Checking your charity's Data Protection status

Howard Lake | 26 November 2002 | News

Are all of your fundraising activities covered under the Data Protection Act 1998? You can easily check by searching online for your charity’s record at the The Data Protection Register.

Are you planning to move into a new area of fundraising? Are you expecting to collect data on new types of donors, volunteers or other supporters? You should check first that your charity is permitted to gather and handle that data.

You could of course ask your finance director or administrator to see a copy of your charity’s Data Protection registration. Alternatively, you can find it online at the Data Protection Register. This provides a current list, updated weekly, of all those organisations who are registered under the 1998 Data Protection Act to operate as what the Act calls Data Controllers. It should help you establish whether your fundraising plans are covered or whether you’ll need to update your registration to remain covered.

The listing is publicly available so you can also check up on other charities and companies. One important reason to check your charity’s registration now is to ensure that it is still current. The Information Commissioner recently introduced an annual system of re-registration, replacing the three-yearly system.

Check your charity’s listing today.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.