Comments on: Things to learn for GNOME?

By: Sven Neumann

Sven Neumann — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:51:28 +0000

People will find out what you are doing with the money without someone sending them unsolicited emails. It is absolutely unacceptable to do that. These people have given you money, not the right to keep their private data and to be annoyed by mails they did not ask for.

If you insist on keeping and using the data of donors, then it is absolutely required that this fact becomes clear when someone makes a donation. And you should make it easy to opt out.

And really, only because everyone does it, that does not make it any better. Data retention is evil.

By: bochecha

bochecha — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:08:45 +0000

@Dave: what about setting up automatic monthly donation ?

I’m doing that for the french Red Cross: each month, 10€ is automatically transfered from my account to theirs, without them needing to send me unsollicited email.

(and as you know, in France, you can deduce 75% of the money you give to charities from you taxes, so in the end of the year, I’ve only given 30€

I think that’s a great way to help on a regular basis, allowing the donor to manage his budget efficiently.

By: Dave Neary

Dave Neary — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:29:18 +0000

@Sven: I know that you feel this way – you made that clear last year. But this is standard operational procedure for every single charity out there – allow people to opt out, of course, but when people give money to your organisation, it is a natural assumption to make that they want to find out what you’re doing with the money. Repeat donations are an important revenue source for most charities. They’re also an important vector for your message.

By: Sven Neumann

Sven Neumann — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:19:30 +0000

Note that in many jurisdictions you aren’t even allowed to keep the email address and other personal data from a donor longer than necessary. Necessary is probably the amount of time you need to send an email thanking for the donation. After doing that you should definitely delete the information unless the donor gave you explicit permission to keep your data.

Even if this is not required by your laws, it is still a good rule to follow. Every collection of personal data bears the risk of getting into the wrong hands. So don’t collect personal data that you don’t need.

By: Sven Neumann

Sven Neumann — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:11:04 +0000

IMO it’s a disaster to send unsolicited email to people to have donated in the past. Unless the donor explicitly asked you to be informed, you must not send them email, ever.

So if you seriously consider to do this, then you need to include a toggle in the donation form that people can use to opt-in for future emails.

By: Erik Snoeijs

Erik Snoeijs — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:00:18 +0000

Great blog post, and this actually reminded me of bug #463742 (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=463742)

By: ethana2

ethana2 — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:14:43 +0000

If I can pay money and have my bugs’ priorities boosted, that’s something I’d seriously consider..