The Fundraising Preference Service (FPS), a new service designed to help donors opt out of fundraising communications, goes live today. Reportedly, within the first hour, 484 opt out requests were received.
The Service, operated by the Fundraising Regulator, allows members of the public to opt out of communication from charities, whether by email, phone, text or addressed direct mail. My previous blog about the Service notes how it was predicated both by public concern over the misuse or overuse of personal data following the notorious Olive Cooke case and similar abuses, but also by the need for charities to adhere to Data Protection regulations, soon to be toughened up further with the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018.
As the Fundraising Regulator’s statement explains, “The FPS website allows a member of the public to enter a charity’s name or Charity Commission number it wishes to stop communication with. The named charity will then receive notification of the suppression request and be invited to view it on the FPS portal.
“If an individual continues to receive direct marketing communications from a selected charity more than 28 days after submitting an FPS request, the Fundraising Regulator can be instructed to contact the charity. If communications continue to be received, the individual can make a complaint to the Fundraising Regulator.”
Ultimately, the sanction for non-compliance would be a fine imposed by the Information Commissioner’s Office – the Data Protection regulator. Recently, more than a dozen household name charities were fined for Data Protection breaches, albeit well below the £500,000 fine that is in theory possible.
The challenge for charities is twofold. How do they retain their supporters’ consent to continued communications and how, if someone triggers the FPS opt-out do they ensure that they respond appropriately?
The answer to the first question is to make sure that your supporters are giving broad and informed consent about what they will be receiving – a basic principle of the Data Protection regulations. Too many communications are clearly going to be an annoyance and so charities will have to be more sophisticated in what they send, how often and to whom, if the nuclear opt out button is not to be pressed; because once a donor has gone, they’re gone for good!
Duplicate records need to be culled, multiple appeals may need to be scaled back, and using donor lists obtained from third parties is a big no-no, as is data mining – tracking people down who have moved or changed their contact details but who haven’t consented to you approaching them with their new information.
Secondly, charities will have to be able to retrieve and remove individuals’ data on request, and that involves having the wherewithal and the resources to do this. Is your database up to the job? Are your colleagues and the systems they work with?
With the EU sponsored GDPR also looming on the horizon, even sooner than Brexit, are you ready for this and what’s coming down the line?
If you’d like to discuss your charity’s particular situation and the steps you need to take, please contact me, Jon Benjamin, at consultingmjb@gmail.com.