How will GDPR affect Charities?
Post Author:
Angie Harvey
Date Posted:
February 14, 2018
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In one of our earlier blogs, Do you know what GDPR is?, we outlined the implications of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which takes effect on 25 May 2018.
The impact of GDPR on a charity is potentially more wide-ranging than for a typical commercial organisation, but the extent of the impact depends very much on the activities undertaken by the charity in question.
GDPR is all about privacy and the protection of personal information. The definition of “personal information” is, in broad terms, exactly what you would expect it to be: information about a person. This covers a person’s name, address, date of birth, emails, financial information, medical information and so on.
Compliance with GDPR may be simple for a small charity which holds investments and uses the income from those investments to make grants to other charities. A charity like this will hold very little personal information. For a larger charity which has its own employees and perhaps provides goods, services or financial assistance to individuals, compliance is likely to be much less straightforward.
The first step towards compliance, for all charities, is to think about the personal information they hold. Ask a few simple questions:
- What information do we hold?
- How and where is it kept?
- Do we really need to keep it?
- Who has access to it?
- How secure are our IT systems and our facilities for keeping hard copy information?
The answers to these questions help guide you on the further steps required towards compliance with GDPR.
OSCR have published more detailed information in a number of recent blogs. These include links to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is the regulatory authority for GDPR.
OSCR New data protection advice service
OSCR – GDPR Legal basis for processing and transparency
OSCR – GDPR FAQs for charities
If you are a charity and would like to discuss any aspects of GDPR with us, please do not hesitate to call us on 0131 317 7377 when you will be put through to one of our team members who specialise in Charities.
