Supporting organizations with data privacy & security

Supporting organizations with data privacy & security

March 3, 2025

With executive orders coming from the President's office, our Data & Evaluation Committee used their February meeting to consider data privacy, ethics, and community data practices that directly affect communities who access food services. 

Here are tips and templates for community-based organizations:

Tip 1: Who has access?
Review the data in your organization and consider who has access. Some data can be public where it’s freely accessible to everyone, while other data may be limited to only your internal team or only specific team members. Setting and reviewing access permissions for your data will improve safeguarding and security for your community.

Tip 2: Be intentional with data collection.
Examine your data collection practices and protocols. You can prioritize your community’s privacy by limiting the data you collect to only what’s absolutely necessary and using anonymous surveys whenever possible. Additionally having an informed consent policy and other data protection policies that are available for your community to review can improve trust.

Tip 3: Be aware of your digital footprint.
Not all encryption is equal; look into the data protection and encryption for your file storage and messaging systems. Find software that uses end-to-end encryption and avoid storing sensitive or private data on free and low-cost platforms like Google Drive. Learn how to turn on encryption for other software you use like Teams, Zoom, and emails.

Tip 4: Flip the script.
Remember that monitoring and surveillance can go both ways, and grassroots resistance movements have long histories of innovative data practices. You can use community data to know what enforcement agencies are doing and what’s happening on the ground.

Tip 5: Bring it all together!
Create systems at your organization that support your work, creating policies are ways to protect your organization and community, and build power and confidence among your staff who will be facing new challenges.