January 30, 2005
Important Policy Change For Donations And Contributions
Moving Towards Greater Financial Transparency
Beginning on February 1, 2005, the names of all new contributors to this site will be disclosed publicly, in order to allow for a financial transparency which allows the reader to understand from where our resources are coming.
This new rule does not apply to contributions we have received in the past, or to our existing monthly contributors, who will be grandfathered in to our old policy, which was actually the absence of a policy.
To be clear: If you made a contribution prior to February 1, 2005, your name will not be disclosed due to that contribution, and if you currently are a monthly contributor, your name will not be disclosed under this new policy, because at the time you signed up for the monthly process, you had no expectation that your name would be disclosed in this manner.
But the names of those behind all new contributions after February 1, 2005, will be publicly disclosed on this site -- that means, if you made a contribution in the past, that will not be disclosed, but if you make a new one, it will be.
If you wish to contribute anonymously, you should avoid any of our PayPal links and do so through our Amazon Honor System account instead.
This information now is also provided as a note at the top of our Donate/Contribute/Buy page, which provides links to all the currently-offered methods of contributing.
Comments (3)
Chris Smith on 30 Jan 2005
If the goal is transparency, why continue to allow anonymous contributions through Amazon? Will you at least disclose the amounts of anonymous contributions?
I also think that you should ask your existing monthly contributors if they are willing to be disclosed (I am).
The One True b!X on 30 Jan 2005
If the goal is transparency, why continue to allow anonymous contributions through Amazon?
Transparency in the name of being able to track potential conflicts of interest is what I mean. For example, if a member of the City Council were to contribute, readers would have a right to know this. But if they did so anonymously, even I would not know that a City Council member had contributed, and so there's no conflict of interest.
That's an extreme example; any number of other people simply may wish to contribute anonymously, and hsould have the ability to do so.
But any way, the intent is to make it clear that if I happen to know who made a contribution, my readers need to know also. And if I have no idea who made a contribution (Amazon provides no identifiable information to me), then there's no potential conflict at issue anyway.
As for disclosing amounts of anonymous contributions, I have no prblem with doing that as well.
Kari Chisholm on 31 Jan 2005
Bix -- I'd suggest that the folks who are making monthly contributions should be public, too, going forward from this point; maybe after a month's warning. Otherwise, if your goal is transparency, you're defeating your goal by hiding ongoing donors.
FWIW, as one of your (very small) monthly donors, I have no problem being listed publicly.
Oh, and nice new design!