NAR Data Use for Advocacy FAQ

Besides NAR, who can use the data?

State and Local Associations involved in advocacy campaigns.

How can the data be used?

Data can be used to directly to contact non-members regarding public policy issues of interest to the non-member to educate the non-member on a legislative or regulatory issue and /or to urge a supportive action by the non-member, like writing a letter, sending an email message to an official, signing a petition on line, urging that they tell a friend or share the message with another party.

What geographic limits are applied to the data?

Data requests for a state campaign or communication will be for all names of residents of the said in the data base.  For jurisdictions within a state, data will be limited to those names in the association’s geographic area of service.

What levels of government can the data target for action?

Any level of local or state government can be targeted, as long as there is an email address for purposes of sending a message. Thus Governors, Mayors, City Council, County Councils, state representatives, etc. are easily targeted. However, be advised that as one targets public officials down the ‘chain’ (school boards, water districts) there is likely to be less contacts in the non-member data file to use.  Usually it is true that the smaller the target the smaller the corresponding number of constituents in the data base.

Other examples of use:  The data base could be used to alert non-members in state Senate districts, City Council Districts (where members are elected by district vs at-large).

What prohibitions are there on use of the data?

Data may not be used for commercial purposes, or for general communications of the association (announcements, meetings, etc.) Data may not be used by the association in selling a service or product directly to the public as a non-dues income source.

Non-member data may not be shared with any other organization, affiliate or non-affiliated party with the association. Data may not be shared with members.

Non-member data from this file may not be used in candidate campaigns.

Is there a cost to use the data?

NAR pas all costs associated with the storage and security and cleaning of the data. Associations using the data in a campaign will be charged for the messaging component of the data use, that is the actual sending of the messages to your list of consumers. Currently the cost is $5/1000 names. TAs an example, if your association where using a list of 100,0000 names for the campaign the association would be charged $500 in total for each batch of 100,000 sent (100,000/1,000 x $5). To carry the example out one step further, let’s suppose your campaign  needed two messages sent over a two month period. The cost to the association would then total $1000 $500 x 2). The association will be billed directly by TargetSmart, our vendor in their program.

If I have an Issues Mobilization Campaign, and wish to use the non-member file, do I need to make a separate request to use the data?

If you are applying for NAR Issues Mobilization assistance, please note on the application for IMC that your association desires to use the data in the campaign. Upon submission of your association’s IMC application, NAR staff will coordinate the IMC and the data requests so that upon approval by the NAR Issues Mobilization Committee of the IMC application, the NAR data agreement will be also be approved. This applies only to IMC requests. See next question if your request is not related to an NAR IMC request.

If I have a campaign and wish to use the data file (i.e., not related to nor using NAR IMC support), how do we acquire the data?

If your association wishes to use the data for a purpose in accordance with the Data Sharing program intent and rules, the association will need to file a separate application and submit it to NAR under separate cover.