Was interested to see the following from the BBC. I'm liberally quoting here.
"Eleven charities have been fined by the UK's data watchdog for misusing information about millions of past donors to seek further funds.
...
The Information Commissioner's Office said offences included secretly piecing together data from various sources and trading personal details to target new and lapsed donors.
The regulator said that some of the charities had hired companies to profile the wealth of their donors. It said this was done by investigating their incomes, lifestyles, property values and friendship circles among other means.
In some cases, the "wealth screening" process was also used to flag those most likely to be convinced to leave money in their wills.
In addition, some of the charities shared data with each other without seeking permission.
The Information Commissioner's Office carried out the probe after reports that charity supporters were being pressured into follow-up donations.
The Charity Commission for England and Wales - another regulator - said it was now investigating whether follow-on action needed to be taken against individual trustees.
You might think that fining charities for being a bit too eager to solicit donations is rather unfair. But make no mistake, the kind of offences that the Information Commissioner uncovered are seen by the regulator as very serious breaches of the Data Protection Act.
One of those fined, the NSPCC, said it was disappointed by what it regards as an unjustified punishment.
But the Information Commissioner hopes that charities will now be aware that they have to be just as careful with personal data as any business."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39502258
If you are in the UK how do you feel about this?
For folks in other countries, like the US where these practices seem to be common place. What do you think about laws like these?
--Tom
That's somewhat terrifying. The only thing in that list of offences that I would consider serious is passing data between charities. But even then, was it the case that a charity had a tickbox that said, 'I agree to let my data be shared between charities' but a donor didn't realise how many other charities they were passing their details to?
But everything else like wealth screening, using old phone numbers to clean up data (which is actually a nifty CRM data) and 'pressuring people' - which sounds like code for 'conducting a fundraising campaign' - is all business as usual. I would find it difficult to see how a charity could survive if it wasn't allowed to do these things.
So, in Australia, many of these "offenses" would by typical activities of fundraisers.
Interesting...
We may be seeing some of the difference between the funding models within each of these societies (UK, US, AU). My understanding is that up to 60% of monies for organizations in the UK may be coming from either local and country-wide government sources. And in that context, these policies are may be survivable.
Makes one think...