This week’s article comes in the form of a podcast that I just recorded with two of the most knowledgeable and generous GDPR-whisperers that I know in the fundraising community, Adrian Beney of More Partnership and Nicola Williams of The Factary.

Both Adrian and Nicola have been researching and consulting with other experts to understand the law for months, and they’ve written many articles, have been speaking at loads of professional conferences, and have provided useful resource lists for all of us to find guidance on the General Data Protection Regulation that comes into effect on May 25^th. If the rest of us are not up on the new regulation, it’s not through any lack on their part to get the word out.

But because of that, they’re very busy people, so I was especially excited when they both said yes to a podcast interview. I know that you’re going to find the conversation we had to be well worth your time. I’m sincerely grateful to them for their generosity to our community, and for their willingness to be a resource to help nonprofits in the US figure all of this out.

GDPR Generally

As I’ve mentioned before, this is a European-based piece of legislation, but every company and nonprofit in the world will have to comply with it if they have EU-based constituents in their database. The GDPR regulates (amongst many other things) WHAT data you’re allowed to hold, HOW LONG you may hold it, and the WAYS you must communicate to your constituency their rights regarding that data. There are certain pieces of information you CANNOT hold in your database (without explicit consent), and many of them are demographic data we here in the US take for granted as being relatively harmless.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and fines for noncompliance will be steep: up to €20 million ($25 million) or 4% of an organization’s total revenue, whichever is greater.

If you’re unsure what GDPR is and how you should be ready, log in* to our learning media area to listen to this informative podcast with Adrian and Nicola. We’ve also included a number of useful resources with the podcast for further information.

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