National charity shows howthe third sector canweather the stormof GDPR Just over a year ago on 1 January 2017 the RNLI announced their intention to stop contacting supporters by email, phone or letter unless they had given their consent, or ‘opted in’. H aving started to plan for the changes as far back as 2015, the charity estimated that they would receive 225,000 supporters opting in. Following their decision to stop mass marketing last January, by October 2017 they had exceeded their estimate with 375,000 supporters signing up. On 8 February this year, the charity announced that they had hit 500,000 supporter opt-ins, proving that the impending GDPR regulations might not be as disastrous as some organisations are predicting.
Supporters of East Anglian Air Ambulance (EAAA) now have the option of donating using fingerprint technology. I n what is believed to be a first for charities, the EAAA is setting up a system for donors to tap or scan fundraising materials with their smartphones to enter the charity’s lottery as well as set up regular donations or provide contact details using their fingerprints. The charity has worked with the mobile payments platform Thyngs to introduce the system, which will go live shortly to coincide with the EAAA’s ‘Only the Brave’ mud challenge. Participants will be encouraged to sign up new lottery members using their finishing medals which will have stickers embedded with proximity technology. A call to action to join the weekly lottery or set up ongoing monthly donations will appear when the medals are tapped or scanned with a smartphone. This latest announcement follows fast on the heels of the technology company’s launch of a similar system which provides charities with unique codes that allow them to receive funds through Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal donations, and which can be added to posters, leaflets, stickers and badges worn by staff and volunteers.
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