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  • 1.  Donor - Going off the Grid?

    Posted 6 hours ago

    Hi all - curious how others handle this common (and slightly mysterious) scenario.

    When alumni/parents/friends decide they'd prefer to go fully "off the grid" and ask to remove their mailing address and/or email, what does your team do? Full suppression, partial restrictions, secret sauce I haven't thought of?  

    Would love to hear how you balance honoring preferences with keeping your database functional. Appreciate any wisdom!

    Patty

    Univerity of Notre Dame



    ------------------------------
    Patty Herrity
    Sr. Director - Gift & Data Managment
    University of Notre Dame
    pherrit1@nd.edu
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Donor - Going off the Grid?

    Posted 5 hours ago
      |   view attached
    If this is "common" for you, I think there's something else going on. I rarely encounter this. Instead, I hear of donors requesting various degrees of anonymity for their donations, but almost never do I hear them tell an organization they never want to hear from them.

    Having a firm, enforceable anonymity protocol might be a better first step. Indeed, there are ways to completely erase someone from your system, but that's a last resort. Instead, I work with donors to understand what they are really looking for without executing a full "divorce" from your institution.

    I am attaching an Anonymity Protocol template I've used for many years, which seems to work well in meeting most donor needs.

    John

    John H. Taylor, Principal
    John H. Taylor Consulting, LLC
    2604 Sevier Street
    Durham, NC     27705

    919.816.5903 (cell/text)

    Serving the Advancement Community Since 1987




    Attachment(s)

    pdf
    2021 Anonymity Protocol - Generic.pdf   128 KB 1 version
    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Donor - Going off the Grid?

    Posted 5 hours ago
    Edited by Patty Herrity 5 hours ago

    Thanks of the response John as well as the Anonymity Protocol!

    How do you handle folks who want to be partially off the grid — “remove my address, but keep my email”?

    On one hand, great — we still have a way to communicate. On the other hand, some of our partners still depend on an address for research or alumni club assignment, so it puts us in a bit of a guessing game about their intent. Are they saying “no mail ever again,” or just “I’m currently living the RV life”?

    Curious how others balance respecting preferences with keeping records useful.



    ------------------------------
    Patty Herrity
    Sr. Director - Gift & Data Managment
    University of Notre Dame
    pherrit1@nd.edu
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Donor - Going off the Grid?

    Posted 5 hours ago

    Thanks of the response John as well as the Anonymity Protocol!

    How do you handle folks who want to be partially off the grid - "remove my address, but keep my email"?

    On one hand, great - we still have a way to communicate. On the other hand, some of our partners still depend on an address for research or alumni club assignment, so it puts us in a bit of a guessing game about their intent. Are they saying "no mail ever again," or just "I'm currently living the RV life"?

    Curious how others balance respecting preferences with keeping records useful.



    ------------------------------
    Patty Herrity
    Sr. Director - Gift & Data Managment
    University of Notre Dame
    pherrit1@nd.edu
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Donor - Going off the Grid?

    Posted 5 hours ago
    I should have added that it's possible you are seeing an increase in requests because your constituents are being contacted in many different ways by many different departments - which could be exacerbated by a proliferation of shadow system. What they really want is less, and coordinated, communication.

    Step #1 is to mandate the elimination of shadow systems.

    Step #2 is to mandate that all donor and alumni communication be coordinated through your office.

    Step #3 is to develop a systematic communication control code system. Here's what we developed at Duke in the mid 1990s:

    image.png

    John H. Taylor, Principal
    John H. Taylor Consulting, LLC
    2604 Sevier Street
    Durham, NC     27705

    919.816.5903 (cell/text)

    Serving the Advancement Community Since 1987





    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Donor - Going off the Grid?

    Posted 5 hours ago

    At UNC Chapel Hill, we have had folks request to be fully removed from our database, because they are unhappy with something. Of course, we cannot fully remove them if they ever gave a gift, but even with non-donors, we would risk them coming back into our database from a feed. We have a customization that flags the record with a nuclear opt-out, which includes adding all solicit codes and often removing all contact information. We might keep the contact info if they have a very common name, so we can prevent them being added as a duplicate in the future, but every piece of contact info would be marked as Do Not Contact, as well.

     

    If it is a matter of not wanting to be contacted using a specific address or contact method, we code the address as Do Not Mail and/or add a Do Not Mail solicit code, depending on the circumstances.

     




    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Donor - Going off the Grid?

    Posted 4 hours ago
    These are great questions. I do some GDPR consulting, and there is a relevant framework for thinking about these issues that I learned in that work that I think applies even if you're not specifically aiming for GDPR compliance. 

    The first question to ask is 'do we have a right to this information, and what is the basis of that right?' If the answer is that your right to the information depends on consent of the individual, when they withdraw consent, you are obliged to remove that information, to record the withdrawal of consent, and to prevent reacquiring that information without regaining consent. 

    If on the other hand, your right to that information does not depend on the individual's consent, you are not obligated to remove the information itself, but you do have to track what the donor actually is consenting to. Directing the person to a form where they can make selections is useful, instead of trying to translate their intent from an email. 

    In practice, all this requires your data systems to have pretty robust tools to track data rights separately from data usage rules like comms or solicit codes, and in my experience most advancement systems are somewhat short of this ideal. When determining how you invite people to shape their comms preferences, keep the options aligned to what your system is capable of. 


    Thank you,
    Isaac Shalev
    Data Strategy Expert
    Sage70, Inc.
    (917) 859-0151
    isaac@sage70.com

    Schedule a 30-minute consultation now:





    Original Message


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