Hey! Thanks for the comment—this makes sense. I’m the founder and executive director (that’s 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/or independent audits). Hope this assuages some concerns.
It’s true we don’t have a “team” page or anything like that. FWIW, this is clearly the norm for campaigning/advocacy nonprofits (for example, take a look at the websites for the animal groups I mentioned, or Greenpeace/Sunrise Movement in the climate space) and that precedent is a big part of why I chose the relative level of privacy here — though I’m 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 enemies… or just to draw the ire of e/accs on Twitter. Maybe both! I would be more open to adding an “our leadership” page, which is more common for such orgs—but we’re 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 haven’t checked) that most new orgs would have their team listed. If bad actors put in 1 minute of Internet effort they will find you anyway—so then for credibility reasons why not have a team page with your names and backgrounds?
Hey! Thanks for the comment—this makes sense. I’m the founder and executive director (that’s 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/or independent audits). Hope this assuages some concerns.
It’s true we don’t have a “team” page or anything like that. FWIW, this is clearly the norm for campaigning/advocacy nonprofits (for example, take a look at the websites for the animal groups I mentioned, or Greenpeace/Sunrise Movement in the climate space) and that precedent is a big part of why I chose the relative level of privacy here — though I’m 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 enemies… or just to draw the ire of e/accs on Twitter. Maybe both! I would be more open to adding an “our leadership” page, which is more common for such orgs—but we’re 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! It’s useful.
Those orgs you list are big legacy orgs. I would imagine (although I haven’t checked) that most new orgs would have their team listed. If bad actors put in 1 minute of Internet effort they will find you anyway—so then for credibility reasons why not have a team page with your names and backgrounds?