Last September, I was on holiday in Greece, full of the joys of ancient architecture, sunshine and Greek food. I decided that having spent too much of my time having a pop at charities and fundraisers and the Institute of Fundraising, I would do that thing that people always tell negative smart-arses like me to do. WHY DON’T YOU DO SOMETHING HELPFUL INSTEAD OF SNIPING FROM THE SIDELINES. I decided that they had a point.
I decided to write a clear, plain English guide to fundraising and charities based largely on the first data protection principle, setting out what Data Protection really requires from Data Protection. I wrote a blog asking for questions that charities and fundraisers really wanted the answers to, planning to write the guide over Christmas and publish it in January. Initially, I had lofty ideas for something interactive, but it came to nothing, so a guide to DP and fundraising was the aim.
Friends, things did not go to plan. Instead of writing the guide, my Christmas was dominated by some unexpected visits to hospital, and several encounters where medical professionals cheerfully reassured me that people with my condition often only find out when they have a stroke. Seasons Greetings and all that, Doc, but any sentence that contains the words ‘stroke’ or ‘brain tumour’ isn’t reassuring. The eventual diagnosis was far from serious, but it still exploded any chance I had of doing the guide on time.
By the time things calmed down, it was January, and I was writing my charity guide in fits and starts while doing loads of work around the country. And then every two minutes, someone was arranging a conference or publishing guidance and it seemed I had missed the boat. More than once, I wondered if there was any point in finishing my charity guide when the ICO and the Fundraising Regulator had already weighed in on the subject.
Then I actually read the guidance in question, and I decided that both regulators hadn’t hit the target I was aiming for – a candid, realistic and human guide to the legislation. Moreover, having relentlessly criticised charities and fundraisers, annoying a good many good people in the process, I felt that if I had something useful, something positive to give, I was obliged do so. Therefore, with no great fanfare and with no ambition further that the hope that some people might read it and understand DP better, I am publishing my guide today. If you would like to read it, please click here to get it from the downloads section of my website. You don’t need to register or sign up to anything to download it.
I did intend to say that this would be the last thing I write about charities and fundraising because surely by now I’ve said everything I possibly could and I don’t want this blog to become solely about charities. Then I realised I have Strong Opinions about the Fundraising Preference Service which some fundraisers may even agree with, so I am not going to make that claim. Nevertheless, regular readers of this blog (hello both of you) will be reassured that I intend to spend less time goading the charity sector and more time, well, goading other people.
Thanks for reading.