The Association of fundraising professionals (AFP) recommends embracing a privacy policy for organizations with personal information like donor names, addresses, and credit card information from attendees of an event and donors. It is a formal written statement about how you can use and protect sponsors’ private data.
The donor privacy policy includes: opt-out and explicit. Explicit policy assures donors that you won’t share or sell out their personal information without consent, and donors have the choice of allowing you to use their data or not. The opt-out privacy policy informs donors that you can use their information unless they state that they do not want you to do that.
Donor privacy policies are meant to engineer trust and assure the donors that the organization will not share or sell personal information without consent. With a donor privacy policy, a nonprofit organization can communicate to donors how important it is for them to protect their private information. Rating groups and watchdog agencies check on nonprofit organizations without a data privacy policy. Data privacy gives your organization a good score for transparency and accountability.
Contents of Donor Privacy Policy
Your donor privacy policy length can be a simple or long paragraph. There is no required length. An example of a privacy policy is.
“We will not share, trade or sell our donors’ names and personal information with other organizations or send mails to our donors on behalf of different organizations. The policy involves information sent to us by the donor both online and offline. Donors’ information will be used for donation processing.”
Your policy can be as long as you want it to be. You can get a template from the charities navigator and offer recommendations. It should be available on your organization’s website and printed and shared with donors who want a copy.
The donor privacy policy should:
- Describe how the organization will use donors’ private information
- Clarify which specific information, including individually identifiable matter.
- State that nonprofit organizations do not sell, share or trade donors’ information and private data. The donors should have an opt-out. You should also explain the personally identifiable information that the organization can share with third parties stating why. The organization is responsible for telling its supporters how to change their data and access it.
- Mention all third-party links and websites on the organization’s homepage and clarify if they use cookies.
- List all security measures aimed at protecting donors’ information.
Conclusion
Most nonprofit organizations give donors alternatives to getting involved in attaining their mission. It can be online donations on their website, on social media like Facebook, and through the individual relationship between the donor and the organization. In this process, the nonprofit organization gets personal data from the donors through bank transfers or cheques. The organizations are required not to share or sell private information to anyone through the donor privacy policy; adhering to this is a way for the organization to show accountability and transparency and can make the donor stick around for longer.
