Peers Advocacy Group Now Run by RelayRides Founder Shelby Clark

Peers, the sharing economy advocacy group with some 250,000 members, has named RelayRides founder Shelby Clark as its new executive director.

Peers organizes petitions and meetups on behalf of the people — usually independent contractors — who provide their homes, cars and labor to power sites like Airbnb, Lyft and TaskRabbit.

The Columbia Journalism Review has called Peers an “astroturf group” for these companies (implying that it is engaged in fake grassroots activism on behalf of corporations), but Clark said in an interview that the group is funded by individual donors and intends to support sharing-economy workers, not their well-funded companies. “We are in the corner of the members,” he said.

The group has an unusual structure, operating as a non-profit foundation that also owns a benefit corporation, a separate unit that can pursue profits as long as it does so by to satisfy social aims, in this case, the rights of contract workers. Clark is director of the foundation, a post previously held led by Natalie Foster, a community organizer. In Clark’s hands, it will shift some focus to building products that help workers.

“This is important income they rely on with great flexibility they appreciate,” he said. “But it doesn’t come with the same support. We’re not suggesting this is a replacement for a job, but there are many important needs to be met.”

RelayRides helps people rent out their cars when they’re not using them, and was one of the earlier sharing economy technology startups. Some time after being replaced as CEO, Clark left the company early last year and is still on its board.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via