IT for Charities & NFPs

Keeping the Right Side of Spam Laws September 28, 2009

Keeping the right side of spam laws is just as important for UK charities as it is for businesses and individuals.   And any UK charity or NFP that sends out any type of bulk email (such as email newsletters, appeals, etc) needs to ensure that each bulk email doesn’t breach spam laws.

As well as the bad-feeling and potential loss of reputation and trust (and donations!) that comes with upsetting potential donors and supporters with unwanted emails, if the email was sent via your own organisations servers then there is a significant risk that all your organisations email can be blocked as your domain gets blacklisted.

A significant number of charities (or individuals working for charities) still don’t really understand spam laws or realise that they even apply to charities.  In fact they not only apply to charity emails, but unless the charity or NFP is promoting commercial products (through a trading arm for example) then the organisation can not even take advantage of the “soft opt-in” relaxation of rules that commercial organisations can utilise.

And if any of your subscribers are overseas (such as the US) you also need to make sure that you don’t fall foul of the recipient countries spam laws either.  This is particularly true of  the USA and the CAN-SPAM laws there – and since many email servers used by UK residents are based in the US (Hotmail, GMail, Livemail etc) then you can find yourself blocked by US servers you never knew you were sending to!

Though strictly speaking spam laws apply to emails sent to individuals not companies, any email sent to a personal address for someone at that company (e.g bob.smith@company.co.uk rather than accounts@company.co.uk) is also deemed to be sent to an individual so is covered by spam laws too.

In order to keep on the right side of spam laws, here are six key things you need to make sure you do*:

1. Explicitly get permission to send each person emails (opt-in).  You can’t just assume they won’t mind or claim that they accepted because there was some small print on the back of something they filled in for you or because an out-of-date privacy policy on your website says that they are deemed to have accepted by doing something vaguely related at some point in the past.  If you do ever get reported for spamming, you may well need to provide detailed information about your “opt-in” policy and evidence that the person making the complaint did opt in to your emails (and jump through a whole host of extra hoops) before your email domain can be removed from the blacklist.
     
2. Provide a really clear (and working!) method for a recipient to opt-out of receiving email from you - in every bulk email you send to them.  Thought you will still be legally covered if your opt-in link is buried somewhere more obscure in your emails, it is best to make it really obvious and really easy to follow. 
   These days it is incredibly easy for users to press a button in their email program to say that they think a message is spam – and if they do this in one of the online services like AOL or Hotmail then you can find your mails to all other users there have been incorrectly classified as spam too.
   Basically you want to be sure that it is easier for a user to contact you to unsubscribe than to press the spam button!
    
3. You must deal with any opt-out requests promptly (US laws give you 10 days, the UK is a little more generous!) and must continue to honour them and not send any more bulk emails to that person unless the specifically request you to do so at a later time.
    
4. Make sure that you include who the email is from and contact details.  For emails that may be deemed from a commercial organisation (such as a trading arm) and/or may go to the US and be covered by US laws you also need to include your postal address (and company registration number if applicable).
    
5. Make sure that the title of the email accurately reflects what the email is about.  Though this may not explicitly be law in the UK (it is in the US) doing this engenders greater trust from your readers and (again) stops them reaching for the spam button.
    
6. Make sure whatever program you use to send your bulk emails keeps the privacy of recipients secure – you must be sure that one recipient can not get the emails of other recipients either directly from your email or by replying to it.  In other words, make sure you don’t send to multiple recipients by putting all their names in the To or Cc field of an email and that any email distribution lists used are set to handle replies correctly. 
   Failure to do this breaches most Data Protection laws in addition to any Anti-Spam ones!

There is a lot more we could add here, but this blog entry runs the risk of turning into a book if we do.  There are some links to further information below, but if you have any questions or would like more information on anything we have covered here, then please contact us or leave a comment – and if we can help or point you in the right direction (on the understanding that we do IT, we aren’t lawyers*) we will be more than happy to do so.

Further reading:

ICO – Data Protection Good Practice Note – Charities and Marketing (PDF document) – a short & easy to read document that outlines requirements with particular reference to charities

ICO – Data Protection Good Practice Note  – Electronic Mail Marketing (PDF document) – also short & easy to read

ICO - Guidance for marketers on the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003
(PDF document) – much longer & contains much more detailed information but still pretty easy to read and full of useful information

Scotch Spam – Anti Spam Law - a site set up to try and stamp out spam by encouraging individuals to complain – the Spam Law page contains lots of information and links to key websites

FTC – The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business -  US Federal Trade Commission site giving information about the US CAN-SPAM act – a little “wordy” in places but overall pretty clear & useful

Staying on the E-mail Up and Up: What Nonprofits Need to Know about CAN-SPAM – a short but useful guide specifically relating to non-profit organisations and the CAN-SPAM act with some good clear basic guidance

* Usual legal disclaimers apply - this information is provided as guidance only and is not a substitute for professional legal advice.  We are not (and don’t claim to be) lawyers, so please consult your own legal representatives if you think it necessary.