Custorian owns a standard it is structurally unable to sell. A promise like that is only worth the paper it is audited on — so this is the paper. Our legal identity, our articles, the firewalls that keep the standard independent, the decisions we take, and the accounts behind them. Published, and kept current.
Custorian is a Danish frivillig forening — a non-profit membership association. It has no shareholders and distributes no profit. The standard it maintains is licensed CC BY-ND 4.0 and remains public even if the association dissolves.
The authoritative documents that constitute Custorian and set the rules it operates under.
Foreningen Custorian is governed by a Board of Directors elected by the general assembly. Under the articles (§ 5, v1.2), the board serves staggered two-year terms and includes a Chair, Vice Chair, Treasurer, Secretary and one or more Non-Executive Directors. The founder holds a seat by right and chairs the board until 31 December 2031 — a time-boxed continuity arrangement, published openly here; thereafter the board elects its chair. Protected provisions (§ 10) prevent any majority from changing the association’s purpose, selling or exclusively licensing the standard, or admitting commercial members, and the standard’s technical content sits outside the general assembly’s vote (§ 5.6). Commercial companies — including any platform that is or may become subject to assessment under the standard — are not eligible for membership (§ 3.1) and hold no board seats. The board oversees five operating arms (below) but recuses from the day-to-day decisions of the advisory bodies and the Certification & Impartiality Committee.
Two separate, non-governing bodies feed independent perspective into the standard, neither holds a vote and neither can bind the board. An Advisory Board of 7–10 named individual experts, spanning child rights, legal and regulatory, technology, academic and clinical practice, law enforcement, and youth perspectives, gives ad hoc, non-binding input on the standard, its ethical dimensions, and child-facing content. A separate Standards Advisory Committee of up to seven industry practitioners and organisations reviews the technical evolution and real-world implementability of the standard. The two bodies are deliberately kept apart, no shared seats, no overlap in remit.
Advisory Board seats are unpaid, non-voting, and formalised individually by MOU. Remaining seats — legal & regulatory, additional technology & security, law enforcement, and youth perspectives — are open; see get involved.
Operations sit in five arms, each with its own scope and funding source, so that no single arm can quietly capture the others. An Association arm handles membership, fundraising and donor stewardship, with a strict firewall against platform funding. A Standards arm owns the standard and control framework, independent of any commercial funding. A Certification arm manages the certification scheme and professional credentialing, and never audits a platform directly. A Research arm runs studies and corpus validation, funded solely by grants. And a commercial Tech arm builds and sells technology under the standard, licensing research and IP from the association at arm’s length — the standard and certification scheme stay independent of it regardless.
Platform certification is issued exclusively by independent bodies accredited under ISO/IEC 17065, operating under a published scheme; the association maintains the scheme and licenses the “Custorian Certified” trademark to qualifying bodies, and never audits or certifies a platform itself. A separate, in-house professional credentialing track (for auditors and child safety officers) runs under ISO/IEC 17024 through the Certification arm — credentialing people is not the same activity as certifying platforms, and neither is confused with the other.
A standard is only independent if it cannot be captured. Ten firewalls keep it that way: only external, accredited bodies decide platform certification, and no one from the Tech arm sits on that oversight; the association and the Tech arm may both advise, but neither ever audits, and their records stay separated; the Research arm holds no monetary ties to any platform it studies, and research data is kept apart from commercial product data; the association takes no corporate donors and prices any commercial work at arm’s length; the founder recuses from any decision touching their own employer; the association itself has no shares to sell, and any IP licence to the Tech arm terminates on breach; the Data Protection Officer reports independently, outside the revenue-generating arms; no one from the Certification arm or the Tech arm sits on the Impartiality Committee; and professional credentialing is preferred for certification bodies, never a mandatory gate. Every board decision is published with its rationale. There is no pay-to-play.
Foreningen Custorian has two membership classes. Support Members are individuals and civil-society or non-profit organisations who back an open, independent child-safety standard; support membership carries no governing vote and cannot be upgraded by paying more. Governing Members hold the voting rights of the general assembly and confirm the Board; admission to this class is restricted to those meeting the criteria set out in the association’s statutes. Commercial platforms and companies are not eligible for either class — a platform that could be assessed under the standard cannot also sit inside the body that owns it.
Membership is admitted by the Board on request. To join, or to ask which class fits you, email info@custorian.org or express interest here.
Custorian welcomes donations to fund its work independently of the platforms its standard assesses. Danish law (Indsamlingsloven) requires a public donation appeal to be registered with Indsamlingsnævnet before it can go live; that registration is in progress, so there is no donate button on this site yet — email info@custorian.org for bank transfer details in the meantime. Donations are voluntary gifts, final and non-refundable, and are not currently tax-deductible in Denmark.
Custorian operates under a set of internal policies covering safeguarding, sensitive data handling, conflicts of interest, anti-fraud, data protection, communications neutrality, and funding eligibility. Full policy text is available on request — write to info@custorian.org.
The board publishes a summary of every material decision, with the reasoning behind it. We publish approved decisions and their rationale rather than verbatim minutes — this keeps individuals, third parties and unfinished deliberations out of the public record while keeping the association’s choices fully accountable.
As a Danish non-profit, Custorian keeps and publishes annual accounts. Funding is capped so that no single source can exceed 30% of income. Accounts will be posted here for each financial year.
Standards, guidance and public statements issued by Custorian.