Dear Catholic Charities, Diocese of Joliet Donor,

More than ever, we are grateful for your support of Catholic Charities. Your financial assistance during this perilous time has kept Catholic Charities on the front lines of this pandemic providing vital services to those in need.

The Agency wants to make you are aware of an issue recently brought to our attention by one of Catholic Charities’ third-party vendors, Blackbaud, Inc. Blackbaud is an online cloud computing company that maintains donor databases, donor relationships and donor management tools for many schools, universities, and non-profit organizations across the country. Like many other not for profit organizations, Catholic Charities uses Blackbaud for these same purposes.
In July, Blackbaud informed Catholic Charities that they had suffered a cyber security event which resulted in unauthorized third-party access to certain information maintained by Blackbaud. Unfortunately, Blackbaud’s cyber event impacted many not for profit organizations, including Catholic Charities.

Upon learning of this event, the Agency immediately contacted Blackbaud to determine what, if any, sensitive donor data was potentially affected. Blackbaud advised Catholic Charities that they were working with forensic experts and law enforcement to investigate the incident. They also provided a general description of the incident, which you can learn more about by visiting blackbaud.com/securityincident.

Catholic Charities uses Blackbaud’s donor software to store only the following types of information regarding our donors: contact information, transaction dates and donation amounts. We believe that this data set (or elements of it) is what may have been accessed by third parties without authorization. Most importantly, Catholic Charities does not use the Blackbaud platform to store highly sensitive donor information, such as Social Security numbers or any credit card or bank account information.

Catholic Charities takes this incident, and the security of our donor’s personal information entrusted to us, very seriously, and we are continuing to follow the Blackbaud incident. Because your privacy is so important to us, Catholic Charities has engaged counsel and is interviewing IT specialists to evaluate our overall internal security program over the data we store, as well as any Catholic Charities data held that may be held by others (such as Blackbaud, in this instance).
If you have any questions regarding the foregoing or related data security issues, please do not hesitate to contact me at klangdon@cc-doj.org or phone me at 815- 723-3405.
We cannot thank you enough for the support you provide the Agency and to all those clients who need you now more than ever. Please keep all of our Catholic Charities’ clients in your prayers during this difficult time. Stay safe and be well.
May God Bless You and all Those You Love,

Kathleen Langdon
Director, Development and Communications
Catholic Charities, Diocese of Joliet

We are a faith based organization serving people in need and calling upon others of good will to do the same.

Posted by Maggie Snow on Monday, August 17th, 2020 @ 5:50AM
Categories: Latest News