‘A fresh opportunity’: Charities on the rule change set to drive a ‘£290m donation uptick’

The Data Use and Access Bill, which became UK law this summer, has opened the doors for communication – especially for charities.

New soft opt-in rules will allow charities to send marketing emails and SMS to existing supporters in specific conditions, which comes with benefits and challenges.

Given that since GDPR became a reality “data is the new oil”, Chartered Institute of Marketing CEO Chris Daly believes these new measures support “greater transparency and control”, as well as the ethical use of data in a sector where “trust is even more important” than normal.

“It helps build consumer trust and trying to get that loyalty between the charity’s brand and the donor,” he adds.

Based on the potential to improve donor reactivation, the DMA estimates the new soft opt-in rules could increase donations by £290m annually through “targeted campaigns”.

“This act is a great opportunity for marketing professionals in the charity sector to implement best practice,” says Daly.

We’ll be playing catch up within the charity sector and non-profit sector over the next few years to try and work out how we utilise this for the best.

Peer Lawther, StepChange

While still early days, charities are receptive to the act. Head of marketing at Fairtrade, Zoe Plummer, says the rule change has allowed the charity to “compete more effectively with larger organisations” by simplifying its supporter outreach.

“It really levels the playing field for us, because we work in quite a competitive landscape. There’s lots of big marketing teams that have humongous budgets and so this change really gives smaller charities like Fairtrade a fairer shot to engage new audiences in our work and our advocacy,” says Plummer.

The change came at a convenient time as Fairtrade’s website and CRM systems were already being refreshed.

On its impact on marcomms, she believes the rule change will allow charities to keep in touch with supporters “more easily”, particularly regarding petitions such as Fairtrade’s ‘Brew it Fair’ efforts, which is urging MPs to legislate for fair wages and working conditions across supply chains in the tea sector.

This summer, Fairtrade took its campaign to festivals including Glastonbury. According to Plummer, softer opt-in rules will allow the charity to activate at more events. Last September, Fairtrade also ran 615 grassroots events across the UK for its Fairtrade Fortnight.

“Being able to collect people’s data and have softer opt-in rules around that means we’ll be able to really maximise those event opportunities and make sure that we’re building a new, engaged supporter base with the target audience that we’re looking to attract,” says Plummer.

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Audience engagement and communications manager at debt charity StepChange, Peer Lawther, isn’t seeing the impact of the rule change yet, but is “cautious and optimistic” about what’s to come. While commercial organisations have had soft opt-in options for “years”, he believes charities are now operating on a “level playing field”.

“It has been around for commercial organisations for years, but there was always that barrier in terms of charities being able to implement it. So, we’ve looked at it and wanted that level playing field, which just didn’t seem to be there,” says Lawther.

“We’ll be playing catch up within the charity sector and non-profit sector over the next few years to try and work out how we utilise this for the best.”

Reducing supporter drop off is a benefit cited by both Plummer and Lawther. StepChange can now send a “nudge” to people in the days following drop off, for example. According to Lawther, re-engaging supporters has a “societal benefit” given the mission of the charity, as it hopefully helps them on the journey to repaying their debt.

That said, soft opt-in can’t be used retrospectively to re-engage past supporters. This means the rule change is not a “golden arrow” and consent still has to be gathered in an appropriate way, Lawther points out.

‘A fresh opportunity’

Head of marketing and communications at Nottingham Hospitals Charity, Laura Peberday, says the bill offers a “fresh opportunity” to look at marketing and data processes.

The charity is currently assessing how to implement the new rules ethically and responsibly. The team are putting on internal workshops and planning sessions to ensure the bill is being applied properly.

Like Lawther, she explains the ability to reach a greater number of people is welcome, particularly as the charity has found the supporters it meets in person can “feel quite cut off digitally” as they can’t easily be added to a mailing list.

Like Fairtrade, the bill came at a time when Nottingham Hospitals Charity was in the middle of a new strategy and brand refresh to acquire supporters and “inject warmth and authenticity” back into income generation post-Covid.

“It’s come at a really good time for us, because we can weave all of this into our engagement strategies and marketing strategies,” says Peberday.

This act is a great opportunity for marketing professionals in the charity sector to implement best practice.

Chris Daly, CIM

She explains the charity already has “incredibly high” email open rates, with some reaching 90%. The team now hopes to “nurture passive interest” and turn that into active engagement. Getting more supporters to join mailing lists and top of funnel activities, including emails and digital communication, are two ways the charity hopes to achieve this, creating a “smoother and more connected experience”.

“[Content] can be a lot more top line, a lot more awareness generating, which will hopefully move people on a lot quicker, a lot more smoothly, but also enables us to communicate with them around what they’re interested in and what they want to hear,” says Peberday.

The soft opt-in change means the marketing can be “much more targeted from the offset” and lean into “human-to-human connection”, particularly as a hospital charity where the last thing people want is something “robotic and formulaic”.

“It is all about goodwill. People aligning with charities and what they can do. But all of a sudden, if you then are interacting with a supporter and then along comes an absolute tranche of explicit consent questions, it can sometimes have the opposite effect and make people think: ‘What am I signing up for and why?’” Peberday adds.

For Nottingham Hospitals Charity, it’s a case of “not running before we can walk” and “still exercising caution”, she explains. Going forward, Peberday hopes to see more examples of best practice for ways to “harness data effectively” to help charities avoid being “overly cautious”.

The latest changes to soft opt-in weren’t as disruptive as the introduction of GDPR legislation in 2018 for education charity ASDAN. Chair of the ASDAN board of trustees, Brian Doidge, says its membership model means the changes have been “surprisingly very modest” and the hard opt-in will likely still dominate.

The new opt-in rules will allow ASDAN to engage people the team meet at events, but the overall consumer journey won’t be heavily impacted and supporters will still have the choice to opt in or out.

“Even with a soft opt-in, we still give them a hard option to just tell us to go away, because otherwise you become a pest. And I don’t think ASDAN wants to become a pest. That’s the last thing on Earth we ever want to be,” says Doidge.

Going forward, he wants to see data changes to help charities “protect” what they’ve got and make it even harder for scammers with “malevolent intent” to access consumer data.

“We’ve got all the various licenses and cyber essentials, but we still are frightened to death in that area. It’s not what can we do with the data, it’s about keeping it in a safe place,” Doidge adds.