More than four decades ago, Envisioning Access began with a mission to make places and opportunities more accessible and inclusive for all. Beginning with the training of capuchin monkeys as service animals and evolving into the work we do today, collaborating with tech startups and universities to develop assistive technology, we seek to restore independence, expand opportunity and improve the quality of life for those living with physical disabilities.
Achieving that mission has always been a challenge. Like many nonprofits across Massachusetts, our organization relies on private donations for its operating income, and securing them has become more difficult due to a significant decline in charitable giving. At the same time, operating costs have risen, and competition for grants and donations, especially since the federal government’s withdrawal of funds, has only intensified. In this environment, organizations are being asked to do more with less, stretching every dollar as far as possible, to fulfill our mission and reach the donors we need to keep the lights on.
Digital tools have become essential to that. Nonprofits rely on strategies such as targeted digital ads and email campaigns to reach donors. These more tailored strategies allow us to stretch limited advertising budgets further than general campaigns that cast a wider net. For organizations such as ours, these tools are not luxuries – they’re a lifeline to a greater chance of reaching donors. That is why the sweeping data privacy legislation under consideration at the State House gives us pause.
Strengthening consumer privacy is a worthy goal, and I am grateful that our state lawmakers are finally addressing it. Yet, while some of the proposals we have seen have shown a pragmatic approach that would support small businesses and nonprofits’ continued use of these tools, the bills gaining traction threaten to create unintended consequences for both communities.
As we heard at a recent webinar we hosted with the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, bills under serious consideration in the House and Senate threaten to significantly restrict the use of digital tools by allowing data collection only for what is absolutely necessary to deliver a specific product or service. That highly restrictive data minimization standard would limit severely how we can engage our donor network over time, potentially harming our ability to build sustained relationships, evaluate outreach effectiveness and plan campaigns.
Strict data-minimization requirements such as these wouldn’t affect just nonprofits, but also the small- and midsized businesses we often rely on as partners. From the mom-and-pop shops we work with to co-sponsor community events to the startups we support that are still trying to find their footing, many of these organizations rely on the same digital tools to reach customers and grow. Restrictions on that data-driven outreach risk making it far more difficult, raising costs and limiting their ability to compete.
None of this is to say that we should abandon a push for data privacy protections. As a member of the broader nonprofit community, I know how important it is for us to protect sensitive data. But there is a difference between smart oversight and policies whose unintended consequences punish organizations trying to serve their communities. As legislators work to finalize a path forward in the coming months, they must pause to fully consider how they can work with the nonprofit and small-business community to create a solution that protects data without sacrificing the usability of digital tools.
Diane S. Nahabedian serves as executive director of Envisioning Access.
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