RallyPoint Partnerships with 'Outside" Institutions

To clarify, I did receive a very quick answer from a RallyPoint Business Development Manager that stated in part:

"Our members are our number one priority, always, and if we had known that you would feel this way we never would have sent you the email, please accept our sincere apologies.
We partnered with an organisation who was looking for people to qualify for a very specific and narrow focus group that they are having later in the month... Part of our agreement with this organisation was that the only information that they were able to gather was from those who qualified for the focus group, so none of your information or your choices will have been gathered.
We absolutely understand your concerns and your frustration, and again apologise for any confusion or anger that we may have caused. RallyPoint is a site built by military members, for military members. Our community has, and always will be, our main focus. I hope that you might consider using RallyPoint again in the future, and thank you for your feedback. We take messages like yours very seriously and learn from them so as not to repeat a mistake."

I replied to this one asking about whether I would receive additional similiar surveys, and received this reply:

"Thank you for your email reply to me, I appreciate you taking the time to respond to me. I am glad that you have found RallyPoint professionally helpful in the past, that is our focus and aim, to help the service members and the veterans who are on our site. The feedback that you have given me is invaluable and will help us moving forward to understand what partnerships are good partnerships to enter into, and which ones are not, an example being that the survey partnership that we entered into was not a success and should not be repeated.
Please don't hesitate to reach out to me at any point with question, comments, or concerns about RallyPoint when moving forward. My job is to help you and to make sure that the site is a safe, positive, and productive place for our members."

From these I sense that RallyPoint has taken my concerns seriously.

I received the same e-mail and had the same reaction when I began to take it. Assuming the survey was to help RallyPoint improve their site, I was certainly willing to participate. As you describe, it was quickly apparent that this was not for RallyPoint. I should have e-mailed RallyPoint but got distracted by other tasks and never got around to it.

My thoughts on these partnerships? I'm a bit hesitant. What is the purpose of the partnership? Is it intended to benefit the RallyPoint users or the company? In general, I'm okay with business partnerships like this as long as it is clear what organization is asking for my information. In this case, the e-mail made it appear that it was RallyPoint asking for my input ... deceptive, in my opinion.

It makes sense that companies seeking a specific demographic would approach other companies that have access to that demographic. More transparency for these is necessary, however, for RallyPoint to maintain its credibility and trust from its members.

Security system flailled all over this one - identified it as a "bot"....I approved the quarantine. If you're protecting our email how did they get our email? I may have to rethink my association with RP if you're allowing RP being used as a intermediary without notice - something I didn't note in your privacy agreement.