Privacy versus Transparency an Oxymoron

It is kind of an oxymoron to talk about privacy and transparency in the same breathe, but for non-profit and government this is exactly the dilemma they faces.  On the one hand they have to be transparent in what they do, in order to solicit support or contribution. On the other hand they need to be sensitive to the privacy of their stakeholders.  A balance act that is constantly changing as technology become more intrusive and cost of privacy keep going up. At the same time it is without a doubt a great time to be transparent there is no shortage of way to communicate, broadcast, advertise your message and internet and social media had just made it all the simpler.

Let examine each thought one at a time, and let take a look at transparency first. For non-profit and government it is not a matter of how but more a matter of what. Let me elaborate, one way to be transparent is to communicate with your stakeholders, and to do so you can achieve the result through the internet by your website.  You can also communicate your message through social media and with social media there is no shortage of tools/method to choose from, from Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more to choose from. So it is often not how you communicate but what you communicate. This is where an organization like government especially need to be judicial on contents. To be transparent they need to communicate their vision, their process, their business are fair and about reproach. This is where procedures and processes should be publish and accessible to the public. Such information should stand up to public scrutiny so any future dealing will have a clear and concise process to follow and stand up to challenge from the public.

A lot of time both non-profit and government face a lot of heat from their stakeholder around their financial dealing. It is paramount such dealing should be clear and concise, especially for non-profit organization. Some years back before social media, I recall a newspaper article exposed most of the charity organization spend up to 80% and more of their funding on fund raising effort and the amount actual end up for their causes is less than 20%. Guess what that will do to your fundraising effort!

venn1
Fig 1 Framework for assessing Transparency

Now a day, information are more pervasive and stakeholder and public can easily get those information via the internet, charity need to be much more forthright in putting the funding towards their causes. While I am not advocating for folks that work for charity should be volunteer but those salary should not be the dominant portion of your budget.

Now what about privacy, being transparency does not necessary undermine privacy. Again with internet nowadays one could snoop out information easily. A lot of time information that are not secure can be hack in (ethical or not).  Whereas government and non-profit needs to be transparent in their dealing and operation the need to protect privacy had never been greater.  Where you need to be open about where non-profit funding go, the contribution and individual contributor must remain a secret (unless of course the donor seek that recognition). Otherwise donor list and their personal information must be guarded and protected at all cost.

For government it needed to guard the personal information of it citizen and protect them from unscrupulous people. Who can use the person information to impersonate your citizen and commit atrocity somewhere else, or rob your citizen blind of their hard earn procession?

To do this both organization needs to place in check and balance against accessing such individual data. However, being transparent can allow the access of an aggregated persona, such persona are extremely important in crafting policy and create media campaign for funding.

It’s also wise such aggregated information can be and should be kept separately. With advance of technology it’s easy to partition your database and secure the personal side with encryption and a careful controlled list of access personal and procedures in place.

For non-profit mining contributors and donors information is a potential gold mine, but mining these data should be done in a very control process so the actual donor information will not be exposed. But carefully group into distinct donor list so the organization can tailor and target their campaign at a later date.  Such donor list and access to them should be tightly control  and should always leverage existing technology and lessen the number of people directly involve in handling such list.

Healthspending
Fig 2. Transparency Vs Privacy

Well Transparency and Privacy need not be an oxymoron or have one outweigh the other. The important things is to develop a well publish easy to understand steps to handle the process and procedures. So to allow maximum amount of transparency in day to day operation, while maintaining the privacy of all stakeholder involve.

 

 

Sources

Fig1

Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/csr/2011/07/12/transparency-social-media-is-forcing-you-to-tell-the-truth/>.

Fig2

“Boydneil.com – Blog.” Boydneil.com – Blog. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://www.boydneil.com/blog/tag/privacy?currentPage=7>.

“Research.” Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <https://www.priv.gc.ca/information/por-rop/2013/por_2013_01_e.asp>.

 

Some (Free) Social Media Tools

There are a lot of social media tools out there, a lot of those are professional paid tools such as Hootsuite and Salesforce, but in a crunch there are a few “free” tools that can help provide a quick snap shot in the social media arena. A few of them like SocialBakers, Iconosquare and Topsy can provide a quick insight to how a brand is trending and allow marketer to do finite adjustment or react to the current situation.

Just to illustrate the point we have pick Tim Hortons, Starbucks and McDonald as our guinea pig and see what we can find if we our client is Tim Hortons.  Just remember this are free tools so the data are so what limited in range and capabilities.

In SocialBakers we compare the Facebook activities between our three subjects and the result is rather unremarkable. So in the world of Facebook “All quiet on the western front”. For that no action needed at this time.

socialbaker

 

Then we look at Iconosquare and again look at the result, we can see Starbuck is way out in front. Then again there is no surprise here, Starbuck have 900 media far exceed McDonald and Tim Hortons and from that sense our advise will be up the number of media posts to close the gap.

 

Finally, we look at the tweets with Topsy we can see a spike on November 9 and if we examine the event closer the spike related to the roll out of Starbuck’s generic looking Christmas cup. The spike are short lived and will have limited impact in overall sales in the long run. But for short terms it did generate a lot of buzz for Starbucks, but for Tim Hortons no action will be needed at this time.

 

 

 

SMD102 Infographics

SMD102 Infographic

 

 

Bibliography

“12 Must-Know Stats About Social Media, Fundraising, and Cause Awareness.” Nonprofit Tech for Good. 22 Apr. 2013. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.

“15 Must-Know Fundraising and Social Media Stats.” Nonprofit Tech for Good. 25 Jan. 2015. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.

“15 Powerful Nonprofit Statistics for 2015.” Capterra Blog 15 Powerful Nonprofit Statistics for 2015 Comments. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.

Ali, Syed Norman. “The Best Social Media Campaigns by Brands [VIDEOS].” Social Media Today. 1 Aug. 2013. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.

“Create Easy Infographics, Reports, Presentations | Piktochart.” Piktochart Infographics. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.

MacLaughlin, Steve. “Your Search Results For: 50 Fascinating Non-profit Statistics.” 50 Fascinating Non-profit Statistics.  NpENGAGE. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.

Mickoleit, Arthur. “Social Media Use by Governments.” OECD Working Papers on Public Governance No. 26. OECD Publishing. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.

“The Best and Worst Brands on Social Media in 2014 – Digiday.” Digiday. 11 Dec. 2014. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.

“Topic: Social Networks.” Www.statista.com. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.