Automated Decision Making

As stated in our Privacy Policy, we employ machine learning and other analytics that make inferences about some characteristics of our users. This involves an activity known under applicable data protection law as profiling, a type of automated decision-making. As an example, if our data shows that you frequently donate to animal welfare causes in London, our algorithms may guess that you care about these causes and may show a new fundraising page for an animal shelter in London at the top of your JustGiving feed.

There are no significant consequences of this decision making. These decisions are only suggestions and don’t force you to take any actions. You can opt out of any of these activities here.

These are the ways in which JustGiving makes automated decisions about you and the logic involved in such activities:

Tailoring your feed to your interests: The feed is a feature for users where you can see updates on pages you have donated to as well as information on other giving opportunities, in the form of fundraising pages, of people you know, that you may know, pages near you, pages you may be interested in, as well as trending and popular pages. JustGiving orders these pages in your feed according to what we think you’ll be most interested in seeing, fundraising for or donating to. We capture and analyse when you “like” a cause or take actions in response to items in the feed banner, to optimise your feed and show you things you’ll be interested in. In addition to being informed by feed items you “like” or your response to banner prompts, these algorithms also use click stream data (web traffic usage like page visits, device type and time on the website) and transactional data (data about actions you have taken with JustGiving, like creating a page or making a donation).

Suggesting people you may know: Our algorithm suggesting other JG users you might know allows us to show you, in your feed, activities of those people. Fundraising and crowdfunding are community activities, and you can greatly enhance your ability to raise funds by expanding your giving network. This algorithm is able to estimate connections between our users by evaluating transactional data (data about actions you have taken with JustGiving, like creating a page or making a donation) and data we get from Facebook when you sign into JustGiving with your Facebook account (like the names of your friends who are also JustGiving users).

Suggesting events to you: JustGiving uses an algorithm to indicate your propensity to want to fundraise for a particular event and we use this information to suggest events to you by email or through the Services, based on your history of using the Services. This algorithm uses click stream data (web traffic usage like page visits, device type and time on the website) and transactional data (data about actions you have taken with JustGiving, like creating a page or making a donation). We think this and the previous tools are important additions to the ecosystem of good because they enable users to find causes they want to support.

Suggesting fundraising actions by email: We use data we collect to suggest actions we think you’re likely to take next in your fundraising journey. To provide you with the best user experience, through the use of an algorithm, we can identify the next likely step you may want to take using the Services. For example, if we know that you fundraise for a particular marathon each year, and the date of that marathon is approaching, we may email you asking if you want to set up a fundraising page for that cause. This algorithm uses click stream data (web traffic usage like page visits, device type and time on the website), transactional data (data about actions you have taken with JustGiving, like creating a page or making a donation) and data on actions you take in response to these emails.

Suggesting a target goal for your page: When you create a fundraising page, we use an algorithm to suggest a fundraising target value to give you the best chance of raising more money for your cause. This suggested amount is calculated using transactional data consisting of data about similar events (like how much pages for similar events raise), data about past actions you have taken with JustGiving (like how successful your other pages are) and data about the charity (like how much pages for this charity typically raise). You are not obligated to use this suggested amount as your fundraising target—you may set any target you like!

Suggesting a donation amount: When you’re in the checkout process to make a donation, our algorithm customises the donation amount box to display optional donation amounts to donors that will maximise the amount of the donations for the fundraising page. These suggested amounts are based on the page’s performance (like the amounts people have been donating to it) and general trends in donation behaviour (like people tend to donate more at night). Just like with suggested fundraising targets, the suggested donation amounts are only guidance, and donors can enter any amount they like into the donation amount box prior to checkout.