8 Ways to Sunday

First, a bit of background is in order so that the vast majority of people who have no idea what prospect research is will have some idea where I’m coming from.

If you’ve read my about page, you know that I work in a field called prospect research. What does this mean? When I’m feeling flippant I like to say that I find rich people for a living, but there’s more to it than that. The official description from the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA) does a pretty good job of explaining things, but it’s laden with just enough biz-speak to make it somewhat mind-numbing to those outside the fundraising profession.

Here’s my nutshell explanation: I collect information from the Internet, public records, and the electronic and paper records of the college I work for. I analyze and distill that information to help ensure that my school’s gift officers (the people who ask in person for the big donations) are spending their time and the school’s money visiting only those alumni and constituents who have both the financial capacity to make a large gift to the college and the affinity to do so. If someone doesn’t have both ingredients — or at least the potential to have them in the future — then they fall into another pool of potential donors, suitable for phone and mail solicitation. In short, people like me help make sure that your alma mater doesn’t come knocking on your door with its hand out for $25,000 unless you can really afford it.

“That’s great,” I hear you saying, “but what are the privacy implications of work like this?” Glad you asked, O theoretical reader in my head!

APRA’s Statement of Ethics, which members must adhere to, contains very specific guidelines and limitations on the gathering, storage, and dissemination of donor and prospect information. Discussions of ethics and privacy issues occur regularly on the prospect research mailing list, and I have never seen any other professional community so earnestly preoccupied with ethical behavior and privacy issues. Along with the Statement of Ethics, APRA also supports a Donor Bill of Rights and has issued a position paper on privacy matters.

If I didn’t believe that the ethical standards of this profession were sound and the privacy protections employed for potential donors adequate, I would find work in another field. By and large, when it comes to prospect research you can be comfortable that you are in good hands. Which is where the controversy at the ACLU, and the media attention lavished on it, comes in…

When headlines attack!

Over the weekend, news reached the prospect research mailing list that controversy was brewing around the ACLU’s donor research practices. An article had appeared on the front cover of The New York Times (below the fold), entitled “A.C.L.U.’s Search for Data on Donors Stirs Privacy Fears” (if you don’t want to register for the Times site, or if the article has expired into their fee-for-service archives, you can read this syndicated version from The San Francisco Chronicle).

In this AP photo, Spitzer is either considering the legalities of the ACLU case or suffering a stroke

According to the Times article, the ACLU was in trouble with its members, and the executive director of the organization was in trouble with its board of trustees, for conducting prospect research in a manner inconsistent with the ACLU’s privacy policy. Not only that, but there seem to have been efforts on the part of the executive director to hide this rather than seeking approval for his actions, or explaining the necessity of the research to anyone. Now New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer was interested in the fuss, and the prospect research and fundraising professions were getting a sudden burst of bad press.

The mailing list was quickly peppered with suggestions that APRA release an official statement on the ACLU flap. While I think it’s worthwhile for APRA to make a preemptive statement in defense of the profession, I also think that the ACLU brought much of this trouble upon itself. If the Times account of his conduct proves to be true, Anthony Romero — the executive director allegedly behind the decisions in question — should be fired for incompetence and mendacity.

According to the Times, there were three big screw-ups perpetrated by Romero:

1. Knowing that he works for an organization which prides itself on a commitment to civil liberties and privacy rights, Romero still signed on for a federal charity drive, a grant agreement, and a donor screening that all may have violated those principles in the eyes of members and trustees. His excuse seems to be that he didn’t read the fine print, which is a pretty lame excuse for someone in a leadership position like his.
2. Even if he did read the fine print and saw nothing wrong with it, an ounce of common sense regarding organizational standards and internal politics should have motivated him to take such decisions to the board for approval. He did not. He should have run the contracts through the legal department for comparison to the organization’s policies and practices; he did not. Doing either would’ve avoided this whole mess.
3. The manner in which Romero has allegedly conducted himself would indicate that he knew there would be conflicts and attempted to avoid them by hiding his activities. Such dishonesty reflects poorly on fundraisers and not-for-profits everywhere, and is just plain bad business.

Having gotten that off my chest, I think it’s worth noting that the New York attorney general’s beef with the ACLU seems to be limited to the organization’s violation of its own privacy agreement with members and donors. The Times article also frames the ACLU controversy as a special case due to the organization’s ideologies:

Many nonprofit organizations collect information about their donors to help their fund-raising, using technology to figure out giving patterns, net worth and other details that assist with more targeted pitches.

Because of its commitment to privacy rights, however, the A.C.L.U. has avoided the most modern techniques, according to minutes of its executive committee from three years ago. “What we did then wasn’t very sophisticated because of our stance on privacy rights,” said Ira Glasser, Mr. Romero’s predecessor.

In other words if an organization’s privacy policy doesn’t permit certain kinds of prospect research, then either the policy needs to be changed (with any required notification sent to the relevant constituents) or the prospect research effort needs to be restructured to conform to the privacy policy. This much is clearly stated in the APRA Statement of Ethics, section C, item 1:

Researchers shall adhere to all applicable laws, as well as to institutional policies, regarding the use and distribution of confidential constituent information….

While Romero may be the one at fault in this situation, there is a real risk of the negative publicity leading to “guilt by association” in the mind of donors. To avoid this, I believe that any effective response from APRA should include an explanation of how Romero’s alleged actions were at odds with APRA’s core principles and guidelines.

There, now I’ve said my peace on the matter. Hopefully this post will be found by a few people googling for information on the ACLU donor data fracas, and give them some additional insight into the how and why of research efforts like the one that’s brought the ACLU under scrutiny. I also hope it shows people that, when the research is being conducted by ethical individuals who are professionals in the field, a great deal of thought goes into protecting the privacy of the individuals who are researched.

Oh, and I hope I’ve used “alleged” enough times to avoid a lawsuit.

Updates:

• 12/21/2004 @ 3:19 pm — Checking my e-mail this afternoon, I found the following official statement from APRA, sent out to its members:
  

  This story highlights the need for all of us to follow organizational policies when collecting and storing data. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask all of you to review the APRA Statement of Ethics and your own organizational policies periodically so that you are confident in your ability to research in a legally and ethically responsible manner.

  Quite.

• same Bat-time — I found Steven Hupp’s Prospect Research Blog. Another good resource if you’d like to learn more about the field.
• 3/3/2005 @ 8:36 pm — Edited to fix a grammar error an a missing word.