I work at a nonprofit organization doing fundraising and donor relationship management among other things. I'm new to the field, and it's kind of a dream job (or at least a step on the way to a better dream job), so I am not sure how to deal with some things and have probably made a few missteps that have led me to where I am. Regardless, I'd like some advice on how to deal with this without quitting or burning bridges.
I started at a musuem last year and was introduced to a man in his 80s who donates a fair amount of folk art to the museum. Nothing ground-breaking, but he's been doing this for quite a while and has developed a relationship with the org and a friendship with our founding director. When I started, I just thought he was a friendly but crass old man who was maybe a little touchy or that there was a generational gap in understandings of professionalism/appropriateness. I would receive the occasional "Forwards from Grandpa" type email with a dirty joke every once in a while, but the relationship quickly crossed a physical line, ie grabbing my hand and holding me uncomfortably close during a handshake, too much touching on my back, comments on my figure or how my clothes fit (I like to keep in shape and am typically well-dressed at work), to a strange amount of him giving me things like old clothes, folk art, or magazines, which I would usually just accept graciously but throw away or donate to Goodwill once he left. I was uncomfortable about it but I also know I can be a very reserved and private person and wanted to be optimistic about it, as it is my job to keep donors happy.
Around Christmas, he invited me to stay at his apartment while he was away, and I tried to politely decline, and he asked if my email was monitored, which I ignored. At a opening reception, he got drunk and openly admitted to me that he knows exactly what he's doing in harassing me, knows that I hate and am made uncomfortable by his comments and actions, and mentioned that he loves to flirt with me simply because he can. this really upset me because my suspicions that he uses his status and "nice old man" persona to be a predator. When I had enough and mentioned this to some of the senior employees they basically said "it's ____, what do you expect? I'm just glad he's not focusing on me any longer" and discouraged me from bringing it up to our director. I'm not sure if the director is aware of it but I'm also not sure how they wouldn't be at this point. There have been other creepy things he's done since but you get the picture.
Edit: one thing that I've failed to mention is that this would not be the first time our director would have thrown me under the bus for a donor. When I was new, I was blamed for an incident that I was involved in but certainly not behind that resulted in an after hours call on my personal phone from the person at fault threatening to get me fired. I've since repaired the relationship with that person, but it leaves me little confidence that anything would happen if I were to mention it to the director.
What should I do? I've tried keeping a professional arm's length since, or introducing him to my girlfriend but it's just getting worse. I don't want to damage the relationship the org has with him because it's my job to preserve these kinds of giving relationships but I'm kind of at my wit's end with the creepiness and intentional harassment. I figured initially I'd just put up with it until Father Time took care of business but I'd rather stand up for myself at this point.
TL;DR: friendly old donor at non-profit turns out to be creepy and i am not sure how to handle it professionally
Submitted May 29, 2019 at 10:55AM by bugpapi http://bit.ly/2Qw1x0N
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