Open letter to our supporters
This week, We Don’t Have Time have been subject to misguided criticism, a string of hate mail, attempts to hack our media accounts, and I have also personally received direct threats. As the founder of We Don’t Have Time, I am of course saddened by this, but it has made me even more determined to keep making a difference to fight climate change.
We have received questions around how we operate in social media, how we are supporting Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and around our business model.
We Don’t Have Time measure our reach and engagement on social media, and how much money we spend on growing our social media network. As any other global company or organisation online, We Don’t Have Time place social media adds across key markets to increase awareness of our cause and to gain new followers. Some of the posts on Facebook and Twitter are promoted to increase their reach. Facebook algorithms means that reach will almost always be bigger that engagement on individual posts. We have spent around USD 25,000 in total since January 2018 on social media promotion. When we refer to our ‘reach’ in social media, we look at how many followers or likes the accounts have that have used our hashtag #wedonthavetime, or have mentioned ‘We Don’t Have Time’, across social media platforms on a monthly basis. In November our social media reach was 38 million according to the media analysts company Meltwater.
Question have also been raised around which role the organisation–and me, personally–have played in supporting Greta Thunberg, the brave Swedish 15-year old who has sparked climate strikes around the world, making world leaders sit up and take notice. I am not employed by Great Thunberg’s family, nor am I Greta Thunberg’s PR agent, nor have I made any payment to her what so ever. Diminishing her brave initiative to an orchestrated PR coup is both heart-breaking and untrue. We Don’t Have Time is an organisation that lifts and promotes climate struggles everywhere to our global audience. We do this by communicating about good initiatives to stimulate more people to act. Greta Thunberg’s initiative is of course one that we want to lift and help, because I firmly believe–being a parent myself–that we need to listen more to our children when it comes to climate change. We will keep supporting Greta and her mission, as many others in the future.
Lastly, there seem to be some confusion around our business model and what we do. We Don’t Have Time is building a social network which connects individuals and organisations in order to fight climate change. Our vision is to bring together large number of people and organisations concerned about climate change in a social network, thereby empowering them to create immediate change and speed up the transition. To date, We Don’t Have Time has focused on developing our application, mobilising capital, growing our follower base on social media and raising awareness of our brand and cause. The purpose of the foundation is to promote knowledge about climate change and its consequences, and to reward good initiatives from leaders, companies and organisations. Read more about our ‘good cause company’ here.
I am immensely proud of what this organisation has achieved so far. In two short years, we have built an organisation dedicated to fighting climate change, engaging and mobilising the financial and business sectors, in which I worked in for many years and that I know well. These sectors are crucial to have onboard to create change at the speed necessary to bend the curve on climate change.
We Don’t Have Time is an organisation dedicated to openness, transparency and action, and we welcome any questions our supporters or stakeholders might have with open arms.
Rest assured, we are more focused than ever to keep fight climate change. And we hope you want to keep supporting us in our venture.
With warmth,
Ingmar Rentzhog, Founder of We Don’t Have Time
About We Don’t Have Time
We Don’t Have Time are currently building the world’s largest social network for climate action. Together we can solve the climate crisis.
But we are running out of time.
Website: www.wedonthavetime.org
