“Request for Guidance: Reaching Out to Charities Before Publishing Reviews on Them, and Our Concerns” by VettedCauses

Introduction Vetted Causes writes reviews of charities. Thus far, we have published reviews of two charities. In both cases, we did not reach out to the charities before publishing reviews on them. We did consider doing so for our most recent review, but did not due to concerns which we've described below. We hope that through this post, members of the community can offer solutions that resolve our concerns. Should this happen, we would be more than happy to send reviews to charities before releasing them going forward. Acknowledging The Potential Benefits of Reaching Out to Charities Before Publishing Reviews on Them We would like to start by acknowledging some of the potential benefits of reaching out to charities before publishing reviews on them: Charities could inform us of hidden information that we were not able to access. Charities could inform us of public information [...] ---Outline:(00:08) Introduction(00:44) Acknowledging The Potential Benefits of Reaching Out to Charities Before Publishing Reviews on Them(01:22) Potential Risks of Reaching Out to Charities Before Publishing Reviews About Them(01:43) Risk 1: Charities could alter, conceal, fabricate and/or destroy evidence to cover their tracks.(03:44) Risk 2: Unconscious biases from interacting with charity staff.(04:28) Other Reasons(04:42) Reason 1: Organizations should be held accountable for serious mistakes.(05:58) Reason 2: Organizations should be incentivized to provide sufficient and publicly stated evidence to justify their important publicly stated claims.(07:49) Conclusion--- First published: February 21st, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KnJBoRcWdCmnnmq74/request-for-guidance-reaching-out-to-charities-before --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.