Who Owns Our Contacts and Campaign Data?

1. 1. What Data Are We Talking About?
2. 2. Campaign-Owned Contact Lists
3. 3. What About VAN, Data Trust, or Other Voter-File Data?
4. 4. What About Supplemental Outreach Data?
5. 5. Who Owns the Data Generated by Conversations?
6. 6. How Does FreeMessaging.ai Use Campaign Data?
7. 7. Can FreeMessaging.ai Use Our Data for Another Campaign?
8. 8. Can We Export Our Data?
9. 9. What Happens When the Campaign Ends or Stops Using FreeMessaging.ai?
10. 10. What This Means for Your Campaign

A FreeMessaging.ai program may use several different types of information. Understanding the source of the data is important because ownership, access rights, and permitted use can differ by source.

• Campaign-owned data - supporter, donor, volunteer, event, signup, fundraising, or prior-outreach lists collected by the campaign.
• Party or voter-file data - records accessed through systems such as VAN, Data Trust, or another authorized voter-data source.
• Supplemental outreach data - approved data made available for a defined outreach program, including supplemental small-business-owner data when part of the campaign scope.
• Conversation and campaign-response data - replies, supporter signals, issue interests, follow-up status, and other information generated during the messaging program.
• Service and technical data - delivery records, suppression records, system logs, and other information needed to operate, secure, troubleshoot, and document the service.

Voter-file and party-system data should be treated differently from a campaign-created contact list. If the campaign accesses data through VAN, Data Trust, a party organization, a committee, or another licensed voter-data provider, the campaign’s rights are governed by that provider’s agreement and applicable rules.

• FreeMessaging.ai can work with data the campaign is authorized to use.
• The campaign should not assume that importing a voter file transfers ownership of the underlying database.
• Source identifiers and provenance should be preserved so data can be handled and returned correctly.
• Any export, synchronization, retention, or reuse should respect the original source-license terms.

Two-way messaging creates new campaign intelligence: a voter may identify as a supporter, ask about an issue, volunteer, request more information, express event interest, or require follow-up. FreeMessaging.ai is designed to capture these signals and make them usable in the campaign workflow.

• Conversation history can be associated with the relevant contact record.
• Supporter, volunteer, donor, issue-interest, and follow-up fields can be written into the voter CRM.
• Campaign staff can use the resulting information for the agreed campaign purpose, subject to applicable data-source restrictions and law.
• Operational logs and system metadata used to run and secure the service may remain part of FreeMessaging.ai’s service records under the governing agreement and privacy policy.

Campaign-owned contact lists and campaign-specific voter CRM data should remain isolated to the campaign’s authorized service context. They should not be treated as a general-purpose contact pool for unrelated campaigns.

Where a data source is independently licensed or maintained by a third party, the rights of that source are governed by its own terms. The existence of the same person in another lawful data source does not make one campaign’s private CRM record available to another campaign.

The campaign should be able to retrieve the campaign data and campaign-response information made available under its service arrangement, subject to applicable source restrictions, retention requirements, security needs, and the governing agreement.

Certain records may need to be retained for operational, security, compliance, billing, audit, or legal purposes. The final retention and deletion rules should be defined by the applicable service agreement and privacy policy rather than assumed from the website FAQ alone.