Introduction
Vetted Causes writes articles about charities. Thus far, we have published articles about two charities. In both cases, we did not show the articles to the charities prior to publication, and were recommended by the forum to do this in future articles.
Based on this recommendation, we decided to do this for our next article. However, we’ve ran into some issues, which we’ve described below.
What Happened
On March 26th, we informed the charity about our plans to write an article about them. We also said:
we will show this response to [_____] 24 hours before publishing (or more if you would prefer). Additionally, we will send clarifying questions to [_____] prior to writing the responses in order to ensure there are no misunderstandings.
The charity responded on March 27.
On April 3rd, we sent three clarifying questions but did not receive a response.
On April 4th, we informed them:
We wanted to let you know that we plan to post [______] next Thursday (April 10th). Once [_____] have sent us your answers to the questions we sent (two different questions were also sent to [______]), we will complete our response and send it to you within 24 hours for your review.
We also gave a reason for wanting to post the article soon.
On the morning of April 9th, having received no response to our last two emails, we sent the article to the charity and reiterated our plan to publish on April 10th.
On the afternoon of April 9th, the charity responded saying they are disappointed that their request to check on deadlines had not been accepted and that they will be posting about it.
However, after reviewing all previous emails, we could not find any request to check on deadlines.
Note: instead of providing only a description of what happened (which could be inadvertently biased), we’d prefer to post the actual emails that were sent. However, we understand that posting emails can be considered inappropriate. We’ve asked the charity if we can share the emails that were exchanged, and will update this post if they agree.
Update: the charity's director said we are free to post pictures of the emails. You can find them here.
Our Thoughts
Given that we informed them on April 4th of our plan to post on April 10th — and they did not object until April 9th after receiving the article — we believe it is reasonable for us to proceed with the original timeline.
Our team worked hard to meet the April 10th timeline (including staying up past 5AM on multiple nights this week), under the understanding that there were no objections to it. Had we been informed earlier of any concerns, we would have been more open to adjusting our plans.
Our Question
Would it be inappropriate for us to post the article on April 10th?
We apologize if the answer to our question is obvious, but this is our first time sending a charity an article prior to publication, and we are doing our best to navigate it thoughtfully.
@VettedCauses DM'd me asking if I could look at this situation (I've been pushing a norm of running things by orgs before publishing while also sometimes talking about downsides). I read the emails that VettedCauses shared below.
Overall, it seems to me that Sinergia is behaving pretty reasonably in this exchange, and Vetted Causes is not being clear enough in setting expectations about timelines and what opportunities Sinergia would have to correct things before publication. I especially think the "After Charity Didn't Object" in the title isn't right.
Under the circumstances, if I were VettedCauses I would write something like:
Emails, with thoughts interspersed:
Basically reasonable, though "We do plan to eventually release full responses to ACE and Sinergia's responses. In order to respect ACE and Sinergia's wishes, we will show this response to both of you at least 24 hours before publishing (or more if you would prefer)." shows less understanding of how organizations work than I'd like to see from a charity evaluator, even a volunteer-run group. Better would be (a) default to an amount of time where the organization could plausibly review and respond without dropping everything, probably a week, (b) give more indication about when this might come than "eventually", and (c) clarify up front whether Vetted Causes is willing to engage in back-and-forth to improve the draft or whether they're just giving Sinergia the ability to prepare a public response.
Also basically reasonable. In an ideal world Sinergia would be less prickly about whether VettedCauses is trying to redirect money between broad cause areas. Note that Sinergia is giving a counterproposal, requesting that the process be that first Vetted Causes shares drafts and then Sinergia says how long they will need. I don't think Vetted Causes has to agree to this, but unless if they didn't want to do it this way it would have been good to say something.
This would have been a good time to mention the desire to record the call. This isn't a default in our society, and if Vetted Causes has a policy of requiring recordings that would be good to include up front.
Clarification on diversion is helpful.
I guess it's fine for Sinergia to suggest this, though it would be better for the focus to stay on the review process.
This is a weird message. It feels very aggressive and unprofessional, and it's not taking into consideration that it's asking for something unusual. It think it would have worked a lot better as something like:
And then instead of asking for statements over email, doing the conventional thing of (a) confirming that Vetted Causes has consent to record before turning on recording and then (b) repeating that recording is happening after turning it on, so that it's captured and it's clear that anyone remaining in the call is aware they're being recorded.
(I'm undecided on whether it's reasonable for VettedCauses to have an all-charity-meetings-recorded policy)
Very reasonable response!
If someone has just said they don't want to be recorded, it's pretty weird to immediately respond by inviting them on a podcast.
More clarity on "send our response to you prior to publishing it" would be better. Especially since Sinergia had requested a structure earlier ("after reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our response") and Vetted Causes hasn't indicated they have a problem with that.
Giving Sinergia a timeline on publishing is good, but the information on when they'll be recieving the draft for comments is pretty messy. For example, setting aside the timing of Sinergia's responses, it sounds like if ACE doesn't give a response until, say, Wednesday April 9th then Sinergia might not get to review before publication. And if ACE's response comes in on the 8th (as Vetted Causes says it did) then Sinergia only has a few hours to review before publication.
Ideally Sinergia would have pushed back on this timing.
As above, I think 24hr is way too short to be practical. Sinergia did push back on this originally, but I think in a way that VettedCauses didn't understand was pushback ("after reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our response").
While it's good that Vetted Causes is now making it clear that they're not planning on updating their article in response to issues Sinergia raises, it would have been much better (as I wrote above) to set these expectations from the beginning if that was indeed VettedCauses' plan.
Sending without citations makes this way more work for Sinergia, since I expect a major thing they want to check is that they're not being misquoted or having quotes taken out of context. While this doesn't make sharing the draft with Sinergia useless, it does remove a lot of the value. Additionally "we will get back to you as soon as possible" is pretty weak in a context of "we're publishing tomorrow". While I think fixing the VettedCauses process to allow sharing cited drafts would be the way to go, saying something like "within 1hr if you request between 9am and 5pm" would help indicate that VettedCauses is committed to doing their part to make this short deadline possible (setting aside that I disagree the urgency is necessary or helpful).
Pretty reasonable!
Yes, it does sound like VettedCauses missed the significance of the "after reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our response".
Thanks for the tip! We've implemented it.