Zum Hauptinhalt springen

Our Ethics

The Values That Guide Our Decisions

Building infrastructure for charitable giving requires making choices—about technology, partnerships, priorities, and trade-offs. This document explains how we think about those choices.

Core Ethical Principles​

1. Transparency Over Convenience​

When we face a choice between making something easier and making it more transparent, we choose transparency. This often means extra work, but it's the foundation of trust.

2. Privacy Without Opacity​

Transparency doesn't mean exposing vulnerable people. We protect individuals (donors, beneficiaries, staff) while maintaining accountability for money flows. The goal is to hide faces, not money.

→ How we balance transparency and privacy

3. Effectiveness Without Elitism​

We believe in evidence-based giving and help donors find effective organizations. But we don't dictate which causes matter. All 17 SDGs have value. Within any cause area, we help donors find organizations that maximize impact.

4. Neutrality on Causes​

Amply doesn't take positions on which causes are most important. Climate action, education, health, poverty, arts, local community—donors decide what matters to them. We provide information, not judgment.

5. No Profit from Giving​

We take no platform fees. This isn't just a business model—it's an ethical commitment. We don't want our incentives tied to transaction volume. We succeed when giving succeeds, not when more money flows through us.

Technology Choices​

Why We Use Cloud Infrastructure​

Amply runs on commercial cloud infrastructure (AWS and similar services). We've thought carefully about this choice.

The tension:

  • Cloud providers are large corporations with their own ethical complexities
  • Some have contracts with governments, militaries, or industries that donors might object to
  • Using them could be seen as supporting those activities

Our reasoning:

  • No infrastructure is ethically pure—all technology has complex supply chains
  • Building our own infrastructure would divert resources from our mission
  • Cloud providers offer security, reliability, and scalability we couldn't match
  • The impact of our mission (transparent giving) outweighs the indirect association

Our approach:

  • We're transparent about our technology choices (like this document)
  • We don't lock into any single provider where avoidable
  • We evaluate providers on security, reliability, and cost—not marketing
  • We direct our impact toward the mission, not toward solving all adjacent problems

Open Source Commitment​

Our verification tools are open source. Anyone can audit our code, build their own verification, or contribute improvements. Transparency in code matches transparency in data.

Data Sovereignty​

Organizations own their data. They can export it, delete it, or move it. We're infrastructure, not a data landlord.

Partnership Principles​

With Organizations​

We verify organizations, but we don't control them. Once verified, organizations operate independently. We provide tools and transparency—not supervision.

With Businesses​

We work with businesses that want to enable giving. We don't take positions on their other activities. A business can use Amply for CSR or checkout donations regardless of their industry, unless their core business is illegal or directly harmful.

With Donors​

We provide information to help donors make decisions. We don't tell donors what to support. We trust donors to apply their own values.

Difficult Questions​

What if an organization does something wrong?​

We surface problems, we don't hide them. If concerns arise about an organization, donors see it. We may add warnings, require additional documentation, or in serious cases, remove organizations from the platform. All actions are documented.

→ Trust and Safety

What if our transparency harms someone?​

This is why we built privacy features. If transparency would harm individuals (abuse survivors, at-risk activists, whistleblowers), we protect identities while maintaining financial accountability.

What if we make a mistake?​

We're transparent about mistakes too. If we get something wrong, we acknowledge it, explain what happened, and fix it publicly. No silent corrections.

Continuous Reflection​

Ethics aren't solved once. We regularly revisit our choices, seek feedback, and adjust when we learn better approaches. This document will evolve as we do.

If you have concerns about our ethical choices or suggestions for improvement, we want to hear them: ethics@amply-impact.org

Related: