From the President & Board Chair

This year, Consumer Reports turned 90.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what the milestone means—not only what CR has accomplished but also what its history asks of us now.

When a small group of consumer advocates founded CR in 1936, the way people shopped looked very different from the way it does today. There was no internet, no online shopping, no artificial intelligence. Television was still an experiment. But people were asking questions that sound remarkably familiar today: Is this product safe? Does it work? Am I getting what I paid for? And who can I trust to give me an honest answer?

Our founders set out to answer those questions with rigorous evidence, fierce independence, and one overriding commitment: to put consumers first.

For 90 years, that commitment has helped change industries and improve millions of lives. CR helped demonstrate the critical importance of seat belts and pushed automakers to make cars safer. We sounded the alarm about the dangers of cigarettes when powerful interests insisted they were safe. And we’ve exposed hazardous products, contaminants in our food and water, scams and hidden fees, and countless other threats to consumers’ health, safety, privacy, and financial well-being.

I’m enormously proud of that record. But what strikes me most as we celebrate this milestone isn’t simply how much CR has accomplished. It’s how often this organization has evolved to meet new challenges—and how important that ability is today.

The questions consumers ask have not changed. The marketplace around them has.

Artificial intelligence is changing how companies operate and how people live. Algorithms increasingly influence what products we see, the information that reaches us, and even the prices we’re asked to pay. Many WiFi-connected products collect huge amounts of information about us. And online shopping gives us access to almost anything while making it harder to know who made a product, whether it’s safe, or whether we can trust the information we’re seeing.

These technologies hold tremendous promise. But 90 years of experience has taught us that innovation doesn’t automatically work in the consumer’s best interests. Someone has to ask hard questions, independently test the claims, uncover the risks, and make sure buyers have a voice.

That’s exactly what CR is doing. We’re applying the same rigorous, independent approach we’ve long brought to appliances and cars to a new generation of products and services. We’re evaluating the privacy and security of connected products, investigating how companies use algorithms and personal data, and developing standards for AI systems that increasingly influence decisions about our money and our lives.

And we’ll keep doing what CR has always done: standing up when products are dangerous, calling out unfair practices, and giving people trustworthy information they can use to make their own choices. The technology is new, but our role is not.

Nine decades ago, our founders believed independent research and testing could give ordinary people more power. That idea grew into an organization that has helped save lives and money, transformed business practices, and established protections that many of us now take for granted.
Our responsibility is to bring that same ambition to the challenges ahead.

We cannot know exactly what the world will look like 10, 25, or 90 years from now. CR’s founders couldn’t have imagined ours, either. But they understood something that remains true today: Whatever innovations come next, consumers need someone firmly on their side.

I’m deeply grateful to our extraordinary staff and to the members, donors, partners, and consumers who make this work possible. Together we’ve carried CR’s mission forward for 90 years—and together we’ll make sure that consumers continue to have a powerful, independent voice in the decades ahead.

Here’s to the next 90 years.

Consumer Reports’ greatest strength is not any single product test, investigation, or advocacy campaign. It is how these capabilities work together.

CR uncovers problems through rigorous, independent evidence. It gives consumers the information and tools to act. And it presses companies and policymakers for solutions.

That approach remains as vital today as it was when CR was founded in 1936. Over the past year, consumers have faced rising costs, rapidly evolving technologies, and new uncertainty around institutions and protections they have long relied upon. Through it all, CR has continued to stand up for their interests and to fight for better outcomes.

The scale of that work is remarkable. Over the past year, CR tested and rated more than 2,200 new products and provided some 10,000 trusted ratings and reviews. We heard from more than 600,000 consumers through our surveys and other research, raised more than $32 million from supporters committed to our mission, and mobilized consumers to take action nearly a million times through petitions, letters, calls, and other efforts to press companies and policymakers for change.

CR’s investigation of Instacart’s pricing practices is a powerful example of what can happen when all those efforts come together. Working with hundreds of consumers, CR found that shoppers were frequently shown different prices for the same groceries from the same stores at the same time. CR brought those findings to policymakers, while consumers raised their voices. Within weeks, Instacart announced changes to its business practices, and CR’s findings helped spur federal and state scrutiny and proposed legislation around the country.

We saw that same combination of independent evidence, persistent advocacy, and consumer engagement deliver results across the marketplace this year.

CR helped make food safer for children by supporting a first-in-the-nation California law restricting certain ultraprocessed foods in public schools. Years of CR research, reporting, and advocacy also contributed to the first federal safety standards for infant neck floats and water beads, products linked to injuries and deaths.

We put that approach to work on emerging digital threats, as well. When Congress considered restricting states’ ability to enact protections against AI-related harms, CR testified before the Senate, and nearly 80,000 CR members contacted their senators. The proposal failed 99 to 1.

And when CR identified dangerous products being sold through online marketplaces, we took our findings directly to companies, including Amazon and Temu, which removed products and changed their policies.

These victories span very different parts of consumers’ lives, but they demonstrate the same principle that has guided CR for nine decades: Independent evidence becomes especially powerful when people can use it to demand change.

As a Board, our responsibility is to help ensure CR can continue producing this kind of impact—and extend it to more people in the decades ahead. One way is by expanding the range of organizations CR learns from and works alongside. This year, we expanded partnerships with organizations representing workers, parents, younger consumers, people with disabilities, businesses, and other communities. These relationships do more than expand CR’s network. They help CR understand the challenges people are facing, bring new perspectives to our work, and build the broad coalitions needed to take on the increasingly complex problems consumers will face in the years ahead.

Those partnerships are just one example of how CR is strengthening its ability to deliver for consumers. Across the organization, we see the same willingness to listen, experiment, and turn CR’s 90 years of expertise into new forms of consumer value and power.

None of that would be possible without the extraordinary people who make this work happen: CR’s staff, our partners, and the members, donors, and consumers who contribute their experiences, voices, time, and financial support to this mission.

On behalf of the Board, thank you for being part of CR at this extraordinary milestone. Our 90th anniversary gives us many reasons to celebrate—but perhaps most important is the community that has made CR’s work possible and continues to make it more powerful.