Confidential Declaration Form wording
The current data protection wording on the Free Wills Month confidential declaration form (CDF) is as follows:

The Free Wills Month Charities and Capacity Marketing For Charities, who manage the campaign, are individually registered under the Data Protection Act 1998. The information you supply by completing this form will be treated with the strictest confidence in accordance with the Act. If you decide to remember one of the participating charities in your Will, they may write to say thank you. The charity may also like to contact you with further information about their work and how you could support them in the future: if you do not want to be contacted in this way, please tick here [ ].

This must change in light advice issued by the Institute of Fundraising, specifically part of their section on direct marketing:

6.5 Selling/renting and sharing marketing lists
b) Even if not for payment, organisations MUST NOT share the personal data of an individual with any other organisation for that organisation’s marketing or fundraising purposes without the explicit consent of that individual to the sharing of the personal data with that other organisation or other specified types of organisation.
“Explicit consent” under subparagraph 6.5 b) means that an individual must have provided a positive indication that they agree to their personal data being shared. This could take the form of ticking an opt-in box, or another action that signifies agreement, such as oral confirmation, or THE PROVISION OF CONTACT DETAILS WHERE THE INDIVIDUAL HAS BEEN CLEARLY INFORMED THAT BY GIVING THESE DETAILS THEY AGREE TO THEIR DATA BEING SHARED [my capitals].

The text in capitals is particularly important, as you will see below. The challenge for all of us involved in Free Wills Month is that charities have different protocols for dealing with donors’ details. Bearing in mind that Capacity is the data controller regarding information taken from the CDFs, we propose to change the data protection wording to the following:

Capacity Marketing For Charities, who manage the Free Wills Month campaign, are registered under the Data Protection Act 1998. The information you supply by completing this form will be treated with the strictest confidence in accordance with the Act. If you decide to remember one of the participating charities in your Will, Capacity will advise them accordingly and they may write to say thank you as a courtesy. At that time the charity will also ask you if you would like to receive further information on their work and future plans.

The revised wording fulfils the undertaking in the capitalised text above and at the same time leaves it to each charity to determine how it treats the data once received.

Comments, please!

Stephen