Exposing the truth about wasteful and unethical practices in the charity world sometimes means not being universally liked. Unlike charity trade associations and other industry insiders whose priority is to amplify the marketing and fundraising materials of charities, CharityWatch's priority is to help donors make wise giving decisions and find good charities to support.
Watch CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron's interview on the GoodViral podcast:
"I didn't come here to make friends. I came here to win. In our work, 'winning' is committing acts of service, is helping people, and a lot of the time for us to do our work and in order for me to do my job, I really have to not worry about being liked. I really have to have an internal locus of control and not an external locus of control where I'm seeking validation from the outside, because I have to have confidence in the idea that the information that we are producing is useful."
"In literature, the antagonist is the person who sometimes has a negative connotation associated with that character, right? But what does the antagonist do? The antagonist moves the plot forward. The antagonist makes the protagonist better. And so, some people view us as heroes and other people view us as antagonists. I guess I would say, either way, however someone wants to view us as the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy,' the truth of the matter is that we are moving the plot forward. We're making the good organizations better, and we're hopefully exposing the 'bad guys' in a way that prevents people from wasting a lot of money that could otherwise go to something that's really great to help a good cause."