Privacy Policy

For alumni, donors and supporters

This Privacy Policy explains what to expect when The Friends of The Cherwell School Oxford (‘Friends of Cherwell’) collects and uses your personal information. Please read it carefully. Friends of Cherwell takes data protection seriously, protects the confidentiality of your personal information and stores your personal data securely. If you would like to learn more about our Data Protection and Privacy Policies, please do not hesitate to contact us.

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Our promise

Friends of Cherwell is committed to respecting your privacy and ensuring the personal information you have entrusted to us is processed in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR) and the General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR). We will never pass on your details to another charity or organisation who could contact you or add you to their mailing lists.

How and what personal information we collect

We collect personal information directly from you when you decide to donate or sign up to receive our mailings or attend an event, and may also collect some publicly available information from sources such as LinkedIn. The information you opt in to provide will be used to keep you informed of Friends of Cherwell’s work unless you have opted out of receiving updates from us.

We only ever request information that is necessary and that does not constitute an invasion of your privacy. Personal data that we may collect, use, store and share (when appropriate) about you includes, but is not restricted to:

• personal identifiers such as your title, name, gender, date of birth
• contact details including your postal address, email address and telephone numbers
• details about your relationship with the Cherwell School as a student, parent/carer of a student, staff member or governor, including records of your achievements and interests
• details of your experience, career and employers since you left the school
• photographs of your time at the school and from events/publicly available sources
• employment and education
• records of your contact with us
• information required to manage your attendance at Friends or alumni events, including access arrangements and dietary requirements (which could amount to ‘special category’ personal data, which is more sensitive)
• records of contributions you have made to Friends of Cherwell such as time, expertise, money, stocks, matched gifts
• financial information such as your bank details if you have set up a direct debit, standing order, or other means of regular giving
• whether you are a UK taxpayer and records associated with Gift Aid claims on donations.

Friends of Cherwell is the ‘data controller’ for the purposes of data protection law. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you.

Sensitive personal data

The Data Protection Act recognises some information as ‘sensitive personal data’. This includes, but is not limited to, information regarding your financial status, race or ethnic origin. We deliberately do not ask you for this information, but if you choose to share it with us we may store it as necessary to provide meaningful communications with you.

Why we collect personal information

There are various reasons why we need to collect personal data, including to:

• help us build a community around the Cherwell School
• process donations
• reclaim the tax on any Gift Aid eligible donations
• keep you informed about our work and Cherwell School developments by post and/or email
• tailor the communications we send you to help ensure they are appropriate and relevant
• notify you of Friends of Cherwell events for alumni and supporters you may be interested in
• send you resources that you have ordered
• send you an annual giving and Gift Aid summary.

Marketing permissions

We try to keep you, with your permission, informed and up-to-date regarding our work, the development issues faced by the Cherwell School and how your support is making an impact. This could include sending you newsletters, special appeals, invitations, email updates.

Postal marketing: we may send newsletters and postal updates to our supporters unless or until you notify us that you would prefer not to receive this information by post.

Email marketing: we ask you for your email address so that we can keep you more up-to-date with the current needs of Cherwell School. We will keep you informed until you unsubscribe from our email mailing list (which can be done by clicking on the link in the email itself).

Telephone marketing: we will make a note of your phone number, supplied by you, in order that we can resolve an issue or follow-up on a query, booking or other matter that you have raised with us.

Friends of Cherwell is fully committed to respecting your choice to receive marketing communication. You can update your permission and contact preferences at any time by contacting us at the above email address, phone number, or postal address.

Who we share your information with

All our online credit or debit card transactions are processed by Blackbaud Merchant Services (BBMS) and securely stored by Blackbaud Payment Services (BBPS) who have their own privacy and data protection policies you can view online at: https://www.blackbaud.co.uk/company/privacy-policy/europe

Friends of Cherwell may share your personal information with trusted third parties, such as our printers or other suppliers, where it is necessary to provide information or products you have requested by post. In situations like this, we demand the third parties have written contracts which obligate them to process your personal information only on our instruction, securely and in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws. We do not share information about you with any third party without consent unless the law and our policies allow us to do so.

Where it is legally required, or necessary (and it complies with data protection law) we may share personal information about you with, for example, our auditors or HMRC to meet our accounting and reporting obligations relating to donations received.

Fundraising

Fundraising is essential for Friends of Cherwell to support the Cherwell School and the education of its students. We endeavour to be transparent, open, efficient and ethical in the way we raise funds and in the manner in which we contact supporters.

We raise funds from activities including but not limited to:

• appeals via emails sent to people on our email list
• appeals on our website and on social media
• appeal leaflets and handouts
• events.

You can contact us at any time to opt out of receiving information from us and we will stop mailing you as soon as we receive your request. Please note that you may still receive some printed material if the next mailing is already being processed at the time your request is received.

Our lawful basis for using this data

We only collect and use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly we process it where we have obtained explicit consent to use it in a certain way, and where we have legitimate interests in processing the data. Where we have obtained consent, this consent can be withdrawn at any time. We will make it clear when we ask for consent, and explain how to withdraw it.

Where we have legitimate interests in processing your data, we will carry out a ‘balancing test’ to make sure our processing does not infringe your interests, rights and freedoms. We will only use the data in ways that you would reasonably expect.

The legitimate interests we have are:

• asking you for financial donations towards the Friends of Cherwell and facilitating this efficiently
• analysing the composition of our supporters and alumni group to help us decide what events or activities to run
• providing you with marketing communications based on what we think you will be interested in.

In addition, we may process your personal data in order to comply with our legal obligations, such as our accounting and reporting requirements in relation to any donations received, and complying with our duties under equality legislation.

Some of the reasons listed above for collecting and using personal information about you overlap, and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your data. Some of the information we collect from you is mandatory, and in some cases you can choose whether or not to provide the information to us. Whenever we seek to collect information from you, we make it clear whether you must provide this information (and if so, what the possible consequences are of not complying), or whether you have a choice. We will only collect the data that we need in order to fulfil our purposes, which are set out above.

How we store this data

We will keep your personal data while you remain involved in the Friends of Cherwell or alumni network. We may also keep it beyond this, if necessary, to comply with our legal obligations.

Our Register of Systems sets out how long we keep information and is available on request.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We will dispose of your personal data securely when we no longer need it.

Your rights

The Data Protection Act (DPA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) give you the right to:

• make a ‘subject access request’ to gain access to personal information that we hold about you
• request from us in writing all of the personal information that we hold about you
• correct or update your personal information processed and held by Friends of Cherwell
• be removed from our mailing lists (please note that we have up to 28 days to comply with a request not to receive postal mailings)
• withdraw your consent for your data to be used unless there is an over-riding need for us to keep the data, for example for tax purposes being subject to HMRC and audit requirements.

If you make a subject access request, and if we do hold information about you, we will:

• give you a description of it
• tell you why we are holding and processing it, and how long we will keep it for
• explain where we got it from, if not from you
• tell you who it has been, or will be, shared with
• let you know whether any automated decision-making is being applied to the data, and any consequences of this
• give you a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

You may also have a right for your personal information to be transmitted electronically to another organisation in certain circumstances. If you would like to make a request, please contact our Chair on members@friendsofcherwell.org

Your other rights regarding your data

Under data protection law, individuals have certain rights regarding how their personal data is used and kept safe. You have the right to:

• object to the use of your personal data if it would cause, or is causing, damage or distress
• prevent your data being used to send direct marketing
• object to the use of your personal data for decisions being taken by automated means (by a computer or machine, rather than a person)
• in certain circumstances, have inaccurate personal data corrected, deleted or destroyed, or restrict its processing
• claim compensation for damages caused by a breach of the data protection regulations

To exercise any of these rights, please contact our Chair on members@friendsofcherwell.org

Information to improve our site

We collect web statistics automatically about your visit to our site based on your IP address. This information is used to help us track what people are reading on the site so that we can improve it. We do not use this information to identify you as an individual and you will remain anonymous, unless you are asked to identify yourself when completing a form to receive our free materials and/or when completing an online transaction.

Cookies

Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard internet log and visitor behaviour information. They are used by our website to remember user preferences such as display properties and language preferences. Also, if you complete our online registration process, we will use cookies to remember your preferences during your current visit, and any future visits provided the cookie was not deleted in the interim. Cookies can be deleted at the end of each visit by logging out of the site. Your browser help text will contain information about how to refuse cookies from our site should you wish. Refusing cookies from our site may affect your ability to perform online transactions, and some other website functions may not act as expected.

Complaints

We take any complaints about our collection and use of personal information very seriously.

If you think that our collection or use of personal information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate, or have any other concern about our data processing, please raise this with us in the first instance.

To make a complaint, please contact our Chair on: members@friendsofcherwell.org

Alternatively, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office:
Report a concern online at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/
Call: 0303 123 1113
Or write to: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Changes to this privacy policy

Friends of Cherwell will review this privacy policy regularly and may update it at any time. Please do check this privacy policy from time to time. If there are any significant changes in the way we process your personal information, we will ensure it is prominently displayed on our website and/or send you a notification.

Version 1.0 October 2019