We did not mention this in our initial post since we did not yet have permission from the charity (Sinergia) to post the emails. Now that we have permission, here is additional context.
Our article is about factual corrections to Sinergia’s response to our review of them. We believe our organization has been suffering reputational harm from factually incorrect claims in Sinergia’s response, and we’ve been trying to move quickly to correct the record.
Here’s a brief timeline:
On March 26, we emailed Sinergia informing them of our plan to publish an article responding to them.
On March 27, we scheduled a call with Carolina (Sinergia’s director) after she accepted our offer to do one.
On April 2, we informed Carolina we would need consent to record the call. In response Carolina canceled the call.
On April 3 (now knowing we wouldn’t be able to ask our clarifications on the call with Carolina), we sent three written clarification questions.
On April 4, we told Carolina about our plan to publish our response on April 10th, noting that we “want to post our response soon since people are likely wondering why we haven’t responded yet.”
Between April 4 and the morning of April 9, we received no replies from Sinergia to any of our emails. We then sent Sinergia the draft article for their review on the morning of April 9, reiterating the planned April 10 publication date.
It was only after receiving the article that Sinergia responded, stating
we do plan to share in the forum our disappointment that our request to check on deadlines was not accepted. We are likely not to respond to further requests if they are done in the same manner.
However, in our email history, no such request was ever made.
We’d also like to note:
We offered to show the article to Sinergia more than 24 hours prior to publication, but Sinergia never told us they wanted this.
Sinergia showed us their response to our review only 24 hours prior to publication, and their response was much longer than our upcoming article.
Vetted Causes is a small, volunteer-run organization. Sinergia is a multimillion-dollar organization with paid staff. If 24 hours was sufficient for our volunteers, we believed it would be fair for Sinergia as well.
That said, we have decided not to post the article today to respect Sinergia’s wishes as reasonably as we can. We are working with them to coordinate a reasonable timeline for publication.
Thanks again for your feedback — we really appreciate it as we continue improving our process.
“after reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our response”.
A couple other points in response:
“If 24 hours was sufficient for our volunteers, we believed it would be fair for Sinergia as well.” feels like a false equivalency. They have many other pressing priorities, and responding to your criticisms takes time and probably knowledge of multiple programmes, which might take time to coordinate.
Some of your email communications came across as pretty hostile (or at least low-trust), and some were friendly and collaborative. I think this might explain some of the differences in how people respond to you. For example, the email before the call where you asked for written consent from all participants seemed like a very low-trust and (if you were already inclined to think that way, as someone who had received critique may be) hostile move. When journalists (who are a good model here) write articles, they often allow interviews ‘on background’ (i.e. interviews where they can use the context they learn, but not name or quote the source). I’d personally recommend that in a case like this—otherwise the interviewee won’t be able to speak freely/ correct themselves etc… in fear of being taken out of context. I think you’ll get a better response from organisations if you adopted more of a vibe of ‘trust but verify’ rather than the current position, which seems to begin by assuming bad faith (whether you actually do or not, this is the vibe).
[edited because I published with half a sentence at the end] Also, wanted to add that again, I’m very glad that you’re responding to the opinions of others on this, and giving Sinergia more time to respond. Thanks again for being open to changing your mind.
“after reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our response”.
We’re a bit confused, because the quoted statement — “after reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our response” — does not request anything from us. It simply says Sinergia will do something.
You’re taking their wording too literally. You wrote asking them if 24hr was enough notice, and this response was Sinergia asking if they could instead tell you how long they’d need after reviewing the draft. You don’t have to accept that — you could say you’re not willing to hold off on publishing for more than a week or something — but when you didn’t respond to it Sinergia was right to expect that you wouldn’t drop a draft on them with 24hr notice before publication.
The assumption is that since you are asking for their response, it’s in their court to tell you how long a response would take. Maybe that’s wrong, and you didn’t mind whether or not they had time to send you a response, but that’s the implication of their email.
The assumption is that since you are asking for their response, it’s in their court to tell you how long a response would take.
We think there is a misunderstanding. We never asked Sinergia for a response to our article. We simply told Sinergia we would send them our article before publication.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, I took this email as saying that you were sending them the post before posting in order for them to review, and clarify anything that needs clarifying (I also understand this as the point of sending the article for their review anyway- doesn’t seem like there is much point if they don’t have time to respond?)
Maybe I am misunderstanding, I took this email as saying that you were sending them the post before posting in order for them to review, and clarify anything that needs clarifying
The clarifications refers to the 3 clarifying questions we sent (referenced in Email 7):
We didn’t include this image in the list of emails before, but we’ve added it now. Sorry for the confusion!
Hi Toby, thank you for your thoughtful reply.
We did not mention this in our initial post since we did not yet have permission from the charity (Sinergia) to post the emails. Now that we have permission, here is additional context.
Our article is about factual corrections to Sinergia’s response to our review of them. We believe our organization has been suffering reputational harm from factually incorrect claims in Sinergia’s response, and we’ve been trying to move quickly to correct the record.
Here’s a brief timeline:
On March 26, we emailed Sinergia informing them of our plan to publish an article responding to them.
On March 27, we scheduled a call with Carolina (Sinergia’s director) after she accepted our offer to do one.
On April 2, we informed Carolina we would need consent to record the call. In response Carolina canceled the call.
On April 3 (now knowing we wouldn’t be able to ask our clarifications on the call with Carolina), we sent three written clarification questions.
On April 4, we told Carolina about our plan to publish our response on April 10th, noting that we “want to post our response soon since people are likely wondering why we haven’t responded yet.”
Between April 4 and the morning of April 9, we received no replies from Sinergia to any of our emails. We then sent Sinergia the draft article for their review on the morning of April 9, reiterating the planned April 10 publication date.
It was only after receiving the article that Sinergia responded, stating
However, in our email history, no such request was ever made.
We’d also like to note:
We offered to show the article to Sinergia more than 24 hours prior to publication, but Sinergia never told us they wanted this.
Sinergia showed us their response to our review only 24 hours prior to publication, and their response was much longer than our upcoming article.
Vetted Causes is a small, volunteer-run organization. Sinergia is a multimillion-dollar organization with paid staff. If 24 hours was sufficient for our volunteers, we believed it would be fair for Sinergia as well.
That said, we have decided not to post the article today to respect Sinergia’s wishes as reasonably as we can. We are working with them to coordinate a reasonable timeline for publication.
Thanks again for your feedback — we really appreciate it as we continue improving our process.
Here’s the request you’re looking for:
“after reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our response”.
A couple other points in response:
“If 24 hours was sufficient for our volunteers, we believed it would be fair for Sinergia as well.” feels like a false equivalency. They have many other pressing priorities, and responding to your criticisms takes time and probably knowledge of multiple programmes, which might take time to coordinate.
Some of your email communications came across as pretty hostile (or at least low-trust), and some were friendly and collaborative. I think this might explain some of the differences in how people respond to you. For example, the email before the call where you asked for written consent from all participants seemed like a very low-trust and (if you were already inclined to think that way, as someone who had received critique may be) hostile move. When journalists (who are a good model here) write articles, they often allow interviews ‘on background’ (i.e. interviews where they can use the context they learn, but not name or quote the source). I’d personally recommend that in a case like this—otherwise the interviewee won’t be able to speak freely/ correct themselves etc… in fear of being taken out of context. I think you’ll get a better response from organisations if you adopted more of a vibe of ‘trust but verify’ rather than the current position, which seems to begin by assuming bad faith (whether you actually do or not, this is the vibe).
[edited because I published with half a sentence at the end] Also, wanted to add that again, I’m very glad that you’re responding to the opinions of others on this, and giving Sinergia more time to respond. Thanks again for being open to changing your mind.
Hi Toby, thank you for your reply.
We’re a bit confused, because the quoted statement — “after reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our response” — does not request anything from us. It simply says Sinergia will do something.
You’re taking their wording too literally. You wrote asking them if 24hr was enough notice, and this response was Sinergia asking if they could instead tell you how long they’d need after reviewing the draft. You don’t have to accept that — you could say you’re not willing to hold off on publishing for more than a week or something — but when you didn’t respond to it Sinergia was right to expect that you wouldn’t drop a draft on them with 24hr notice before publication.
The assumption is that since you are asking for their response, it’s in their court to tell you how long a response would take. Maybe that’s wrong, and you didn’t mind whether or not they had time to send you a response, but that’s the implication of their email.
We think there is a misunderstanding. We never asked Sinergia for a response to our article. We simply told Sinergia we would send them our article before publication.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, I took this email as saying that you were sending them the post before posting in order for them to review, and clarify anything that needs clarifying (I also understand this as the point of sending the article for their review anyway- doesn’t seem like there is much point if they don’t have time to respond?)
The clarifications refers to the 3 clarifying questions we sent (referenced in Email 7):
We didn’t include this image in the list of emails before, but we’ve added it now. Sorry for the confusion!