Should we compromise ?

I get to face one issue recently . As you know we were able to register Swa Jagriti and are now in preparatory mode for starting operations. Few friends told me that they have contacts and can get us funding. Now i was excited as funding is the critical part of any NGO and it will lessen one part of my burden. But there was a glitch. Almost all of them underlined one condition for this :- we will have to pay part of donation to the person in power... as bribe. Here comes the question mark.

There are two facets in my view... of this situation. One facet says that we boast of honesty in our operations. There are few baselines we never want to cross. We decided that we will work with honesty, transparency and certain ethics. If we pay bribe then probably we will be following the path of most NGOs and relevancy of our existence will cease. In this way(by not paying bribe and declining the amount) the progress might be slow but it will be solid.

The second facet says that what is important is best utilisation of money, not how it comes. Suppose 100 rs are at stake, we pay back 20 as bribe and get 80 in our hand. Now our concern should be to best utilise 80 rs because if we deny, someone else will grab opportunity and even these 80 rs might go waste. So while in first case out of 100 , at lease 80 rs were available for genuine expenditure ( as misuse at our end will strictly be ZERO) in second case even these 80 rs are doubtful. Though this view is not honest enough it supports that we must implement honesty at our end and ensure best utilisation of over all money.

Both logic are sound and i am at present not able to decide which way to go though i am little biased towards the first option. But it id difficult to ignore the practicality of second option. Lets see which way we will go as these things are currently not on in the way and will come face to face at least 5-6 months later. Probably we will decide on case to case basis...