A new report by the Fundraising Regulator shows that more charities are taking data hygiene seriously than previously.
This year, only 14 charities were found to be flouting the Fundraising Code of Practice by failing to access requests to stop communication made through the Fundraising Preference Service, which was set up in July 2017 in response to the fall out of the tragic death of poppy seller, Olive Cooke. It enables people to ask specific charities to stop contacting them by phone, email, SMS or post. In the last review 20 charities were found to be uncompliant.
By removing people that have registered on the FPS charities adhere to Section 3.2.5 of the Code of Fundraising Practice, however in Section 3.1.1 the Code also requires charities to adhere to the principles set out in GDPR, which includes the requirement to ensure that data is kept clean and as up to date as possible. To do this organisations are required to regularly screen their data in order to remove people that have passed away to ensure they don’t cause undue distress to the deceased’s family and friends by inappropriately sending them marketing materials, and also identifying goneaways; people that have moved house.
Increasingly, charities are managing their data on CRM platforms such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 and for those that do so, there is a new, easy data hygiene solution. Clean Contacts is the first in-platform data cleansing product which enables charities to quickly and cost effectively clean their data within the Azure ecosystem meaning that the data never leaves the Microsoft platform. This makes it the most secure data hygiene solution available to charities.
For further information about the benefits of data hygiene, the requirements under GDPR and the Fundraising Code of Practice or details about Clean Contacts please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
