently, investigative reports can be lengthy and rather weedy. There may be confidential or personally identifying information that needs to be redacted. I get that. But there is nothing to stop you from asking the investigators at Guidepost Solutions to release a summary of findings and recommendations.
2. Acknowledge the harm Preemptive Love has caused former and current staff.
Preemptive Love claims to be a community of peacemakers, mending the wounds of violence. As of today, 34 people have come forward claiming to have endured psychological and emotional abuse, bullying, gaslighting, and threats. I’ve heard from others too, especially in Iraq, who chose not to come forward out of fear of retaliation.
I implore the board to understand that this kind of abuse is a form of violence.
Preemptive Love cannot claim to “stop the spread of violence” so long as it fails to acknowledge its complicity in causing violence.
The board’s January 4 statement does not dispute the validity of the stories that were shared with the investigators. However, the language used is, at times, vague and evasive: “Broad themes became apparent, and the information we received confirmed the information that the Board itself had independently collected and verified…”
You can do better than this.
Peacemaking begins with hearing and acknowledging hard truths. That’s one of the core principles of Preemptive Love’s own peacemaker gatherings, isn’t it?
Preemptive Love has not yet acknowledged specifically the harm that has been done. People who left the organization shattered, who needed years of therapy to heal from wounds inflicted by the Courtneys and others. People who live in fear to this day, who still have nightmares about their time there.
I get that everyone involved wants to put this behind them. I do too. But acknowledging what happened is one key step to moving forward.
3. Commit more of Preemptive Love’s resources to actual programming.
Preemptive Love has plenty of funding to spare, and there is plenty of need. Passing a financial audit is the lowest of bars you could meet.
Preemptive Love had $5.5 million in effective net profit in 2020 — more than a third of what was raised. The organization has averaged a net profit of $2.2 million a year for the last four years.
Preemptive Love’s own financial reports show that just 66% of its budget went to humanitarian programming in 2020 — and some of what was claimed as a program expense was questionable at best. For example, $352,000 for digital fundraising ads.
The organization’s investment portfolio grew nearly 50% in 2020 alone. The gap between Preemptive Love’s revenue and program spending has widened every year since 2018.
I’m not suggesting you try to hit some arbitrary overhead ratio simply for the sake of hitting it. But given the present reality, it’s difficult to trust that Preemptive Love has done everything it can to “steward past donations with integrity.”
Can you even tell donors how much money went to each program?
Preemptive Love could have so much more impact than it has today, but only if its first financial commitment is to the people it serves.
4. Commit to full transparency in how Preemptive Love works.
Some old allegations from World Magazine have resurfaced in recent weeks, claiming Preemptive Love inflated its work in Syria. So let me say for the record: I didn’t have any reason to believe those allegations in 2019, and I don’t believe them today. Of all the concerning things I saw at Preemptive Love, falsifying humanitarian work was never one of them.
But the lack of transparency over how that work gets done IS a problem, and it needs to change.
There is no shame in funding local partners who do amazing, hands-on work. Preemptive Love used to say it was all about “local solutions to local problems.” Nothing is more local than a partner who belongs to the very community you want to serve.
The problem is Preemptive Love’s insistence, mandated by Jeremy Courtney beginning in 2017, that local partners never be named. At first, this rule applied mainly to Syria, ostensibly to protect partners’ safety there. Then it became a global rule: no mentioning any partners, anywhere. Before long, Jeremy didn’t even want us using the word “partner” in most cases. He wanted donors to think it was Preemptive Love’s team on the ground doing all the work. (This video is a good example of what I mean.)
In some cases, there are valid security reasons for not naming a local partner. But that is not the case everywhere Preemptive Love works, and it’s certainly not the case for partners they used to name publicly but then stopped naming.
Many reputable international NGOs rely on local partners — charity: water is just one example. The difference is, they’re transparent about it. There’s no reason you can’t be too.
5. Put locals in charge.
Preemptive Love talked a big game about empowering local staff when I was there. But even when it happened, there was always a limit, always a glass ceiling. And that ceiling was the Courtneys.
The humanitarian sector as a whole still carries a lot of colonial baggage. Big, western, mostly white-led NGOs calling all the shots. Most of the decision-making power — how the money is spent, who benefits — is concentrated in the hands of people far removed from the actual lived, on-the-ground reality of the people they serve.
If you think about it, it’s just a slightly more altruistic form of colonialism.
You could change that — and hopefully prevent future mishandling of cultural, racial, gender, and power dynamics — by putting the people you serve in charge. Leadership should come from their communities.
Imagine if there was an Iraqi-led international NGO — and imagine it was you. You might not get on all the same stages here in the US. You might not snag all the most coveted influencers. But it might also open doors you didn’t expect.
Who knows? You might just shake up the whole aid industry.
I still believe in the vision of Preemptive Love. I want the organization to come back stronger, healthier, and more sustainable. Change at the top of an org chart is just the beginning of what needs to happen.
Change means acknowledging the harm caused, being transparent about your failings, and committing to fundamental shifts in how you operate. Above all, it means putting more power into the hands of the people you serve.
It will be hard. But I believe it would be worth it. I believe the world would be better, more peaceful, more beautiful — if Preemptive Love becomes everything it can be.