David Lawson, Kintera

"Open APIs are a natural evolution in the nonprofit and software vendor communities. It is critical, however, that security standards be developed within the vendor community to accompany this evolution. Donors trust nonprofits with sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, social security numbers and income levels. Donors and supporters must be assured that sensitive information remains securely held by the nonprofit and that open APIs will not enable data to be available to external parties with less secure mechanisms - and potentially fall into the wrong hands.

Conversely, security standards should not stifle creativity in the nonprofit community. A common misconception is that security and creativity are mutually exclusive, but this need not be the case. By developing security standards, software vendors free nonprofits to leverage the power of the Internet, their data, and imagination to reach and engage supporters in completely new ways. This needs to happen to maintain - and even increase - donor trust, while continuing to build support for an organization's mission."