Privacy Policies

02 Dec Privacy Policies

3 December 2024

By David Allen, Development for Conservation

A few years ago, Land Trust Alliance hired me to write the Guidance Documents for the revised Standard 5 on Fundraising, and it included a section on Privacy. In anticipation of a fair amount of mail and email traffic in the next few weeks, and the likelihood that a fair number of people will object in one way or another, I thought it timely to return to the topic as a reminder.

Of the sections in the LTA Standard, this was the most difficult for me to write – because for most of my career, I have not actually practiced the provisions I wrote about for LTA.

I did a fair amount of research on privacy issues and policies to prepare. I looked at AFP, Network for Good, several Linked-In forums, and the blogsphere generally. The overall conclusions were as follows:

• Every Land Trust should have a policy that addresses issues of what donor and gift information is collected, how it is used, and how a donor might go about getting their information removed from such uses.
• The policy should be easily found on the organization’s website and written in such a way as to be easily understood by anyone.
• Each communication piece coming from the organization should include an option for having one’s name removed from the list.
• The land trust should have the ability to honor both general and specific requests from its donors in this regard.
• Most of this is driven from electronic marketing norms where one can easily “unsubscribe” from future marketing email.

I started my fundraising career before e-marketing was much of an issue. We grew our membership by trading lists with other like-minded organizations and then mailing invitations to join to the members on their lists. And they would mail to ours in return. If someone – anyone – requested that their name not be used for such marketing, we flagged them in the database as NOTRADE and removed (purged) them from any list we traded. We also used a DONOTMAIL flag in the database and were careful to purge that list against any traded lists we might get from other organizations.

We also had flags for ANONYMOUS, NOFALL and NOSPRING, and NOTELEPHONE. This wasn’t policy-driven, but it was ethics-driven.

The internet and the advent of e-marketing has changed the rules a lot, and there are different expectations now. One big change is the call for regular disclosure in all media. Instead of simply being responsive to donor requests to be removed from various lists, non-profits are now responsible for regularly asking donors if they wish to be removed.

If it sounds like I’m whining, it’s because I am. I don’t have a problem with the expectation that e-marketing messages carry an “unsubscribe” message near the bottom of the message, because I get SO MANY email marketing messages – many of them daily from the same company or group. But do the same rules need to apply to newsletters? The Fall Appeal? Invitations to field trips?

Traded names?

I get calls every year from land trusts that feel stuck with their current donor base. Most of them have 300-500 member/donors and haven’t grown outside of a “COVID surge,” for years. (See also The 300-Member Trap)

These land trusts haven’t been growing because the number of members leaving due to attrition is equal to the number of new members recruited from tabling and events. These efforts are not scalable beyond a certain point. And the efforts aren’t scalable because the organizations aren’t in the mail – trading lists with like-minded organizations.

In fact, most land trusts have elected to simply tell everyone that they will never trade or sell their membership information with anyone. Some of them purchase names from other like-minded organizations so they can mail invitations to join. It feels ironic to me that an organization using the fact that it does not make its list available to other like-minded organizations has no problem renting someone else’s list for the same purpose. Most often, such lists are more expensive. I recently worked on a project for client who paid an extra $400 for the lists they mailed to because they did not make their list available for trade.

Regardless, it feels timely to share the guidance language with you again here.

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When donors give money or tangible property to nonprofit organizations, quite a bit of data comes with it: name, address, and other contact information, for example – but also gift amount, time of year, project or program interest, and so on. This information is valuable in that it helps the nonprofit build and track its relationships with donors. It also has great potential value to other organizations and even commercial interests.

How a land trust chooses to keep and use donor and gift data is up to each individual land trust, but every land trust should have a written Privacy Policy that is easily understood, regularly reviewed, and disclosed to its donors at least once each year. It should also be easily found on the land trust’s website along with an easily understood mechanism for “opting out.”

Privacy Policies first establish that all donor information collected belongs to the land trust and not to any associated staff, consultants, or volunteers. They acknowledge that donors have the right to limit how their private information is used and that the land trust is responsible for maintaining systems that honor that right. This includes an expectation that reasonable precautions will be taken against cyber-attacks.

Privacy Policies should cover (at least) how the land trust intends to handle:

• Anonymity;
• Listing of gifts and donors on the internet, in newsletters and annual reports, and in any other public settings;
• Internal use of information to mail newsletters, event invitations, special appeals, renewals, and other solicitations;
• Internal use of information to emailing news and information including solicitations;
• Sharing of list information with other organizations under any circumstances;
• Any other usage or publication of information collected on line or through the mail about the donor and their giving information.

Anonymity

Donor requests to have their name and gift information held anonymously must be absolutely honored, except where disclosure is required by law. (Disclosure of gifts and donors are required on the IRS Form 990 under certain circumstances. Land trusts are advised to seek advice from a qualified CPA.)

Holding donor information anonymously requires that the land trust’s data systems, including human systems are capable of honoring such requests. Understanding the systems and regularly testing them is a good organizational practice.

Donors sometimes request that their contributions be held confidentially even from the Board. Because the Board ultimately bears fiduciary responsibility for the organization, this is one request that cannot be guaranteed. If a board member were to become alarmed about the identity of a donor or the nature of a gift, they would have the right to have that information disclosed to them, subject to the confidentially statement they sign every year.

It is worth noting that anonymity is not necessarily helpful for fundraising. Donors often influence each other, and the fact that a donor is listed in the Annual Report has the potential to lend other donors confidence in measuring their own decisions. Similarly, listing confidential gifts in the Annual Report as “Anonymous” is not necessary, and has the potential for fostering suspicion.

Internal and External Mailing Lists

Land trusts should maintain and honor donor requests to be removed from any and all internal mailing and email lists and should have the systems and practices in place to guarantee this removal. This implies that donors can easily find a mechanism for communicating their wishes to the land trust. When the information is being delivered by email, most people have gotten used to searching for an “unsubscribe” link near the bottom of the page. But most privacy experts recommend that organizations make it equally easy for a donor to “unsubscribe” from everything else as well.

This means that everything a donor receives from a land trust should include an easy way, such as a simple check-box or online procedure, for the donor to indicate that they wish to have their name removed from similar outreach in the future. This applies to newsletters, event invitations, special appeal solicitations, email, eNews, and all other paper and electronic communications.

Sharing and/or trading lists with other nonprofit organizations is and has historically been an important driver for growth, and especially for conservation organizations. However, if a land trust allows its donor names to be used by other organizations (name-for-name trades, for example), it should disclose that information to its donors at least once each year and have an easy-to-use mechanism for donors to opt out. It should also maintain and regularly test systems for suppressing such a NOTRADE list.

Importantly, these NOMAIL and NOTRADE lists apply to people who are not donors as well. If you acquire the permission to solicit or otherwise mail to someone who is NOT currently a donor, and that person requests that you remove them from all future mailings, you need to find a way to accommodate that request.

Nonprofits are discouraged generally from offering their mailing lists for commercial uses. Such agreements are potentially subject to Unrelated Business Income Taxes (UBIT), and land trusts are strongly advised to seek legal counsel before allowing such use.

Again, all thoughts, feedback, and comments are welcomed.

Cheers, and Have a great week!

-da

PS: Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.

Photo by Nick the Photographer courtesy of Pixaby.