As nonprofits venture deeper into online marketing, they need to be guided by a set of ethical standards. Unfortunately, as in any new medium, there are many vague descriptions of marketing products and services, and they are often difficult to understand. (They are also often “explained” by people who know little about marketing and much less about nonprofits and their traditional concerns for respecting the donor.) A series of questions from nonprofits have led the staff of NPAdvisors.com to review existing standards and offer some guidance to nonprofit internet marketing managers.

Existing Standards:
There are three associations that have offered online ethical standards that apply to nonprofits:

The e-Philanthropy Foundation issued its “Ethical Online Practices” first, in November of 2000 and revised in September of 2002. Read it at:
http://www.ephilanthropy.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ethics

The Association of Fundraising Professionals issued its E-Donor Bill of Rights in January of 2001. It is based on their Donor Bill of Rights. Their standard is online at:
http://www.afpnet.org/tier3_cd.cfm?folder_id=898&content_item_id=1247

The Direct Marketing Association (prepared by its subsidiary, the Association. of Interactive Marketing) has a standard that applies to all members, including many of the nation’s largest nonprofits who use direct marketing to raise funds. Their online standards were adopted in January of 2002. See the standard at:
http://www.the-dma.org/guidelines/onlineguidelines.shtml or:
http://www.interactivemarketing.org/councils/cre/onlineguide.asp

Therefore, there exists no standard in the nonprofit world that is less than two years old, in spite of:

• nonprofits’ use of the internet exploding in that time;
• donors and online users having become more plentiful and more sophisticated;
• new technology creating more options for nonprofits beyond those covered explicitly by existing standards.

It is important to evaluate the existing standards in light of the background of the organizations who have issued them. It is also important to attempt to interpret them in order to arrive at standards that would apply to new technologies and practices which were unavailable when these standards were created. Finally, we should have some standards by which we can evaluate emerging technologies, since internet communication options will be created faster than any organization can update its standards.

The Association for Fundraising Professionals (AFP) created its standard at a time when there was great confusion among charities and especially their online donation processing. There were at that time many third party commercial organizations who were collecting and processing donations, and three of the nine principals in their document deal with maintaining an honest donation processing system. This is how the AFP introduces its guidelines:

“Since the creation of the Donor Bill of Rights, the philanthropic landscape has changed dramatically. One critical change has been the growing use of technology to facilitate charitable giving, primarily through the Internet. While the Internet holds great potential as a charitable giving tool, it also creates new challenges — both for the donor and the charity. Because the Internet is such a new medium for giving, best practices are just beginning to be identified, and many donors and charities are unsure as to their online rights and responsibilities. The E-Donor Bill of Rights is intended to complement the original document and provide further and more detailed guidance for the new world of online giving.”

The other principles deal with providing clear information on the organization’s mission, privacy policy, contact information and opt out policies. The AFP differs from the DMA guidelines when they say that the donor has a right “to not receive unsolicited communications or solicitations unless the donor has ‘opted in’ to receive such materials.”

The DMA/AIM standards deal primarily with sending unsolicited e-mail. It is an opt-out standard. Unless the donor or prospect requests that they be removed (“opt out”) of future mailings, then a marketer may mail to them. A third party’s names may be used so long as the third party has given the prospects the chance to opt out, and they have not done so.

The DMA/AIM standard also stipulates that the subject of an e-mail be “clear, honest, and not misleading” and that the sender’s identity be disclosed.

The E-Philanthropy Foundation’s “Ethical Online Practices” deal with five specific areas: The “Philanthropic Experience” section requires clear identification of the organization on any site that is raising funds, and requires fundraisers to “Employ practices on the Web site that exhibit integrity, honesty, truthfulness and seeks to safeguard the public trust.” The other sections cover Privacy and Security, Disclosures, Complaints and Transactions.

The charity watchdog groups have few available standards for online fundraising techniques by nonprofits. The Better Business Bureau has very specific guidelines on privacy policies and disclosure of data collection at http://www.give.org/standards/newcbbbstds.asp.

Neither do Guidestar (guidestar.org), NetworkforGood.org. or the American Institute of Philanthropy (http://www.charitywatch.org/index.html). Charity Navigator references the E-Philanthropy Foundation’s guidelines.

Beyond the Standards: Openness and Donor Choice

None of these standards specifically address many of the opportunities that have become available to nonprofits and other marketers. However, they give general guidance and they are uniform in their support of openness and donor choice.

Openness means that our communication needs to clearly state who we are and what we’re offering. We can be clever in our subject lines, but we should never be deceptive. Will the average donor smirk when they open the email and connect the subject line with the message, or will the think they’ve been ‘had’?

Think of the teaser copy on envelopes for fundraising direct mail. A clever teaser line that makes people open the envelope is very acceptable, if it relates to the subject inside. Making it look like a government envelope or a refund check is over the line, unless perhaps the point of the mailing has to do with the government or refund checks.

Burying disclaimers in the user agreement does NOT meet the openness requirement, because NO ONE reads disclaimers.

Donor choice means that we need to always give the donor a choice and respect that choice. It’s the principal behind letting them opt out of future e-mails. Therefore we shouldn’t send any communications to people who haven’t exercised a choice regarding that particular means of communication. Whether the choice is a positive “opt-in,” or a tacit approval by not opting out, is a matter of each nonprofit’s own organizational culture.

Some examples:

Putting an ad in an e-mail to subscribers of the New York Times “Today’s Headlines” e-mail complies with donor choice because the subscribers had to positively choose to subscribe to that publication. In every issue there is a link to allow people to unsubscribe, and presumably, the New York Times complies with those requests promptly. These types of organizations are also likely to be in compliance with CAN-SPAM, the principal Federal law governing e-mail communication. Compliance is a burden of both the list owner and the advertiser (you).

If the New York Times sent their subscriber list to you, and you sent e-mails to that list, it would violate donor choice, because those subscribers did not choose to receive email from you.

Co-registration may be acceptable if the choices are clear. If someone opts in to an e-newsletter on cooking, and it’s clear that they’re also opting in to receive solicitations from a nonprofit fighting hunger, then that’s ok. If the co-registration does not make it clear that the person is signing up for two or more lists, then it violates the principals of openness and donor choice.

Banner ads, and paid inclusion of your ad in search engines or other context-relevant web pages meets the criteria for donor choice if the donor actually chose to go to that page. Note that Kanoodle’s “BehaviorTarget” service is a bit shadier. According to their website, “your listing will be displayed to web surfers who have shown an interest in what you offer, based on the type of websites they've visited in the past. For example, if a potential customer has visited the site of a mortgage broker during the last 30 days, we can show them your mortgage listing - even if they are visiting a website that has nothing to do with mortgages.” This seems to stretch the concept of donor choice.

While it is smart marketing to have software on your site to help web visitors e-mail your articles to their friends, if you keep the friends’ e-mail addresses and use them to do anything other than send the original article, you are violating donor choice, since the friend did not opt in to receive your communication.

Spyware violates donor choice in many ways. First, it is almost always installed without the user’s knowledge which could be construed as intimidating and harassing. The information is collected and transmitted surreptitiously, and provided to third parties without the user’s consent. There are not adequate controls in place for the security and use of that data. Currently, California is drafting a law to make it illegal. Even the most positive description of it is “aggressive commercialization.” For a definition of “spyware” see: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/s/spyware.html.

Before you embark on some new internet marketing idea, take a step back and evaluate the situation. Ask a lot of questions. It will help you understand what you’re getting into. Make sure you can explain it to your boss, or even a board member of your nonprofit. Ensure that it is in compliance with the letter and spirit of any internal code of ethics. Hopefully you’ll never have to explain it to a reporter who’s writing about how your nonprofit is receiving complaints about your activity, or how an investigation is being launched into your online marketing. There are hundreds of perfectly legitimate, affordable ways to expand your online marketing.

October 2004