Witness Inc.

“Senior management reviews and evaluates the information being compiled for the 990 in advance of preparing a draft, and reviews the final 990 prior to irs filing. The finance committee of the board of directors reviews a final draft of the 990, and then the final 990 is circulated to the full board prior to irs filing.”

“All applicable personnel, including board of directors, officers and key employees, sign a conflict of interest statement, in conjunction with witness' published conflict of interest policy, on an ongoing basis. Any potential conflicts are discussed as they may arise, and resolved at the semiannual board of directors meetings.”

“Base salary and salary increases for the executive director are reviewed and approved by the executive committee of the board of directors, taking into consideration, and staying within the parameters of the organization's salary structure, which is updated every two years after originally being created by an external compensation consulting firm in 2005. This salary structure includes salaries for all staff, including the executive director and other key staff.”

“The organization's conflict of interest policy is available upon request. The organization's financial statements are made available to the public on its website, www.witness.org, and by request.”

“Witness is an international, nonprofit organization that is making it possible for anyone, anywhere to use video and technology to protect and defend human rights. We believe in a world where anyone can be a witness for change. Today's communications technologies have ushered in a new era of ubiquitous citizen video, creating a transformative opportunity to turn tens of millions of people into powerful witnesses, and make the act of "witnessing" - of capturing, exposing and amplifying human rights abuses into second nature for us all. With witness' extensive experience and leadership, we are powering up a new generation of changemakers who can turn our collective acts of witnessing into a universal force for good. Co-founded in 1992 by advocate and musician peter gabriel, to date, witness has partnered with more than 425 human rights groups representing 108+ countries, trained over 7,100 human rights defenders and citizen activists, and reached over 1 million people with witness resources. As we entered our 25th year, witness continued to innovate ways that people could harness the power of video and recommitted its support to people working for human rights change. The following are highlights from our fiscal year ending june 30, 2017. Our collaboration with the news lab at google, the witness media lab produced a groundbreaking report, called "capturing hate," in the fall 2016. In an effort to address the shortcomings of federal surveys and to supplement other research on transgender and gender nonconforming people, the media lab looked to eyewitness videos -- and the viewer engagement with those videos -- as a source of new data. The report analyzed hundreds of videos showing violent attacks against transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the united states that had been uploaded and shared, horrifyingly, as entertainment. A sample size of just 300+ videos had garnered nearly 90 million views and hundreds of thousands of vitriolic comments. Working with lgbtq groups, we set out to turn this hate-filled content into an advocacy tool for good. Witness continues to focus on how to make devices and platforms more human rights friendly. We continued our advocacy to technology companies to integrate human rights values into their products and websites and develop functionalities that improve verification and ensure enhanced safety for advocates and citizen witnesses. One example of that during this period was a crucial conversation with facebook about its livestreaming application and sensitive human rights content. Scrutiny of police tactics and violence against people of color in the united states, already at an increased level since the high profile killings of men and women including eric garner, tamir rice, sandra bland and freddie gray, reached new heights in july 2016 with the shootings within days of each other of alton sterling in baton rouge, louisiana and philando castile in minnesota. Video played a role in each of these cases, perhaps most shockingly in the aftermath of the shooting of mr. Castile which was livestreamed via facebook (and which disappeared from the social network for a few hours before being reinstated) by his fiancee. We were contacted by facebook in the days following the murder of castile to discuss how to better deal with graphic but important content such as the video streamed by castile's fiance that might otherwise violate its community guidelines. Witness quickly updated and recirculated guidance for people about filming police misconduct with special considerations about safety and new methods of documentation including livestreaming. While livestreaming was a technology that had been used by activists for nearly a decade, the functionality added to facebook, the largest social network on the planet, opened new possibilities and challenges for the medium. We also had an opportunity to discuss our guidance in a number of media interviews, articles, and op-eds with broad online distributi”

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