Our mission is to be a grass-roots organization that works for the benefit of all consumers to help expand everyone's health, safety and financial freedom.  To that end, we strive to deliver the best consumer tips, clearly explained so everyone can get the greatest benefit possible and live their lives to the fullest.  We are bound together by our mutual dedication to seven bedrock principles:

The Unbiased Truth.  Our editorial standards are constituted in such a way as to deliver proven truth.  Money to support the CFA will only be accepted in ways that do not bias our mission to serve consumers. Consumer Value, Positive Values.  We provide the best consumerwise tips available so you'll receive very high value in return for your time spent here.  And we are also about universal values such as truth, freedom and conservation. Plain Speaking.  Our descriptions are always clear and concise, so you'll gain the maximum benefit from reading our tips and have all possible free time left.  Other sites sometimes provide information to the point of overload; ours will give you what you need to know, with links to articles where you can learn more if you wish. A Consumer Community.  The Consumer Freedom Alliance was founded and built from the ground up by consumer advocates for consumers.  There is always courteous customer service for our members. Individualized Content.  We give consumers ways to customize our web pages to their own needs, such as printable interactive tipsheets. Entertaining Our Guests.  Perhaps surprisingly for a consumer site, we believe that if you're going to visit us, we should provide entertainment to make it a happy journey!  You'll be amused with good humor, delighted with beautiful design, and inspired by the wisdom of the ages. Your Vigilant Watchdog!  We constantly monitor news sites and consumer publications to keep you updated with important news covering crucial topics such as careers, credit, health care, homes, the Internet, investing, safety, shopping, taxes, thrift and utilities.

Here's what the CFA won't do:

• We will never "spam" you:  you are always in control of all email communications, and all emails will remain free of commercial advertisements.
  
  
• Our web site will remain "hype-free":  we will provide only objective and helpful consumer information.
  
  
• We don't allow "pop-ups" on our site.  If you ever see a pop-up while visiting our site, it's probably caused by spyware on your computer.
  
  
• We don't get involved in political issues.
  
  
• We don't accept gifts or donations from corporations to pay for any services offered to our members:  we would rather see charitable donations go to the truly needy.
  
  
• While anyone in the world can come here, keep in mind that our advice may not be appropriate for non-Americans because foreign countries have different financial circumstances.

Organizational Funding

To accomplish the above goals and serve as many consumers as possible, we choose to keep almost all of our services free to all consumers.  To help keep services free, funds necessary to maintain the Consumer Freedom Alliance will always come exclusively from sources that we will not allow to bias the Alliance in any way.  All consumer organizations must acquire funding somehow:  for example, ConsumerReports.org gets revenue from donations and subscriber fees.  The Consumer Freedom Alliance receives funding in these ways:

• Product comparison sites.  We will accept compensation for promoting sites that do an excellent job of comparing a variety of products or services, but we will not accept compensation from individual suppliers.  In effect therefore, we get paid only by companies that have a strong record of consumer advocacy on the Internet.  Example:  we promote InsWeb.com and eHealthInsurance.com (two sites that compare insurance plans for consumers), but we don't promote any individual insurance companies.
  
  
• "Blind" advertising.  The CFA does not seek out advertisers, but we do receive advertising revenue indirectly from reputable "third-party" services such as Google.  Because we have no direct commercial relationship with advertisers, no conflict of interest is created that would harm our stated mission of serving consumers in an unbiased manner.  Currently we have very few advertisements.  We place these ads only on web pages, never in emails.  All advertisements will be clearly labeled as ads.  The placement of an advertisement on one of our pages does not imply that we endorse it in any way.  If we discover that an advertisement is inaccurate or otherwise bad for consumers, we will remove it.  Example:  ads from Google.com are always labeled as "Google Ads".