/when-we-get-it-wrong
ACCOUNTABILITY
When we get it wrong
We said we would check our figures once a year against the source and publish what the check found, including our own mistakes. This is where those findings go, and what we mean by a mistake.
01
Why this page exists before it has anything on it
On the donation form we wrote that we check our figures once a year against the source, and that we publish what the check found — including our own mistakes. A sentence like that is easy to write and worth nothing without a place for the findings to land.
This is that place. It is empty today, and it says so plainly rather than filling itself with reassurance. An empty log is only honest for as long as no check has been run; after that, an empty log is itself a finding.
02
The four ways we can be wrong
A number is wrong
A price, a count, a total or a piece of arithmetic on this site does not match the source it claims to come from.
For example: A page says a gift buys 26 meals when the invoice it is built on only supports 22.
We correct the number, and we say what it was before. The old figure stays visible in the log — a correction that hides the original is not a correction.
A promise is wrong
We said we would do something, and we did something else, or nothing, or not yet.
For example: We said a check happens once a year and 18 months passed without one.
We say so before anyone has to ask, and we say whether the promise stands, changes, or is withdrawn.
A delivery is wrong
The thing a gift was meant to become did not arrive, arrived late, arrived damaged, or arrived somewhere else.
For example: Goods were bought, shipped, and did not reach the people they were bought for.
We record what was bought, what happened to it, and what the money did in the end — including if the answer is that it was lost.
A judgement is wrong
Nothing was miscounted and nothing went missing. We simply chose the wrong thing to fund, or the wrong order to fund it in.
For example: We funded equipment where the actual constraint turned out to be the people trained to use it.
This is the hardest kind to admit because no rule was broken. We name it anyway, and we say what we would do differently.
The examples are illustrations of the category, not things that have happened. If one of them ever does happen, it appears in the log below with a date.
03
What we do, in order
Notice
Either the annual check finds it, or someone tells us, or we trip over it ourselves. All three count and none of them is treated as less legitimate than the others.
Say
It goes in the log below with a date, before it is fixed. Publishing only finished corrections would let us quietly bury the ones that turned out to be expensive.
Correct
The wrong thing is put right where it appeared — not only in the log. A page that carried a wrong figure gets a dated note saying it was changed and why.
Say what changed
If the mistake was structural rather than clerical, we write down what we altered so it does not happen the same way twice. If we changed nothing, we say that too.
The order matters. Saying comes before correcting, not after, because the gap between the two is exactly where an organisation is tempted to decide the whole thing was never worth mentioning.
04
We do not silently edit pages
If a page carried a figure that turned out to be wrong, we do not simply overwrite it and move on. The page gets a dated line saying what it used to say, and the log gets an entry.
Typos, broken links and rewritten sentences that do not change a fact are not corrections and do not get logged. We are trying to be accountable, not to bury the real entries under housekeeping.
05
The log
No entries yet
The first annual check has not taken place. This is not a claim that nothing has gone wrong — it is a statement that we have not yet run the process that would find out.
What an entry will contain
The date we found it.
Which of the four kinds it was.
What was wrong, in the words a person would use.
How it came to light.
What we did — and, if the answer is nothing, why.
PLACEHOLDER — RULE NOT WRITTEN
We have not written the rule for what a published entry names.
An entry can involve a supplier, a partner, a colleague, or the person who told us. What a published entry does and does not name about any of them, and what we print in place of a detail we leave out, has not been decided or written down. It is not something to work out while writing the first entry, so it is marked here rather than left unsaid.
06
If you think we have something wrong
Tell us. You do not need to be certain, you do not need to be polite about it, and you do not need to be a donor.
info@i-h-c-p.com
If you are right, it goes in the log with the date you told us — not the date we got around to agreeing. If we think you are wrong, we will tell you why rather than letting the message go quiet.
07
What is still open
The first annual check has no date on it yet
A commitment to check yearly without a month attached is a commitment that can be postponed indefinitely, and we would rather name that now than be caught with it later.
Who runs the check is not settled
Checking your own arithmetic is worth something. Someone outside checking it is worth considerably more.
A page like this is only evidence of anything once it has entries on it. Until then it is a promise about where the entries will go.
