How decisions get made at porchstroll — and who they answer to.
A privacy promise is only as durable as the structure behind it. A founder who changes his mind, or a board that answers to investors, can undo any promise overnight. porchstroll's governance exists for one reason: to make "we don't use you" something the organization can't quietly walk back — even if someone wanted to.
Most board seats will be held by people who are neither staff nor the founder. The board's job is to hold leadership accountable to the mission — not the other way around. Directors will serve unpaid, so no one will sit on the board to draw a salary.
The exact size of the board, term lengths, and the process for selecting independent members will be worked out with a nonprofit attorney after we incorporate. We'll publish the details — and the people — here once they're settled.
The founding legal document will be posted here so anyone can read exactly what porchstroll is bound to. It's where the organization's purpose and the non-distribution constraint live — the rules a future board would have to amend publicly rather than quietly set aside. We'll post it within days of the state accepting the filing.
porchstroll is not the founder's to sell, redirect, or cash out. Because there are no shares and no owners, there is nothing to sell and no one to enrich. If and when the founder is paid, the amount will be set by a recorded vote of the board and reported on the transparency page — not decided privately.
This is the part that fails on most platforms. A founder with controlling shares can accept an acquisition, flip on a privacy promise, or change the terms whenever the incentives shift. The structure here is built specifically so that can't happen quietly.
Plenty will change over time — features, policies, how things look, what we've learned we got wrong. That's normal, and we'll make those changes in the open.
What can't change quietly is the core: the organization's purpose and the rule that no surplus flows to insiders. Those will be written into the Articles of Incorporation and published here, and amending Articles is a public state filing — so it can't happen invisibly. That's the difference between a promise and a structure.
Most organizations never tell you this, and it's exactly when it matters most. The moment a platform fails is the moment its users' data is most exposed — because to a creditor or a bankruptcy court, data can look like an asset to be sold off. We're stating now, in advance, that it isn't one.
If porchstroll ever winds down, your data is not put up for sale and not handed to whoever might buy what's left. We'll give you clear notice and a window to export everything you've put here — and then we delete it. This will be committed to in the privacy policy itself, in advance, because a promise made before the lights go out is the kind a court will hold us to. We'll link that policy here as soon as it's published.
The precise mechanism for guaranteeing this through an insolvency is something we'll settle with legal counsel once we've incorporated. We'd rather get that right than make a promise we can't keep.
The non-distribution rule holds all the way to the end: no money can go to the founder, staff, or any insider on dissolution. After obligations are settled, whatever remains goes to another nonprofit whose work aligns with ours — privacy, digital rights, or community infrastructure. This will be written into the Articles of Incorporation, not left to anyone's discretion.
Whether to name a specific successor organization or define a process for choosing one at the time is a question for the Articles, and one we'll work through with counsel. Either way, it will be a mission-aligned nonprofit, and it will be on the record.
The money side of all this lives on the transparency page. The reasons behind it are in the founder's letter.