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The IN DEPTH Standard

Who we serve, how we decide, and why.

The Standard Defined

IN DEPTH Intelligence cannot be bought or used by any person or organisation that does not meet our standard for the good work.

We exist to give the people and organisations doing the good work everything they need to succeed. That sentence only means something if we can say, with evidence, what “the good work” is - the standard an organisation must meet before we give our offering.

The IN DEPTH Standard is how we hold ourselves to our own values.

Every organisation that passes it joins a network of people doing work that matters, and can trust that everyone else inside was held to the same tests. We are not gatekeeping for its own sake. We apply the Standard so that admission says something true: that an organisation is doing good for the present and the future of this planet.

The Three Lanes

Mission is expressed as priority, not as a boundary.

Lane One - Ocean.

Organisations whose work serves the health of the Ocean, in any form. Ocean organisations pay half the standard rate, permanently, because IN DEPTH started in the Ocean and the Ocean is the least funded frontier of the climate fight: of all seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, the Ocean goal receives the least funding, less than one per cent of the total. Our loyalty to it is permanent and structural, which is why it is built into the rate and not negotiated case by case.

Lane Two - The Climate Solutions Network.

Organisations working on climate solutions in any form, non-profit and for-profit alike. The standard rate applies.

Lane Three - The Wider Good, By Special Application.

Organisations outside climate whose core business does measurable good in the world. Assessed case by case, at the standard rate.

Source for the Ocean funding fact: World Resources Institute, on Sustainable Development Goal 14 as the least funded of the seventeen goals at under one per cent of total SDG finance.

The Five Tests

Every application is judged against all five. The first three decide admission. The last two decide whether we can serve you well. Our own research is the evidence for all of them.

Test One - The Good Is The Business.

The core activity itself must do the good. Not a foundation arm, not a pledge, not an offset programme, not a sustainability report bolted to an unrelated business. If you removed the good, the business should stop making sense. Passes: a company growing coral, whose revenue is grown coral. A bamboo straw maker whose product displaces plastic. A solar company whose product is solar. Fails: a fast-fashion brand with a recycling initiative. A bank with a green bond desk. This is a test of output on purpose, so the quiet doers get in. An organisation doing measurable good for purely commercial reasons, with no mission language anywhere, passes.

Test Two - The Harm Lines.

Bright lines, not judgement calls. An organisation is declined, regardless of any good it does, if its core activity is any of: fossil fuel extraction or expansion, or primary services to it; weapons and arms; tobacco; predatory lending or gambling; industrial-scale extraction that destroys ecosystems as its method; deliberate disinformation as a business model; or the exploitation of people, including forced labour and supply chains knowingly tied to trafficking. The list is short on purpose, and every addition is recorded with a date and a reason. These are lines about core activity, not purity audits: we admit organisations moving hard in the right direction, and we decline organisations whose model depends on the harm.

Ownership.

The lines are tested against the controlling owner as well as the work. Where an organisation’s own work passes every test but its controlling owner would fail one, the work is served and the identity is withheld: the organisation can use the system, but we do not name it, feature it or count it in the story we tell. Its people keep full standing as practitioners. We serve the gigawatt and withhold the halo.

Test Three - The Claims Match The Conduct.

The greenwash screen, and the test BREACH was practically built to run. Public claims consistent with public record. Impact language proportionate to evidence. No pattern of inflated or withdrawn environmental claims. We hold applicants to the standard we hold ourselves to: nothing stated beyond what the evidence supports. An organisation that overclaims to get in would overclaim inside the network, and the network is what we protect.

Test Four - Capacity.

Can you use it? We look for a working practice or organisation with live work to point the system at, for whom a subscription is a sensible decision and not a sacrifice. Solo practitioners are welcome at the Practitioner tier, and where price is the barrier, Sponsored Access is the route.

Test Five - We Can Serve You Well.

For Lane Three only. Our depth today is in the Ocean and climate. Before admitting an organisation from a new sector we assess what serving it well would take, and if we cannot yet do that, we say not yet. A shallow first experience travels as fast as a good one, and we would rather decline than deliver thin.

How Admission Works

  1. Step One - You Apply. A short application at in-depth.io that takes only a few minutes: who you are, what you do, what good it does, who owns and funds you, how your organisation is structured and what you are trying to achieve.
  2. Step Two - We Research You With BREACH. Every applicant is researched by our own intelligence engine, the same Surface Intelligence report our members use on their own prospects. Public claims are checked against public record, ownership is traced, and mission language is tested against evidence. Your own words and our independent research then sit side by side in one record. The vetting is a demonstration of the product you are applying for. Others send you a questionnaire. We send you your reflection.
  3. Step Three - The Decision. Your application is assessed against the five tests, and we respond within five working days. Every no is tied to a named test, never to taste. When your application is granted, we inform you where we have placed you and what your price is. Our aim is to make IN DEPTH Intelligence accessible to as many of the people doing the good work as we can, as fairly as we can, and placement is how we do it.
  4. Step Four - You Are In. You accept the Terms of Use online, your credentials are issued, and you calibrate on the platform. The first few sections are enough for us to build your bespoke system, and you can deepen it whenever you like.

A Human On The Other Side.

Help from one of the IN DEPTH team is always available, never required. Inside your system the engine proposes and the human disposes: nothing is decided without a person. And there is a person on the other side of every decision we make, including the decision to admit you.

If We Decline.

If your application is not granted, the information you gave us and the research we built from it are deleted immediately.

Saying No

If we decline an application, we endeavour to tell you clearly, and privately, which of our tests was not met. We never publicise a decline.

If you do not agree with our reason, we invite you to talk to us at apply@in-depth.io.

Staying In

Admission is not permanent by right. We do not police our members, but we may decline to renew if we become aware that an organisation no longer meets the Standard, whether through a change in who owns it or through its own conduct. If that happens, everything the organisation has built is returned to it.

Rates are published on the Pricing page.

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