Is there a reason itās impossible to find out who is involved with this project?
Maybe itās on purpose, but through the website I couldnāt find out whoās on the team, who supports it, or what kind of organisation (nonprofit? For profit? Etc.) you are legally.
If this was a deliberate and strategic choice against being transparent because of the nature of the work you expect to be doing, Iād love to hear why you made it!
[My 2 cents: As an org that is focused on advocacy and campaigns, it might be especially important to be transparent to build trust. Itās projects like yours where I find myself MOST interested who is behind it to evaluate trustworthiness, conflicting incentives, etc. For all I know (from the website), you could be a competitor of the company you are targeting! I am not saying you need Fish-Welfare-Project-level transparency with open budgets etc.,and maybe I am just an overly suspicious website visitor, but I felt it was worth flagging]
Hey! Thanks for the commentāthis makes sense. Iām the founder and executive director (thatās why I made this post under my name!) and The Midas Project is a nonprofit, which by law entails that details about our funding will be made public in annual filings and such reports will be available upon request, and that our work has to exclusively serve the public interest and not privately benefit anyone associated with the organization (which is generally determined by the IRS and/āor independent audits). Hope this assuages some concerns.
Itās true we donāt have a āteamā page or anything like that. FWIW, this is clearly the norm for campaigning/āadvocacy nonprofits (for example, take a look at the websites for the animal groups I mentioned, or Greenpeace/āSunrise Movement in the climate space) and that precedent is a big part of why I chose the relative level of privacy here ā though Iām open to arguments that we should do it differently. I think the most important consideration is protecting the privacy of individual contributors since this work has the potential to make some powerful enemiesā¦ or just to draw the ire of e/āaccs on Twitter. Maybe both! I would be more open to adding an āour leadershipā page, which is more common for such orgsābut weāre still building out a leadership team so it seems a bit premature. And, like with funding, leadership details will all be in public filings anyway.
Those orgs you list are big legacy orgs. I would imagine (although I havenāt checked) that most new orgs would have their team listed. If bad actors put in 1 minute of Internet effort they will find you anywayāso then for credibility reasons why not have a team page with your names and backgrounds?
Additionally if you want to show that you can credibly engage policymakers (which I think you might need to do in order to put pressure on these companies) I would expect transparency of people and funding sources to help a lot.
Is there a reason itās impossible to find out who is involved with this project? Maybe itās on purpose, but through the website I couldnāt find out whoās on the team, who supports it, or what kind of organisation (nonprofit? For profit? Etc.) you are legally. If this was a deliberate and strategic choice against being transparent because of the nature of the work you expect to be doing, Iād love to hear why you made it!
[My 2 cents: As an org that is focused on advocacy and campaigns, it might be especially important to be transparent to build trust. Itās projects like yours where I find myself MOST interested who is behind it to evaluate trustworthiness, conflicting incentives, etc. For all I know (from the website), you could be a competitor of the company you are targeting! I am not saying you need Fish-Welfare-Project-level transparency with open budgets etc.,and maybe I am just an overly suspicious website visitor, but I felt it was worth flagging]
Hey! Thanks for the commentāthis makes sense. Iām the founder and executive director (thatās why I made this post under my name!) and The Midas Project is a nonprofit, which by law entails that details about our funding will be made public in annual filings and such reports will be available upon request, and that our work has to exclusively serve the public interest and not privately benefit anyone associated with the organization (which is generally determined by the IRS and/āor independent audits). Hope this assuages some concerns.
Itās true we donāt have a āteamā page or anything like that. FWIW, this is clearly the norm for campaigning/āadvocacy nonprofits (for example, take a look at the websites for the animal groups I mentioned, or Greenpeace/āSunrise Movement in the climate space) and that precedent is a big part of why I chose the relative level of privacy here ā though Iām open to arguments that we should do it differently. I think the most important consideration is protecting the privacy of individual contributors since this work has the potential to make some powerful enemiesā¦ or just to draw the ire of e/āaccs on Twitter. Maybe both! I would be more open to adding an āour leadershipā page, which is more common for such orgsābut weāre still building out a leadership team so it seems a bit premature. And, like with funding, leadership details will all be in public filings anyway.
Thanks again for the feedback! Itās useful.
Those orgs you list are big legacy orgs. I would imagine (although I havenāt checked) that most new orgs would have their team listed. If bad actors put in 1 minute of Internet effort they will find you anywayāso then for credibility reasons why not have a team page with your names and backgrounds?
Additionally if you want to show that you can credibly engage policymakers (which I think you might need to do in order to put pressure on these companies) I would expect transparency of people and funding sources to help a lot.