Independence is a structure, not a claim.

ImpactLab is a Norwegian non-profit association (ideell forening) registered with Brønnøysundregistrene. Organisation number 835157032. We operate as a public-interest think-do-tank, headquartered in Norway. It operates programmes across the Nordics, the United States, and the Middle East. Harvard Kennedy School and MIT Sloan are the founder's alma maters and appear on this site in that capacity. ImpactLab is an independent organisation and speaks only for itself.

Day-to-day direction sits with the Founder and Executive Director. Programme decisions are taken by the operating team. Decisions that bind the organisation beyond a single programme cycle — new funding relationships, partnerships above the disclosure threshold below, and changes to editorial policy — are reviewed by the Advisory Council once it is seated.

We accept aligned capital and decline conflicted capital. Aligned capital funds a question we would have asked anyway. Conflicted capital arrives attached to a conclusion, a vendor, or a non-disclosure requirement we cannot honour and still publish.

We publish every funder contributing more than NOK 100,000 or USD 10,000 in a calendar year, with the amount band and the programme funded. We do not co-brand commercial AI products. We do not accept funding conditioned on review rights over a publication before it appears.

The Dispatch carries no advertising, no sponsored content, and no paid placement. Every issue is free to read and footnoted to primary sources wherever a primary source exists. Where a figure comes from secondary reporting, the footnote says so.

Every argument we publish carries a bear case: the stated condition under which we would consider the argument wrong. When that condition is met, we publish the correction as its own item rather than editing the original quietly. Substantive corrections are dated and described.

Where an issue names an institution, we send the relevant section to that institution before publication. We do not give a right of veto or a right of edit. We give a right of reply, and we publish the reply.

Forming — first meeting Q3 2026. Founding members announced with the meeting agenda.

The Council's standing mandate is to safeguard editorial independence on The Dispatch, advise on programme selection, and review partnerships above the disclosure threshold. It will publish a code of conduct, a conflict-of-interest policy, and a gift-and-honoraria policy at the point it is named, not afterwards.

Anyone writing or convening for ImpactLab discloses commercial interests, board seats, advisory roles, and paid speaking relationships relevant to the subject at hand. Where a conflict is material to a publication, it is disclosed inside that publication rather than on a register nobody reads.

The founder's speaking and advisory work is disclosed on the Founder page. Where a Dispatch issue concerns an organisation with which ImpactLab has a funding or partnership relationship, the issue states the relationship in the first hundred words.

We name partners only where something has actually been agreed in writing. Convening a person from an institution is not a partnership with that institution, and we do not describe it as one. Partnerships involving money, data, or joint publication above NOK 100,000 or USD 10,000 are disclosed on the relevant programme page.

Once a year we publish a short accountability note covering four things: funders above the threshold, partnerships above the threshold, corrections issued during the year, and the commitments we made publicly in the previous note that we did not meet. The fourth item is the one that makes the note worth reading.

Questions about anything on this page can be sent through the contact page. Governance queries are answered in writing.