Anonymizing Payments

May First members may request that their payments be anonymized.

To anonymize a payment:

CiviCRM:

• Ensure any in progress recurring contributions have been cancelled.
• View the payment, if a copy of a check is attached, delete the attachment.
• Find the contribution in CiviCRM, click the “…” option, and choose “Anonymize Contribution”
• Review the member contact record to ensure no traces of the contribution remain

In GnuCash

If the contribution has been imported into GnuCash:

• Find the member record: Business -> Customer -> Find Customer
• Change the customer name to “Anonymized Member”
• Change the customer id to a number starting with 9 and followed by 5 random digits (shuf -i 10000-99999 -n 1 to generate a 5 random digit number)
• Lookup the payment in the registered (Stripe or Paypal or Checking Account) and change the description from the member’s name to “Anonymized Member”

How does it work?

The script will move the contribution, payment activity type and contribution activity type to the contact with the name “Anonymous Anonymous”. It will also ensure any previous recurring contributions are deleted. And any email activity (e.g. receipt) or membership update activity is deleted.

But, the contribution record will remain, which will be a link to the person who paid it.

By anonymizing a contribution, we are severing the link between the payment and the membership it paid for, we are not severing the link between the person who made the payment and the payment. We cannot sever that link because it can always be traced via the banking system.