2 Groups Release Protocols for Data on Donations

By NICOLE WALLACE

The issue of data standards for the non-profit world is heating up. Two for-profit organizations have released non-profit data-exchange protocols. The protocols are specifications for formatting data about charitable donations so that information about gifts can move easily between computer applications.

For example, charities that use a fund-raising database that follows one of the protocols would be able to easily import information about donors who make contributions through online-giving sites that follow the same protocol.

Social Ecology, a company in Seattle, posted its Lightweight Donation Data Exchange protocol on its Web site (http://www.socialecology.com) on July 24.

Michael C. Gilbert, founder of Social Ecology, says that the company has invited comment from charities on the LDDX protocol and is interested in turning it over to a non-profit organization to administer. In addition to posting the protocol, Mr. Gilbert has also created a separate Web site, the Nonprofit Internet Standards Project (http://standards.gilbert.org), to encourage discussion about the issue of data standards.

A week later, on July 31, the OPX Consortium, a group of three technology companies that provide services to non-profit organizations, released its protocol, the Open Philanthropy Exchange (http://www.opxinfo.net), which it had announced at the end of June (The Chronicle, July 13).

Since the consortium announced its plans, more than 15 other technology and consulting companies have expressed their support for the protocol.

Mr. Gilbert, of Social Ecology, is careful to say that he is not against OPX and hopes that the two organizations can work together. But, he worries about the possible implications for charities if they are not able to fully participate in the development of the protocol that eventually becomes the standard used in the non-profit world.

“If the underlying mechanism whereby your tools communicate with each other isn’t responsive to your needs, but instead is only responsive to commercial interests, then I fear that we’ll end up with a situation where the sector doesn’t fully control its own fate,” he says.

Brian Montgomery, director of strategy at Blackbaud — a software company in Charleston, S.C., and one of the three companies that originally organized the OPX Consortium — believes that Mr. Gilbert’s apprehension is unfounded.

“As an open standard, all parties are invited to help create the standard,” says Mr. Montgomery. “This distinction between for-profit and non-profit — I don’t think it’s going to be all that meaningful inside the work of creating a standard. We all need to bring our concerns and our talents to bear on getting the best standard together.”