On September 7th of this year, I blogged about Rainforest Action Network’s (RAN) lack of accountability and transparency. In that article, I said that after reviewing the RAN Web site, RAN.org, for information pertaining to their governance procedures, I didn’t find much of interest. Specifically, I said that I found that:
There was no information provided in the form of annual reports.
There was no information provided which would tell us how RAN governs itself.
There were no organizational bylaws provided.
There was no information provided which tells us how RAN’s board of directors is elected.
There was no information available on who votes for the board of directors.
There was very little information showing their financial condition; only information for fiscal year 2009 was given. (What about fiscal year 2010? As of the date of this post, RAN’s 2010 fiscal year had been over for 14 months.)
Well, go ahead and cross out that first bullet item in the above list because I did some more digging on their site and located some annual reports. But, they didn’t make it easy to find the reports. They didn’t provide a link to their annual reports. I had to search for it. Here is a link to the search results.
RAN, in their corporate campaigns, often demands corporate accountability from the companies they target. But RAN itself doesn’t do much in the way of providing information so the general public can assess RAN’s accountability.
Once I dug through their site to find their annual reports, I perused the reports from 2008, 2009, and 2010. To their credit, in each of the reports, I found a list of their donors. I also found a lot of flashy reporting on the campaigns that they undertook in each of those years. So much the better to woo potential donors for the next year, I suppose.
But I wasn’t seeking information on donors, or campaigns for that matter. I was seeking information about their self-governance and there was no information in those reports about how this influential NGO governs itself. Like the post I wrote on this same subject, but concerning Friends of the Earth US, I had questions.
How are the members of their board of directors elected? Are they even elected? Or are they appointed?
If the members of the board of directors are elected, who votes for them? The donors? The rank and file members? The staff? Other members of the board of directors?
If they are appointed, who appoints them?
If the donors vote for them, how many votes do the donors get apiece? Do they get one vote per donor, or do they get one vote per dollar donated? Sort of like shareholders in a corporation.
The RAN reports, like the FOE-US reports, contained lists of board and staff members. And the RAN reports contained a little bit of financial information, scant as it was. But there was nothing there to tell me, or anyone else, how this organization governs
Continue reading Rainforest Action Network Makes Their Governance Info MIA
Rainforest Action Network (RAN) campaigns against various companies. One of the tactics employed in those campaigns is to demand accountability and transparency from the businesses it targets. This is not necessarily a bad thing. But when organizations demand accountability and transparency from companies, it is imperative that the demanders are at least equally, if not more, accountable and transparent.
Where is RAN’s accountability and transparency? It’s certainly not on their Web site.
A recent review of RAN’s Web site showed little to no information which would shed light on their accountability or transparency.
There was no information provided in the form of annual reports.
There was no information provided which would tell us how RAN governs itself.
There were no organizational bylaws provided.
There was no information provided which tells us how RAN’s board of directors is elected.
There was no information available on who votes for the board of directors.
There was very little information showing their financial condition; only information for fiscal year 2009 was given. (What about fiscal year 2010? As of the date of this post, RAN’s 2010 fiscal year had been over for 14 months.)
RAN is a non-profit, tax exempt 501 (c)(3) corporation which basically is supported by all taxpayers. (To learn how tax exempt organizations are supported by ALL tax payers, please see my post “Know More About NGOs. After All, You Pay For Them.“) In order to earn the respect of those who indirectly support them, RAN needs to be less hypocritical and more open about how it conducts its operations.
Earlier today I wrote about the punking of Chevron’s new “We Agree” promo campaign. For background on this campaign and how it was punked by activists, you may read that article “Could the Yes Men Get Punked in Return?” by clicking here.
In that article I noted that Chevron announced their “We Agree” campaign on the morning of Monday, October 18, 2010. There is further information concerning the timing of the announcement and how it was made.
A New York Times article states that Chevron made the announcement, in the form of emails sent to reporters, after an article about the promo campaign was published in The Wall Street Journal on the morning of Monday, October 18, 2010. Chevron also announced the new promo campaign via a corporate press release on their Web site on the morning of Monday, October 18, 2010.
The New York Times article also states, however, that several hours prior to those Chevron emails being sent out, emails resembling Chevron emails were sent out, referencing a Web address different from what was mentioned in the actual Chevron emails. These first emails turned out to be spoofs. That other Web address referenced in the spoof emails was a Web site that the Yes Men used in their spoofing campaign, Chevron-WeAgree.com.
If the information in the Times article is correct, (and it appears that the Times article is not a spoof itself) it would seem that someone on the activist side of this affair had foreknowledge of the announcement of the “We Agree” campaign.
Indeed, that possibility can be supported via an independent check of the domain registration for Chevron-WeAgree.com.
Go to Who.is and check the registration for Chevron-WeAgree.com. You won’t learn who registered that domain. But you will find out WHEN it was registered. The registration record for Chevron-WeAgree.com, according to Who.is, states that the domain was created on October 16, 2010. That’s two days before Chevron announced the “We Agree” campaign publicly.
This information raises at least two questions.
Was there a leak in the “We Agree” campaign? If so, where did it occur?
You have the information as shown above. You may draw your own conclusions.
UPDATE: October 19, 2010 – 7:45PM ET, In a post on their site (which does not appear to be a spoof), Rainforest Action Network (RAN) admits playing a role in this Yes Man protest campaign. RAN also admits sending out information prior to the Chevron emails “. . . we had the element of surprise . . . before Chevron’s press release announcing its ‘We Agree’ campaign could hit reporters’ inboxes, we sent out a press release of our own on their behalf.” RAN also admits to creating the Chervron-WeAgree.com Web site along with the first fake press release by saying in that same post “before we sent out our press release, we put together a spoof website and a fake press page.”
To do all of this along the
Continue reading Was There a Leak in the "We Agree" Campaign?
In a recent press statement, General Mills announced that:
General Mills supports the principles of the Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and RSPO efforts to encourage and certify sustainable palm oil production practices. To reinforce those principles, General Mills purchases palm oil only from RSPO members – with preference for purchasing RSPO certified sustainable palm oil.
General Mills also said:
Our work with environmental organizations, including Rainforest Action Network, helped focus us on this important issue.
These are interesting developments because General Mills has recently been a target of Rainforest Action Network in an extended and coercive campaign against General Mills and in efforts by that NGO to “encourage” General Mills to change its palm oil sourcing policy.
This General Mills acquiescence to the RAN demands makes me wonder how long it will be until Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace, or other NGOs involved in the palm oil campaign attack General Mills by saying that the RSPO policy is not responsible enough. I’ve seen this happen before, and this strategy has been well-documented in academic literature. (Hoffman, Andrew “Shades of Green, ” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2009, p 48)
NGOs often work in packs and tag-team a target that has displayed a willingness to acquiesce to one NGOs demands. Once a target accedes to the first NGOs demands, such as is the case here with General Mills, then the second NGO moves in for further attacks. Weakness always draws attackers.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
When dealing with the “information” issued by irregular competitors in their campaigns against companies, I try to find the most objective sources possible. That’s not always easy to do, and it accounts for one reason why I post to this blog only twice per week.
One of the mainstream news providers to which I have turned in the past has been Reuters. Regardless of the news source, I always look at the information with a critical eye and often try to confirm the information via another source. However, after reading a recent news article from Reuters, I think I will be putting that news organization toward the bottom of my sourcing list.
In a recent (September 3, 2010) article on Reuters.com, the news organization reprinted an article about how banks and other financiers are refusing to back mountain top removal (MTR) mining operations. The title of the article is “Banks Back Away from Financing Mountain Top Removal” and was originally posted on GreenBiz.com on the same date. The byline on the article is shown as Robert Kropp of SocialFunds.com, a site that describes itself as a “finance site devoted to socially responsible investing.” Activist? Yes. I would define anyone who is investing on criteria other than pure financial return, or offering information on such a process, as an activist, especially when it involves social issues.
If you read the article, which is listed under an “Article” tab (implying news content) and not an “Opinion” tab, you will see that it is written from a polemic, one-sided, activist point of view. The article speaks about the negatives of MTR, but none of the positives. An example of its one-sidedness, appearing in the next to last paragraph of the article, is in a quote from the head of Rainforest Action Network (RAN):
According to Rebecca Tarbotton, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, “When the top four banks in the country back away from Massey Energy and other leading mountaintop mining operators, it sends a clear signal that these companies have a high risk profile and that other banks should beware. Bottom line, as access to capital becomes more constrained it will be harder for mining companies to finance the blowing up of America’s mountains.”
The above quote gives the impression that RAN is using the withdrawal of MTR financing by four banks as proof of a totally negative mining process, as if the banks came to this decision completely on their own. The reality is that the banks have not come to this decision on their own. The reality is that for many years RAN has been targeting several banks in reputation damaging, one-sided anti-corporate campaigns, over their financing of MTR mining. You may see evidence of my claim by going to RAN’s own website to read “Grading the Banks: Mountaintop Removal Report Card” and by reading my previous post on a Chase bank MTR “Die-In” protest sponsored by RAN.
My point in
Continue reading Now Reuters Prints Activist News
As Monty Python used to say . . . and now for something completely different.
Through the miracle of Google Alerts, I recently noticed a unique type of social media protest. This one is a situation where activists are targeting for protest other activist organizations because those organizations are, in the opinion of the protesters, too mercenary and not activist enough. Yes, you read that correctly, and I thought it peculiar as well. Here’s the story.
First, a tiny bit of background is needed. Change.org is a social site as well as an activist organization, which I have profiled (Interestingly in that profile, I found that Change.org is most likely a for-profit corporation, but that’s a different story. See my Change.org profile for more information.) Through their site, Change.org offers anyone the opportunity to create a petition drive, enabling the petition supporters to easily send messages of protest to the target of the petition. The petition targets are often companies accused of committing various behaviors found objectionable by the petitioner and its supporters. But not always. You probably realize by now where I am heading.
Now here’s the “something completely different” part. If you read this blog regularly, you will have read that I believe that some anti-corporate activist tactics can be turned back around on the activists themselves. “Payback is always a bitch.” Well, here’s a good example of such turnaround payback and it involves Change.org which recently featured a petition drive entitled “Less money collecting, more actions!” The petition asks its “signers” to demand that various activist organizations “act more” and “collect less.” (Why am I thinking of Jerry Maguire?) The targets of the petition are:
Rainforest Action Network,
Greenpeace National,
Earthjustice ,
1Sky National Office,
Sierra Club National Headquarters,
and five other activist organizations. Interesting, isn’t it?
As of the date that I wrote this post, in a little over one week, the petition had only 23 signers with a goal of 800. I’d say that was pretty slow progress, especially for a petition that’s on a site that is as highly trafficked as Change.org. This activist vs. activist petition certainly has a way to go to hit its goal. But you may check their progress currently by clicking here.
It’ll be interesting, in the game of activist vs. activist, to see how far this protest goes and if the targeted organizations are responsive to their protesters.
|
|
