Last Updated: November 2025
Contact: info@ihtimam.org
1. Purpose & Scope
This policy aims to ensure that İhtimam selects partners whose values and practices align with the organization’s ethical principles, mission, and understanding of care ethics when engaging in collaborations, accepting grants or donations, or developing joint projects with external stakeholders (including companies, funders, institutional donors, partner organizations, and individuals).
This policy applies to all potential partners, donors, and collaborators and establishes a risk-based assessment process.
2. Guiding Principles
Values Alignment:
Organizations or individuals with whom we establish partnerships should be consistent with İhtimam’s mission, ethical stance, and care ethics values.
Accountability & Transparency:
Partnership decisions, decision-making processes, risk assessments, and the rationale behind decisions should be documented.
Risk Management:
Detailed assessments should be conducted when engaging with high-risk sectors, particularly those involving environmental, human rights, ethical, or reputational concerns.
Continuity & Monitoring:
Approved partnerships and donors should be regularly monitored and reassessed if new risks or significant changes emerge.
3. Due Diligence Process
Before deciding to work with a potential partner, the following steps are carried out:
1. Initial Screening / Strategic Fit Assessment
Prior to establishing a partnership or accepting a donation, factors such as mission alignment, target audience, impact strategy, and organizational capacity are evaluated.
2. Sector & Risk Assessment
The sector in which the partner operates is analyzed.
Where relevant, organizations involved in the following high-risk sectors are automatically declined:
- Production, sale, or distribution of weapons and ammunition
- Production, sale, or distribution of tobacco products
- Gambling-related activities
- Fossil fuel extraction or production
- The pornography industry
- Companies implicated in, or directly or indirectly complicit in, human rights violations
- Organizations that employ or tolerate forced labor or child labor
Organizations investing in new fossil fuel exploration, extraction, or fossil-fuel-based energy generation facilities are automatically rejected.
Organizations that have committed to a just transition away from existing fossil fuel assets and have established measurable carbon reduction targets (such as SBTi commitments) may be considered.
3. Organizational & Reputation Review
The organization’s history, institutional behavior, previous projects, and human rights record are reviewed. Publicly available information, including media coverage and independent monitoring sources, may be consulted for reputational assessment.
4. Quantitative Assessment / Performance & Compliance Indicators
Where available, indicators such as ESG ratings, sustainability performance, financial transparency, and reporting practices are reviewed.
5. Dialogue & Transparency Meeting
Direct conversations are held with the prospective partner to discuss past practices, ethical commitments, future goals, and any potential concerns.
6. Community / Stakeholder Consultation (When Necessary)
For particularly sensitive or high-risk cases, representatives from relevant internal stakeholders, affected communities, expert networks, or target groups may be consulted to assess alignment with organizational values.
7. Decision & Approval
Based on the findings of the assessment process, the partnership may be approved, conditionally approved (with additional requirements), or declined. Decisions are documented by the İhtimam team.
8. Agreements & Conditions
Approved partners enter into agreements that include provisions related to transparency, ethical commitments, monitoring, and reporting mechanisms.
9. Ongoing Monitoring & Review
Partnerships are monitored throughout their duration. Performance, compliance, emerging risks, and potential violations are reviewed regularly. Partnerships may be reassessed or terminated when necessary.
4. Awareness of Carewashing Risks and Shared Responsibility
4.1 What Do We Mean?
Carewashing refers to situations in which an organization presents itself publicly as “care-centered” or “caring” through partnerships with civil society organizations or occasional communications, despite not fully embedding care ethics, employee wellbeing, or respect for invisible labor within its own structures and practices.
As an organization that advocates for care ethics, İhtimam remains attentive to the risk of care becoming an empty concept or a temporary marketing narrative.
4.2 How Do We Try to Navigate This Risk Together?
Given the nature of our work, we recognize that these risks cannot be fully measured or prevented through analytical tools, rigid rules, or bureaucratic mechanisms alone.
Care is inherently relational, non-linear, and shaped by emotions, intuition, and the quality of connections between people. No matter how many procedures we establish, we acknowledge that we ourselves may unintentionally contribute to these dynamics and, at times, even become part of the problem.
For this reason, rather than relying solely on bureaucratic barriers, we choose to trust our collective experience, shared intuition, institutional judgment, and the wisdom that emerges from working together.
In practice, we strive to uphold the following:
Balance Between Narrative and Practice
We seek to understand how closely a partner’s public messaging aligns with its internal practices and explore together how gaps between the two might be addressed.
Careful Communication and Boundaries
In project and partnership communications, we aim to foreground the genuine impact of the work and the philosophy of care ethics. We maintain open and transparent dialogue to ensure that collaborations do not become vehicles for masking structural shortcomings through image-building campaigns.
Integrity of Content and Methodology
In all collaborations, we aim to preserve the transformative and distinctive essence of care ethics. We strive to ensure that content and language remain aligned with İhtimam’s independent expertise and values.
A Learning-Oriented Approach
We view partnerships not as static projects but as living processes through which both we and our partners can learn, confront shortcomings, and strengthen care practices together.
5. Responsibilities
- The primary responsibility for implementing this policy and managing the assessment process rests with the Partnerships & Collaborations Unit (or any designated role established for this purpose).
- The relevant team or decision-making body holds authority for final approval or rejection decisions.
- All decisions and assessment processes are documented in writing.
6. Exceptions and Special Circumstances
In some situations, the standard due diligence process may not be sufficient due to a partner’s history, the nature of a sector, or the specific characteristics of a campaign or project.
In such cases, an enhanced review process may be conducted, including measures such as obtaining independent expert opinions or requesting additional reporting and documentation.
7. Policy Review
This policy and procedure are reviewed annually.
When necessary, updates may be made to reflect changes in the internal context, including new programs, emerging risks, and sectoral developments.