Hi VettedCauses. (Disclaimer: not posting this as a mod, though I am one).
The 24-hour deadline doesnât seem ideal from your perspective or from theirs. The benefit of sharing a draft with a charity is two-directional: you learn further context which can stop you from publishing uninformed arguments/â make your case stronger and they get to respond in a timely manner (ideally at the same time the critique is published) meaning that your critiques will be more likely to be taken constructively. I get the impression that you are underweighting the benefits to you. 24 hours is very short notice for a busy charity, and barely gives them more notice than just publishing the post. To get the benefits of sharing the draft, Iâd strongly recommend (as Jason also suggests in the comments) liaising with the charity to find out how long they need to respond appropriately before you publish.
Unless there is something in the post which needs to be urgently announced (i.e. itâs particularly action-relevant in the next couple of days) or holding off for longer seriously decreases the odds of you publishing the critique at all, I donât see the case for publishing now without feedback.
PSâthank you for being open to changing your approach with these articles. Itâs really important to have independent and thoughtful evaluations of charities (itâs part of what we are here for), and Iâm grateful that youâre willing to adjust your methods based on feedback from the Forum readers and the charities.
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 Sinergiaâs response to our review of them. We believe our organization has been suffering reputational harm from factually incorrect claims in Sinergiaâs response, and weâve been trying to move quickly to correct the record.
Hereâs 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 (Sinergiaâs 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 wouldnât 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 âwant to post our response soon since people are likely wondering why we havenât responded yet.â
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.
Weâd 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 Sinergiaâs wishes as reasonably as we can. We are working with them to coordinate a reasonable timeline for publication.
Thanks again for your feedback â we really appreciate it as we continue improving our process.
âafter reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our responseâ.
A couple other points in response:
âIf 24 hours was sufficient for our volunteers, we believed it would be fair for Sinergia as well.â 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 âon backgroundâ (i.e. interviews where they can use the context they learn, but not name or quote the source). Iâd personally recommend that in a case like thisâotherwise the interviewee wonât be able to speak freely/â correct themselves etc⊠in fear of being taken out of context. I think youâll get a better response from organisations if you adopted more of a vibe of âtrust but verifyâ 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, Iâm very glad that youâre responding to the opinions of others on this, and giving Sinergia more time to respond. Thanks again for being open to changing your mind.
âafter reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our responseâ.
Weâre a bit confused, because the quoted statement â âafter reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our responseâ â does not request anything from us. It simply says Sinergia will do something.
Youâre 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 theyâd need after reviewing the draft. You donât have to accept that â you could say youâre not willing to hold off on publishing for more than a week or something â but when you didnât respond to it Sinergia was right to expect that you wouldnât drop a draft on them with 24hr notice before publication.
The assumption is that since you are asking for their response, itâs in their court to tell you how long a response would take. Maybe thatâs wrong, and you didnât mind whether or not they had time to send you a response, but thatâs the implication of their email.
The assumption is that since you are asking for their response, itâs 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- doesnât seem like there is much point if they donât 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 didnât include this image in the list of emails before, but weâve added it now. Sorry for the confusion!
Hi VettedCauses. (Disclaimer: not posting this as a mod, though I am one).
The 24-hour deadline doesnât seem ideal from your perspective or from theirs. The benefit of sharing a draft with a charity is two-directional: you learn further context which can stop you from publishing uninformed arguments/â make your case stronger and they get to respond in a timely manner (ideally at the same time the critique is published) meaning that your critiques will be more likely to be taken constructively. I get the impression that you are underweighting the benefits to you. 24 hours is very short notice for a busy charity, and barely gives them more notice than just publishing the post. To get the benefits of sharing the draft, Iâd strongly recommend (as Jason also suggests in the comments) liaising with the charity to find out how long they need to respond appropriately before you publish.
Unless there is something in the post which needs to be urgently announced (i.e. itâs particularly action-relevant in the next couple of days) or holding off for longer seriously decreases the odds of you publishing the critique at all, I donât see the case for publishing now without feedback.
PSâthank you for being open to changing your approach with these articles. Itâs really important to have independent and thoughtful evaluations of charities (itâs part of what we are here for), and Iâm grateful that youâre willing to adjust your methods based on feedback from the Forum readers and the charities.
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 Sinergiaâs response to our review of them. We believe our organization has been suffering reputational harm from factually incorrect claims in Sinergiaâs response, and weâve been trying to move quickly to correct the record.
Hereâs 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 (Sinergiaâs 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 wouldnât 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 âwant to post our response soon since people are likely wondering why we havenât responded yet.â
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.
Weâd 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 Sinergiaâs wishes as reasonably as we can. We are working with them to coordinate a reasonable timeline for publication.
Thanks again for your feedback â we really appreciate it as we continue improving our process.
Hereâs the request youâre looking for:
âafter reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our responseâ.
A couple other points in response:
âIf 24 hours was sufficient for our volunteers, we believed it would be fair for Sinergia as well.â 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 âon backgroundâ (i.e. interviews where they can use the context they learn, but not name or quote the source). Iâd personally recommend that in a case like thisâotherwise the interviewee wonât be able to speak freely/â correct themselves etc⊠in fear of being taken out of context. I think youâll get a better response from organisations if you adopted more of a vibe of âtrust but verifyâ 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, Iâm very glad that youâre 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.
Weâre a bit confused, because the quoted statement â âafter reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our responseâ â does not request anything from us. It simply says Sinergia will do something.
Youâre 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 theyâd need after reviewing the draft. You donât have to accept that â you could say youâre not willing to hold off on publishing for more than a week or something â but when you didnât respond to it Sinergia was right to expect that you wouldnât drop a draft on them with 24hr notice before publication.
The assumption is that since you are asking for their response, itâs in their court to tell you how long a response would take. Maybe thatâs wrong, and you didnât mind whether or not they had time to send you a response, but thatâs 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- doesnât seem like there is much point if they donât have time to respond?)
The clarifications refers to the 3 clarifying questions we sent (referenced in Email 7):
We didnât include this image in the list of emails before, but weâve added it now. Sorry for the confusion!