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Accurately Recording Consent on Your CRM

Donations are the lifeblood of every organisation, and getting supporters to donate to your cause requires obtaining their consent to contact them. June 2016’s introduction of new data protection laws ensures more protection for charity supporters and require organisations to abandon the ‘soft opt-in’ approach, which previously allowed charities to continue to send their marketing material to previous donors. The new law requires explicit consent to be given by would-be supporters in terms of how they wish to be contacted.

Not adhering to these new EU Directives can see fines of up to €100 million, which makes it absolutely critical to ensure that consent has been accurately and competently recorded.

Transparency

The key to ensuring compliance and accurate recording of consent in CRM software for charities is in simplicity. None of the language used to obtain consent should be confusing for would-be donors; instead, the entire process should be as transparent as possible, with no information being hidden in privacy statements. As well, all subscribers need to have their own entry in your CRM so that each can be queried and modified should their preferences for contact ever change.

You’ll also need to tell them how you plan to use their information. For example, if you plan to use information to send subscribers emails that are targeted to their preferences, they will need to be informed of this.

The Deletion Option

Every person in your CRM database should be given the ‘right to be forgotten’; that is, they should have the option to request the complete deletion of their profile from your charity’s database. While this was always a requirement, the new law will see subscriber rights being more clearly stated as well as being more enforceable.

Even messages sent to subscribers with regard to website maintenance and similar notices require specific consent. To accomplish this, subscribers need to be notified of maintenance in advance and then provided with options for receiving these notifications. These can include SMS, email and post. Or they can choose to receive no notification whatsoever.

Existing Subscribers

Those already in your database who previously gave your charity consent to contact them are not automatically considered to have given perpetual consent. Instead, you will need to prove they’ve consented to communication from you every time.

Time and Date Stamped

Charities must now ensure that every consent given is accompanied by the date and time it was given, in addition to what the consent was given for. It’s also a good idea to enter a date for the expiration of that consent.

Consent Status

New fields may need to be created in your CRM that reflect several degrees of consent, and for each type of content and channel your organisation uses. It may help to create fields which indicate specific situations such as where consent was requested but not given, or where consent was not yet requested.

Consent Updates

As stated previously, an expiration date for each subscriber in terms of their consent is a good idea. This way, your CRM can prompt you when the time is coming to re-request consent. This will ensure that your charity always has a current as well as an historic record of consent for each subscriber.

A good idea is to ensure that consent request fields in both your CRM and on your website are matched. For instance, if you’re asking subscribers for consent to receive mail from you by post on your web site, this field should also appear in their profile on your CRM.

Ensuring that you receive clear and unambiguous consent from subscribers, and then accurately recording consent in your CRM will help you to keep your database current and help you avoid costly legal implications.