One of the annoying things about working on documents or advice for the public is the inevitable moment where someone asks “shouldn’t we have some FAQs?”. And then someone proceeds to write a series of questions that the organisation wants the public to know the answers to, rather than the answers to questions the public have actually asked. Frequently asked by who, is what I frequently want to know.

I am currently working on a product aimed giving data protection advice to charities. It will be free to access, and should hopefully be ready by the end of the year. It will take into account the current DP and PECR law, the Fundraising Preference Service and associated Regulator, as well as anticipating the GDPR in several key aspects. As part of this, I would like to include an ‘actually asked questions’ section, in which people working on DP or IG for charities ask questions, and I provide the answers.

This is where you (hopefully) come in.

I want to get real questions from practitioners and volunteers working in the charity sector. There are a whole bunch of things I want to say about the topic, but questions from the intended audience are vital to make the guidance meaningful. If you have any questions about Data Protection, PECR, marketing, volunteers, security or other related matters, please send them to the following email address:

[email protected]

You can be specific or general. You can ask about the detail, the background, individual scenarios relevant to your work or issues that cover the whole sector. I would be happy with 5 questions, or 500. You can also tell me things you think DP guidance for charities should include. I have the content more or less planned out, but I might have missed something.

There are a few things you need to know before sending a question in.

1. You will not receive an individual answer to your question. Your question, if at all possible, will be answered in the FAQ section of the product. It may be that your question is answered in the main body of the text, in which case, your question will not feature specifically but the answer will still be there. If it is impossible to answer your question – time permitting – I will reply direct to you to explain why and give some advice if I possibly can.

2. You will not be added to any mailing list, or receive any marketing as a result of participating. If you indicate in your email that you want to know when the product is available (it will be free, and getting access to it will not involve any obligations or commitments), then I will send you a single email to let you know. You will receive nothing else and your details will not be retained for any other purpose.

3. All questions will be treated anonymously. You, and the charity you are associated with, will not be identified or alluded to in the product, no matter what the nature of the question is. Even if the question is “can we sell our donors’ data to a claims management company?’ or “can we buy data even if we think it might have been stolen?”, you will not be identified. The sole purpose of this is to make the product more useful and lively by getting direct input from the intended audience. By the way, the answer to both of the above questions is no.

4. Questions sent in after 30 November won’t make the cut.

The final shape of the product may go one of several ways, so I am being vague about what it actually is – one option is easy but less interesting, the other is better but more time consuming. Nevertheless, to emphasise the point again, it will be free, and you will receive no marketing or further contact if you choose to participate.

I very much hope that if you have any questions or queries, or other issues you would like to raise, you will send them in. Thanks for reading – if you have the opportunity to tweet or circulate this to people in the charity sector who might have questions they want to ask, I would be very grateful if you would. I cannot promise that anyone who necessarily like what I have to say, but I’m very keen to find out what you’d like to know.