It’s useful to adopt a set of principles to guide a nonprofit organization’s decision making and activities, as well as the behavior of its employees, volunteers, and board members. These principles could be called a “code of ethics” but they might be called the nonprofit’s “statement of values” or “code of conduct,” or something else. The purpose of adopting such a statement formally is to provide employees, volunteers, and board members with guidelines for making ethical choices and to ensure that there is accountability for those choices