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.
Hi VettedCauses. (Disclaimer: not posting this as a mod, though I am one).
The 24-hour deadline doesn't 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/ 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, I'd 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. it's 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 don't see the case for publishing now without feedback.
PS - thank you for being open to changing your approach with these articles. It's really important to have independent and thoughtful evaluations of charities (it's part of what we are here for), and I'm grateful that you're willing to adjust your methods based on feedback from the Forum readers and the charities.
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.