Jim Fruchterman | December 15, 2025

As we have completed months of consultations and are getting close to releasing the Better Deal for Data^TM as a readily adoptable lightweight data governance standard, we felt the need to revise the draft commitments presented in our original white paper from April 2024. This paper provides the updated BD4D^TM Commitments for comment, a copy of the original draft commitments, and a list of what we changed, and why we are proposing to make the changes.

The big news about the changes is that there is no big news. We made very few substantive changes. However, we did revise the commitments to tighten the language, and remedy confusion we encountered over our last two years of co-design efforts. We ‘demoted’ several concepts from being part of the Commitments, and will place them in the supporting text behind the Commitments. For example, mentioning the data subject’s control over making their data open caused more confusion than clarity, since the Better Deal for Data is designed primarily for personal and sensitive data which should not be made open. It’s still part of BD4D, but it is a corner case which doesn’t need to be in a commitment. We’ll discuss each of the changes in more detail below.

The Revised Draft Commitments (December 2025)

Declaration. We make the following commitments to “You,” all of the individuals or organizations that we serve and whose data we touch. We make these commitments to You about “Your Data,” non-public information related to You which we collect, analyze, store, and/or share:

1. Purpose. We are using Your Data to benefit You, Your community, humanity, and the planet, not for private gain or profit.
2. Ownership. We don’t claim ownership of Your Data.
3. Control. We will delete Your Data, correct it, or transfer it to You if You ask.
4. Monetization. We will not monetize Your Data by providing it to third parties for compensation.
5. Protection. We will steward Your Data with care, and comply with applicable data privacy laws.
6. Research. If we or a trusted partner do research based on Your Data, we will follow best practices around the anonymization of personal data, and published research papers or reports will be made available to You for free.
7. Binding. We will be legally bound by these Commitments, and anyone we share Your Data with will be similarly bound.

The Original Draft Commitments (April2024)

We make the following commitments to “You,” all of the individuals or organizations whose data we touch. We make these commitments to You about Your Data which is collected, analyzed, stored, and/or shared:

1. We are using Your Data to benefit You, Your community, humanity, and the planet; not for private gain or profit.
2. We don’t claim ownership of Your Data: it remains subject to Your control.
3. We will delete Your Data, correct it, or transfer it somewhere else if You ask.
4. We will not monetize Your Data by providing it to third parties for compensation.
5. You can decide if You want to make Your Data open, or want to monetize it for Your benefit.
6. We will protect and steward Your Data and comply with applicable privacy laws, but You may have privacy obligations as well.
7. If You allow research with Your Data, we will follow best practices around the anonymization of personal data, and published research results will be made available to You for free.
8. We will be bound by legal agreements implementing these commitments, and anyone we share your data with will be similarly bound.

Background on the Changes

Since releasing the original draft commitments, we have been busy responding to questions and exploring areas of concern from leaders wanting to adopt the BD4D. As a result, we have written a series of Major Questions papers intended to respond to the most common issues, and these are one of the sources for the revisions in the commitments.

For example, the Nonprofits and Funding paper dealt with the concern that our prohibition on data monetization would interfere with normal activities of nonprofits, like fundraising based on impact statistics. The Open and the Better Deal for Data paper responded to the confusion about our mention of open in the original commitments.

We also decided against a heavy legal focus on BD4D, and thus will not be including detailed legal language as part of the standard. Rather than extensive prohibitions and legal terms, we address the central issue in the Good Intent and No Surprises paper, which emphasized the importance of good intent (in the relevant context) over more formal processes that have been shown to be ineffective, such as rubber-stamp consent.

Finally, some drafting changes were made for clarity, and to accommodate the wide range of data capacity present across organizations likely to adopt the Better Deal.

Noteworthy Changes and the Reasons for Them

• Titles: We added titles to each commitment to make it easier for discussions to refer to the topic of each commitment. For example, to refer to the “Monetization” Commitment rather than remembering that is Commitment 4.
• Original Commitment 2: Delete “Subject to Your Control.” This was partly redundant: we have a “Control” Commitment that says you control the data, which is more specific. In addition, we wanted to limit the scope for requiring permission steps for trustworthy data uses which exemplify social good intent and the idea of no surprises.
• Original Commitment 5: Deleted. This does not change our position that BD4D requires data subjects to explicitly decide to make their data open or to monetize it. Since BD4D is primarily for data which should not be open, mentioning it here created more confusion than clarity. We recognize there are a wide range of decisions people might want to make about their personal data, and questions of opening and monetization of data are just two of them. We’ll also mention this in the supporting text which explains how to implement the commitments.
• Original Commitment 6: Deleting “Protect and” was mainly tightening the language as opposed to changing the meaning. We added “with care” to address the need to safeguard the data of the people and communities served by organizations collecting data. The admonition “You may have privacy obligations as well” confused more people than it helped. In many jurisdictions, organizations collecting certain types of data have privacy requirements to meet. We don’t need to point that out: it simply is the case and we have nothing to add here.
• Original Commitment 7: Modifying the concept of being allowed to do research. If “We” are doing human subject research, the requirement is informed consent (rather than just consent), and any organization doing this needs to follow the rules. However, there are plenty of research projects which are socially beneficial (does this program work, which regenerative crop practices give the best yields) and we didn’t want to create an artificial consent barrier to that data use. We’re relying on good intent in the relevant context, and no unpleasant surprises. Lastly, changing “research results” to “papers or reports” was a clarification of our original intent, not a major change. We do not expect organizations to create new papers or reports to fulfill this Commitment, but if they exist they should make them available upon request. Of course, publishing a paper under open access would fulfill this requirement.
• Original Commitment 8: Shifting from legal agreements to legally bound. As we did our research, we realized there were many organizations which do not have formal legal agreements (such as privacy notices or terms of service) which could be amended to reflect the BD4D Commitments. We want these organizations, and the communities they serve, to benefit from the enforceable promises the Commitments offer.

Conclusion

Our goal is to make a standard that advances the cause of responsible data use in the social sector. The Commitments are the foundation on which the rest of the Better Deal for Data is built. We’re looking forward to more feedback on these changes and our reasoning behind them.

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