One Nonprofit’s Navigation Through Privacy Issues

Having a donor privacy policy on your site is a must for nonprofit organizations collecting donor information online. But having a privacy policy doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got the whole privacy issue taken care of.

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has a donor privacy policy and bill of rights posted on its Web site. But Bill Lynerd, chief development officer of the museum, says one thing that’s recently come up for the institution is the question of whether or not it’s a privacy issue to post its annual report — along with the names of donors who contribute $15,00 or more a year — on its Web site.

“I’ve just been having an e-mail exchange with one of our members of our development committee about the issue of having donors at a certain level listed on the Web site. We do it largely for donor-recognition purposes and cultivation, but it brings up an interesting dilemma and that is, ‘Do people increasingly want their names out there?’” Lynerd says.

The annual report is available on the organization’s site in PDF form and lists the names of donors categorized under donation ranges, e.g., $25,000-$49,999. The concern voiced by the committee member is that having these names on the Web might not only be troublesome for donors but also that it gives the public — namely other organizations — easy access to the museum’s donor list.

“[The committee member is] concerned that people might get approached by multiple organizations if they saw that they were contributing at a certain level to our museum, that that in fact might inspire others to pursue them,” Lynerd says.

The rationale for putting this information on the Web is twofold. First, Lynerd says it makes the museum more accessible to people interested in donating, as well as to existing donors. Second, it conserves paper and saves the organization money.