Only the charity may use the numbers a charity collects

The requirementstatement

A charitable programme must let no entity other than the charity use the collected subscriber data, and only for the campaign it was collected for.

Severityseverity
BlockingBLOCKINGBreaking this rule gets the submission rejected. There is no partial credit.
When it bitesphase
Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
What is checkedobject
campaign.message_flow + privacy policy
Where it liveslayer
OperationalOPERATIONAL
How Ekas settles itdetectability
AI · formAI_FORM
A semantic question about what you wrote: whether a description matches a use case, whether a name looks like a filed entity. Judged by a model against written criteria.
What the fix involvesfailureClass
Fix the fieldRETRY_FIELD
A better value in the form fixes it. Ekas can rewrite it and re-check.
Who requires itauthorities
T-MobileCTIA
When it appliesapplicabilityText
Applies when the use case is CHARITY.

Why this rule existsrationale

Charitable messaging gets favourable treatment because donors are giving to a cause, not entering a marketing relationship — and the data is unusually valuable precisely because it identifies people who give. The restriction is absolute for that reason: no agency, no fundraising partner, no affiliated foundation. It is broken innocently when the campaign is run by an agency whose own platform holds the list.

How to fix itremediation

State that subscriber data collected by the programme is used only by the charity and only for this campaign, and that no partner, agency or affiliate uses any part of it. Where an agency operates the sending, say it processes the data for the charity and holds no independent right to it. Done when the flow and the policy agree that the charity is the only user.

A compliant exampleexample

Numbers collected by Riverside Shelter's text programme are used only by Riverside Shelter and only for this campaign; our messaging agency processes them on our behalf and may not use them for anything else.

Common mistakespitfalls

  • Naming an agency as a joint controller, or a parent foundation as a permitted recipient, breaks the restriction even where both are non-profits.

Rules you will hit next

6 other rules read campaign.message_flow + privacy policy. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.

All operational rules

OPS-261 is one of 139 operational rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.

Reading the rules is the easy part.

Ekas runs every rule that gates approval, 823 of these 915, against your registration before it reaches the carrier. It reads your site, your policy pages and your opt-in the way a reviewer would, and hands you the fix, not just the verdict.