4 Founders
6 Board of Directors
14 Advisory Board Members
3 Staff
I'll grant there may be a 4th staff member not (yet) listed on their webpage, but their organization seems a little top-heavy.
I'm setting up a non-profit and I need to find a board of independent directors. That's fine for me, but the thing will initially look like 1 worker, 5 directors. But it's not like I'm paying the 5.
[1] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/822...
That would be the case if the organization wasn't mostly about what the Board and Advisory Board does - basically being a think tank/advisory board kind of deal.
And the stuff are just like secretarial services and such.
This isn't a factory or some research lab.
"Kate Judson is a lawyer who often deals with crimes that did not occur. As the executive director of the Wisconsin-based Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences (CIFS), her job is to examine ostensible scientific evidence to see whether it backs up prosecutors' claims.
"Some people who died were classified as victims of homicide when they were really the victim of illness, or accident, or suicide, or medical error—that kind of thing," says Judson. "We had a case of a family that lost their child. The caregiver was accused of attacking her. It was later discovered, based on new medical evidence, that the child had been really ill with a disease she was probably born with."
Evidence can't bring a child back, obviously. But it can get an innocent person out of jail. And it can give a grieving family some peace of mind. To learn that your child "was held and comforted in their last moments, instead of attacked," says Judson, "would be important to know."
When the center was founded four years ago, Judson left her job as a public defender to become its first employee. Now a staff of four works to keep bad science out of the courtroom. "
Until I was facing justice myself [1], I wrongly believed wrongful convictions were an extreme rarity. I actually discovered that innocent individuals are imprisoned every day, partly due to unreliable pseudo-scientific forensic methods [2]. I'm totally perplexed by society's apparent acceptance (or ignorance) of notable error rates in criminal convictions [3]. Why isn't it a major national cause already?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402