Catherine
Potter McLaughlin

I've built my career at a rare intersection: the place where data protection, Gift Aid compliance, and fundraising operations meet. In most charities these sit as three separate jobs, each demanding specialist knowledge in its own right — I've spent over ten years being the person who holds all three at once.

As a Certified Data Protection Officer and Data Protection Lead, I've designed and embedded GDPR compliance programmes across fundraising, marketing, and supporter data environments. I led a full audit and overhaul of Gift Aid at a children's mental health charity — rebuilding the claims process, donor declarations, and record-keeping to withstand HMRC scrutiny — and went on to hold operational responsibility for Gift Aid in my most recent role, at a national disability charity. Underpinning both is day-to-day fundraising operations leadership: the systems, processes, and people that turn compliant policy into a fundraising programme that actually runs.

That combination matters more than a single specialism would. Data protection, Gift Aid, and fundraising operations are deeply interdependent — a change in one has consequences for the other two — and they're the three areas any HMRC or ICO review will ask about first. I bring all three under one roof, with the operational experience to make them work together rather than in competition.