Clarification Related to Dallas Morning News Article

October 2, 2020

A message from CFT's President & CEO, Dave Scullin

In today’s business section of The Dallas Morning News, a story about a Blackbaud data breach that occurred earlier this year incorrectly listed Communities Foundation of Texas as an organization that may have been part of new findings related to the breach.

Blackbaud, one of our third-party service providers, has been a long-time technology vendor of CFT, and is widely considered to be the leading data management technology provider serving the nonprofit sector.

Communities Foundation of Texas did not store social security, bank, credit card, or other sensitive information in the database that was affected in Blackbaud’s global breach of customer information. Further, Blackbaud confirmed this week that Communities Foundation of Texas' data was not involved in any of their new findings.

In August, as a precautionary measure, we communicated to our constituents whose information was compromised in the data breach, noting that the affected data from CFT included a combination of publicly available information such as names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers; for most individuals, it was business contact information. Again, no financial information, student information, or social security numbers were included in the breach. You can view a copy of the August communication here. Most of our constituents did not receive this communication in August because their contact information was not compromised.

We are extremely disappointed that The Dallas Morning News did not verify the information related to our organization prior to publishing the article. We have asked for corrections to the digital edition and for a correction to be printed in the next print edition.

Ensuring the safety and protection of our constituents’ data is of the utmost importance to us, which is why we we sent a large-scale email communication and are sharing this information on our website. Our goal is to assure our community partners and stakeholders that no sensitive data was compromised through Communities Foundation of Texas.

Should you have any further questions or concerns regarding this matter, please contact us at 214-750-4135 or communications@cftexas.org. Thank you for the many ways you work with us to build a thriving community for all.

Sincerely,

Dave Scullin
President and CEO, Communities Foundation of Texas

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