Our Practices and Principles
At The Mighty, our most critical goal is helping people with health challenges and their loved ones to better manage their conditions. This is only possible with transparency.
Everything we do at The Mighty is centered around and shaped by supporting and protecting our community. All employees of The Mighty are Mighty members ourselves, so we remain hypersensitive to the potential concerns of our members and hypervigilant in enforcing all policies spelled out below. We want all our members to have confidence that The Mighty is a safe place to join us in sharing your experiences and feelings about whatever health challenges you may be living with. That is why we feel it is imperative to outline our business structure, who we partner with, and the nature of our relationships with those partners.
The Mighty is an investor-backed, for-profit business. We are structured this way because we believe that operating a business able to support itself through revenue, and not one dependent on donations, offers us the best path to continue serving our members and to create the kind of sustainable positive impact we seek to make in the health care industry.
As we pursue the real, lasting impact that drives our team every day, we endeavor to work with forward-thinking partners across the health care industry, including but not limited to: advocacy organizations, hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical, and insurance companies. To safeguard our community, we approach every potential partnership with thoughtfulness, as well as strict parameters on how we choose partners, how we share data and maintain our members’ privacy, and how we contextualize sponsorships.
How We Choose Our Partners
The Mighty works with various partners to accomplish our goal of providing support to people navigating their health journeys. Through our partnerships, we aim to provide our members with the resources, opportunities, and information they need to help them make informed decisions about their health. We take care to communicate our company values to any potential partner organizations ahead of formalizing our affiliation. Below are some of the partnerships we participate in.
Research partners: The Mighty partners with academic institutions (like universities), health care organizations (like hospitals), and policymakers to participate in research that can further medical progress in areas that matter most to our members.
Revenue partners: As part of our business model, The Mighty works with various companies in the health care and pharmaceutical industry to provide patient insights and resources in an anonymous way or with your full consent.
Nonprofit partners: Nonprofit partner organizations contribute resources, advocates, and experts to relevant Mighty content and communities. Together, we raise awareness, challenge stigma, and enhance peer-to-peer connections with additional patient support.
How We Use Personal Data
Your privacy and trust are important to us, and we know that control over your data is important to you. We believe this begins with transparency about what data we collect, why we collect it, and how we use it.
Your Experience: Most importantly, The Mighty collects data to improve your experience on our site and in our app. Like many sites, The Mighty uses cookies to better customize a member’s experience. This is done to tailor the site to your needs, such as suggesting communities you might be interested in and making sure you see content that is relevant to your experiences.
Sharing Posts: We are very careful to preserve confidentiality or get your permission when sharing what you post on The Mighty. We do not sell your posts to third parties without your explicit consent, and any posts we share will be de-identified and not tied to any personal data about you. For instance, we may anonymously use quotes from public posts to provide context and deeper understanding with our partners.
Insights: In addition, we may share insights we gather from the content you post at an aggregate, summary level. This means we share it in combination with other data and none of the insights we share can be tied back to you individually (for example, did you know over 80% of people in our cancer communities also are part of our anxiety or depression communities?). These insights may help our partners better understand the lived experiences of patients and caregivers, and we are turning many of these insights into content that benefits community members as well.
How We Identify Sponsored Content On The Mighty
We will always clearly distinguish content (sponsored stories, advertisements, and promoted research opportunities) that has been paid for by a partner on our site and app. Here are the types of paid partner content you might see on The Mighty, with an explanation of each:
Sponsored newsletter: You may receive an email newsletter that we created in conjunction with one of our revenue partners. These emails are clearly marked with the partner’s logo. We typically only send sponsored newsletters out to people who follow a related topic. This ensures you only receive emails that might be relevant to you.
Sponsored article: Sponsored articles are stories that are written and edited with input from a paid partner. All articles created in conjunction with an external organization will be clearly and prominently marked with the partner’s logo.
Sponsored group: Mighty groups connect our members around shared health conditions or hobbies/interests and the vast majority are created by individual community members; sponsored groups are ones created with input from a paid partner. They are clearly designated and voluntary. You will not be placed in a sponsored group based on what topics you follow. The Mighty oversees all content and moderation of these groups to be sure they meet our privacy and content standards, and no data will be collected in these groups without your consent.
Sponsored video: Sponsored videos are produced with input from a paid partner. All such videos are clearly marked with the partner’s logo. They also are clearly marked on top of a video story page.
Research opportunities: Based on your interests (which we never share directly with partners), you may be presented with pop-ups, emails, or other outreach asking you to participate in research opportunities. These may be sponsored by us or by a third party. Research opportunities are always voluntary, and we never share data without your explicit consent.
We strive to make sure you only see paid partner content that might be relevant to you. Everything you see on The Mighty—from ads, to sponsored stories, to a pop-up—are delivered to you exclusively based on the topics you engage with on our site and app; never on what you do outside of The Mighty.
Learn More About How We Protect the Privacy of Our Users
At The Mighty, transparency and your privacy are very important to us. You can read more about our Privacy Policy here.
If you have any questions or concerns about privacy or our partnership practices, we are always here to help. Please feel free to contact us at community@themighty.com.