I for one am shocked – shocked! – in the revelations that Facebook has treated our data with all the care of a four-year-old with a new Hot Wheel. (Let’s see what happens when we run a user’s personal information OFF A RAMP AND DOWN THE STAIRS!)  After all, packaging these data for ads is the primary component business model.

These new allegations feel different because of the lack of consent.  Users of Android phones are seeing their call and text records in their Facebook archives.  Information has leaked to app providers where it was shouldn’t have (by policy or by permission).  People are looking through their digital footprints and saying “at no point was this part of the contract I signed to see my cousin’s cat photos and tend a virtual farm.”

That’s why Facebook is changing its settings and policies, just like it did in 2014, 2011, 2010, and 2007.

If only someone who was knowledgeable about the tech world could have warned them.  All you have are slackers like some Steve Jobs guy who said, in front of Mark Zuckerberg:

Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly. I’m an optimist; I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with their data.

Facebook hasn’t implemented any of the asking remedies.  One of my supposed interests for advertising on Facebook is Alcohol.  Speaking as one who has never and will never have a drink, this is a waste.  I’d gladly tell Facebook to cool it with the booze ads.  It would be a win for them, for their advertiser, and for me.  But they don’t ask.

So why am yammering on about Facebook?

Because we nonprofit marketers are more like Facebook than we are like Apple.

To wit:

• When you donate, you face a donor journey of between zero and literally hundreds of communications per year.
• These communications could be through your original channel of communication or others.
• You don’t know about this journey in advance nor are you asked if it’s what you want.
• Once on that donor journey, your ability to change it is minimal and rarely, if ever, solicited.
• The organizations usually divines your interests from your actions rather than asking you for explicit preferences.
• The information they gather on you is from appended data rather than asking you.
• Once a donor, your contact information will be rented to other organizations both individually and en masse through co-ops.
• You will not be asked how you’d like your gift to be used.

I’m not saying this as an innocent – I’ve done all these things and continue to do some of them (e.g., if someone has donated to mail for a decade, it’s probably safe to send mail without explicit permission).

But as society looks at Facebook’s privacy practices, it’s an opportunity to look at our own.

There are a few other reasons to focus on transparency and donor choice:

• Allowing donors to restrict their gifts increases giving (see for example here and here)
• More people opt in when they get a choice as to the channels or frequency of communication after their opt in. In fact, in DonorVoice’s research, it’s the single biggest factor in whether people will opt in to your communications.
• Allowing donors to control channel and frequency means more committed and valuable donors in the long term. Some examples in Tip #4 here.
• Donors don’t like excessive, unrequested solicitation. Who knew?
• Few donors get mad at you for using data you got from them directly. There are some good examples here.  This isn’t the case for appended data.
• The information you get can be used to customize your appeals and get more revenue from them. A simple example is by customizing cat people versus dog people (for an animal charity), you can increase every appeal’s response rate and average gift by 15% each.

And for those in the United States, look to European regulation for what awaits us if we can’t take care of our own house.  If we cannot find a fair balance between our donors and ourselves, it will be found for us, and it will be unpleasant.

So perhaps nonprofits should work to become a bit less Zuck and a bit more Jobs.  Ask them.  Ask them every time.