What are Idealist's community guidelines?
Welcome to the Idealist community! We're happy to have you here.
The Idealist community is a vibrant collection of people and organizations interested in making the world a better place. We're weekend volunteers and executive directors; social workers and development professionals; college students and social entrepreneurs. We're large global organizations, small community-based groups, and everything in between. Together, we cover every issue, and we're in every country.
When you join Idealist, you're connecting with the world's largest network for social good where you can share knowledge, skills, and opportunities with people from around the world. Idealist provides a welcoming space for anyone looking to turn their good intentions into action; we do not endorse or promote any program or organization over any other.
It's important that this be a safe and productive space for everyone, so let's all work together to keep it that way!
Here are some things to keep in mind:
We're here to make the world a better place. The mission of Idealist is to connect people, organizations, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free and dignified lives. We're excited to be doing this with you.
Be kind. We want to keep Idealist a welcoming space, guided by a spirit of generosity and mutual respect. Make space for different perspectives and points of view. Follow the Golden Rule here, and be respectful. That includes being respectful of other people's information and privacy on the site.
You're responsible for your little corner of Idealist. Remember that everything you post belongs to you. Keep your profile or organization page current, update or remove any listings that are out of date, and generally keep your corner of Idealist the best it can be.
Certain types of content are NOT welcome on Idealist. Idealist does NOT allow organizations, listings, comments, or other posts that:
- Encourage hate or violence
- Express praise or substantive support for individuals or organizations that promote hate or violence
- Discriminate against or generalize about groups or personal identities based on racial identity, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic resources, age, language, body type, family configuration, caste, spiritual or religious practices, or disability status
- Spread misinformation and/or false claims
- Attempt to spam, scam, or impersonate other members of the community
- Use comments or other community discussions to promote a brand, product, or service
- Speak on behalf of other community members
- Ridicule others or shoot down others’ ideas
- Troll, name-call, bully, or harass other members of the community
- Encourage self-harm, including disordered eating
- Share sexually explicit or profane content
- Promote the sale, gifting, trade, or distribution of tobacco, weapons, or firearms
- Attempt to gain access to another person’s account or information without their consent
- Share private information about a community member without their consent
No action about you without you. Let's not “help” anyone without talking to them first. This can often lead to unintended harm. In the Idealist community, we work alongside each other, we work with others. We don’t try to fix or solve someone else’s circumstance without their involvement.
Let us know if something doesn't seem right. We can't be everywhere at once, so we rely on our community to report content that doesn't meet our standards. If you see a listing, organization page, or individual profile that's unclear, problematic, or breaking our guidelines, click the three dot icon to the right of the “Share” button to report it. If you get a message that looks like spam, please let us know. And feel free to contact us if you see anything else you think we should take a look at.
Keep Idealist fair and useful for everyone. As an organization, only post one listing for each opportunity. Cluttering our search results with duplicate listings crowds out other organizations' opportunities and makes it difficult for seekers to use our search. It also just annoys everyone! If you choose to post a new listing for your position, please remove the old one.
What you post is public. What you post publicly on Idealist will be visible to other Idealist users. In the case of job listings, internships, and volunteer opportunities, this content may be distributed to other sites, via email alerts, RSS feeds, search results, and other social media tools. However, personal data like your contact information or resume will not be made public and will only be shared when you say so. Salary submissions are fully anonymous and cannot be linked back to your account.
We'll remove anything that breaks our rules. We'll remove anything or anyone from our site that we find to be violating our terms and conditions or breaking any of the rules we've set here.
We’re always learning and growing. We want to make things even better for you on Idealist, so you'll see tweaks to the site from time to time. Always feel free to let us know what you think.
If you enjoy all the legal details, feel free to peruse our Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy.