Today, The Center for Investigative Reporting learned that an independently created GoFundMe campaign – promoting a legal fund to protect whistleblowers who leak information about Donald Trump – names our organization as a potential beneficiary of any unused funds.
As a nonpartisan investigative journalism organization, we understand the importance of assuring legal protections for whistleblowers. Throughout our 40-year history, we often have relied on courageous testimony and evidence provided by individuals who – at great personal risk – have come forward to help address injustice.
However, CIR does not and would not conduct any investigation in a partisan manner.
We therefore want to make it clear that we had no hand in this campaign and will not be accepting any funds from it.
Joaquin Alvarado worked at The Center for Investigative Reporting until September, 2017. Before joining CIR, he was senior vice president for digital innovation at American Public Media and founding senior vice president for diversity and innovation at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He also has been a strategic consultant for a number of leading media companies and nonprofits, including Univision, NBC News, the Ford Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He founded CoCo Studios, which promoted education and collaboration through game development for fiber and mobile networks. Alvarado was the founding director of the Institute for Next Generation Internet, which launched in 2005 from San Francisco State University. In 2004, he began the National Public Lightpath, advocating high-speed fiber-optic networks as the next generation of the Internet. Alvarado holds a bachelor’s degree in Chicano studies from UC Berkeley and an MFA from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. A veteran of many nonprofit boards, he currently serves on the boards of TechSoup Global and Consumer Reports. He is the co-author of the two-volume “Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art.”
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