Privacy Policy

We ensure as a minimum that we use your data in accordance with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal data. This policy explains:

• What data The Children’s Society may collect about you.
• How we will use that data.
• Whether we disclose your details to anyone else.
• How we manage your personal data – security, storage and retention.
• Your choices regarding the data you provide to us.
• How we use cookies to provide services to you or to improve your use of our websites.

Any questions you have in relation to this policy or how we use your personal information should be sent to data-protection@childrenssociety.org.uk or addressed to The Data Protection Officer, The Children’s Society, Whitecross Studios, 50 Banner Street, London, EC1Y 8ST

Please note that from time to time we may need to amend or update this policy, for example if there is a change in the way that we use personal information or because of updates to the law. You should periodically check this website to make sure that you have seen the most up to date version of this policy.

Your personal data (which is any data that identifies you, or which can be identified as relating to you personally) is referred to as 'personal data' in this privacy policy will be collected and used by the following parties (known as 'data controllers'):

• The Children’s Society with the charity no. 221124 and data controller number: Z7088095.
• The Children’s Society (Trading) Limited, a private limited company with registration number 885496 and data controller number Z8912805.

Both The Children’s Society and The Children’s Society Trading are referred to as 'The Children’s Society' in this privacy policy and are based at The Children’s Society, Whitecross Studios, 50 Banner Street, London, EC1Y 8ST.

As a valued supporter of The Children’s Society we collect personal information about you, store your record in our supporter database and use it for administration, communication and marketing purposes in the following ways:

4.1 When you give us information

When you engage with us as a supporter we may ask for personal information when you: make a donation to us, register for an event or a campaign, subscribe to a newsletter, engage with our social media or communication services, or provide us with personal information in any other way. This information may include:

• Your name, postal address, email address and telephone number.
• Financial data (such as bank account details provided by you, and whether donations are gift-aided. See Section 12).
• A record of the financial donations that you have made and data about your tax status for Gift Aid purposes.
• Details of your indicated interests, opinions, preferences and the ways you support or have supported us – eg in relation to any campaigns, events or fundraising schemes you have participated in. When you receive a communication we may collect data about how you respond to or interact with that communication, and this may affect how we communicate with you in future.

When you provide your personal information to The Children’s Society, please ensure that it is accurate and up to date. This will allow us to contact you effectively and courteously in order to deal with your donations, questions or provide you with data about our work. Please get in touch if you would like to change the personal details that we hold about you by contacting our Supporter Care team at the address provided in Section 11.

4.2 When you use The Children’s Society website

When you use our website we collect data about the services and features you use and how you use them, including how you interact with its content and any advertisements.

When you provide your personal details when filling out a registration, making a donation, communicating with us or signing up for or receiving a service on our website, we will collect this data and store it in your record so as to fulfil your request, answer your enquiries and keep a record of our correspondence with you.

Our website uses cookies. Cookies are files which are sent to the computer or device through which you access this website, and they collect small amounts of data. They are used to store information about such computer or device and your preferences so that our website doesn't have to keep asking you for them. We use cookies on The Children’s Society website as follows:

• The form used on The Children’s Society Online Shop will collect data – such as your name, email address and postcode – that will allow The Children’s Society to identify you on each occasion that you log in. Our other online forms also allow us to do this in order to help us provide certain information about you when you complete them. This may help to automatically fill in information about your name, or your contact preferences.
• To allow us to collect statistical and performance data about how the website is used. We may collect geolocation data about your geographic location, the mobile device that is used and to confirm what browser you are using, and computer operating systems that are being used. This data doesn’t contain any identifiable information about people. We use this data to improve the functionality of our website and ensure you have a good experience when browsing it.
• Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pixel cookies are used to collect data about which sections of the website are accessed by people who are registered users of these social media services. These service providers collect this data, which then allows The Children’s Society to reach new audiences. The Children’s Society only has access to aggregated data from these companies, not identifiable personal information.
• When a supporter creates a Facebook Donate page, we will store the data about the donation and who sent it, but will not contact that donor with any marketing other than as otherwise expressly permitted hereunder.

For further details about this, see our Cookie Policy.

4.3 When you use social media

When you view information published by The Children’s Society using social media hosted across various platforms, we will collect and receive information that provides aggregate data relating to items such as video views, demographics and location data. Sources of this data may include:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Identifiable personal information about people who access these platforms is collected in order to allow The Children’s Society to reach and market new audiences.

We may sometimes collect additional data about you from other organisations or companies that provide data from publicly available sources, so we can make it easier for you to support The Children’s Society by providing you with details about the types of activities and services we can offer. We ensure that such data is only collected from legitimate sources on a lawful, fair and transparent basis in accordance with applicable data protection law.

The data about you that we may collect from third parties can include:

• Your name, postal address, phone number, email address, for example from Just Giving which is our online service for making donations.
• Data to categorise and create supporter categories. This does not include information that identifies people specifically, only creating profiles of general factors that we use to categorise sections of our records.

We may disclose information to third parties or individuals, when we are obliged to by law or a regulatory order, or when one or more of the following apply:

• If you have specifically agreed that we may share your personal information to those third parties or individuals for a particular purpose.
• When we use other companies (known as 'data processors') to provide services on our behalf who are only processing personal information in accordance with our instructions. For example, companies that provide: direct mailing or marketing services that send material to you by post, email or text message, customer analysis, assessment, profiling and when using auditors or advisors. Also, we may use third party organisations (again processing data under our instructions) to carry out fundraising on our behalf. For example, we may use a company to call supporters who have agreed to be contacted by phone about a campaign, appeal or donations.
• The Children’s Society also uses Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn targeted advertising that involves sharing selected supporter information with these social media platforms to create new audiences for advertising. The process is secure and Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn delete the personal information we have sent to them once new audience profiles of their users have been created. No new personal information is added by us to your supporter record as a result of this.
• We send selected supporter information to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to create custom audiences to send advertising to our supporters that are also Facebook and Twitter users. We will only market you in this specific way if you have given us your consent.
• Processing credit/debit card payments. The Children’s Society does not handle or store credit/debit card data itself, but uses secure debit and credit card processing services that are provided by World Pay, Sage Pay and PayPal in accordance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards. Debit and credit card data will be collected directly by these card processing service providers when you make a donation to The Children’s Society or buy something using The Children’s Society Online Shop.
• We may disclose aggregate statistics about our supporters and online shop sales to describe our services and operations to prospective partners, advertisers, other reputable third parties and for other lawful purposes – these statistics do not include any information that identifies people.
• When we run events such as a sponsored marathon, trek or similar activity in partnership with other identified organisations we may pass your personal information to those organisations. When you register for these events we will inform you about how your data will be used and who by and you will have an opportunity to indicate your privacy preferences.

We complete internal research and analysis of your personal data, which can result in new personal data being created and added to your record. We do this in two ways:

7.1 Internal supporter research

We complete research by analysing the success of our campaigns and events, so as to identify patterns, trends and areas for future development. Having this information allows us to better understand our supporters, improve our relationship with you and provide you with a better supporter experience. By doing this, we ensure supporters are only provided with the communications, products and data which are important to them, and that our charity resources are used in a cost effective way.

To achieve this, we analyse and research supporter data to group people together in terms of common characteristics in order to offer you more relevant and tailored information, advertising, services and communications.

We keep track of the amount, frequency and value of each person’s support. If, based on data that has been provided to us (such as geographical location, demographics, or previous donations), it appears you may be willing and able to provide more to support The Children’s Society’s mission, then we may contact you to see if you wish to do so.

We will also obtain data from other sources, which is available on public and commercial databases. This may include obtaining data related to life-style and socio-economic categories. This data is analysed and modelled with a view to creating clusters of supporter types. Attributes are not personalised to individuals, but are modelled assessments that ascribe a generalised score or measure to supporter records found in each cluster.

We may also conduct supporter research that includes collecting data from public sources about a limited number of supporters who we think can influence policymakers to promote the interests of children and young people. We may also research supporters who we believe can become significant financial supporters of The Children’s Society’s mission, including well-known or influential people. We make sure that the sources we use are reputable public databases such as Companies House, mainstream news outlets or other reliable media sources. These sources include:

• 192.com
• MINT
• Factary Phi
• Civil Society and Fundraiser Magazine
• Trustfunding
• Camden Council Capacity Building Bulletin
• Duedil.com
• Tenders direct subscription
• Company Guide to Giving DSC
• Credo Reference
• Glassdoor.com
• Northcote Data
• MousePrice
• The Lawyer
• Electoral Commission
• Management Today
• Sunday Times Rich Lists
• Forbes
• Other Special Rich Lists
• Tax Payers Alliance
• Kumu
• Wealth Watch
• Factiva

We will make sure that we do not use data about individuals that is clearly intended to be private or collect information in a privacy intrusive manner that would not reasonably be expected by you. We will also inform you of this use as soon as is reasonably possible.

We do not normally collect or store what's known as ‘special category’ or ‘sensitive’ personal information about supporters – this includes data relating to someone’s health, ethnic origin, religious beliefs or political affiliation. On the few occasions when The Children’s Society does collect this type of sensitive personal information it will be for specific activities or events. For example:

• A sponsored marathon race or other fundraising activities, such as trekking. We will however only collect this data with your consent, usually with the aim of providing you with the necessary support and assistance to allow you to safely participate in these types of event (for example, information about health).

OR

• There may also be occasions when you share a story or experience about yourself that includes sensitive personal information relevant to The Children’s Society’s mission to be used in a campaign or related marketing. When your information is collected in this way we will always tell you how your information will be used and obtain your explicit consent to use it in this way.

The Children’s Society will not knowingly contact anyone under the age of 18 to ask them for donations or other forms of financial contribution.

We would like to give young people the opportunity to be involved in campaigning for change in areas that affect their lives. To achieve this, we may sometimes send email and Facebook communications about campaigns that relate specifically to children and young people aged 13–17 years.

The consent of those children and young people will be requested using appropriate privacy notices to receive this type of campaign information. To help us confirm your age, when you agree to receive this information your date of birth may be requested – this must be provided in order to allow you to be involved. We also reserve the right to ask for verification of age if we think it necessary.

The Children’s Society will not knowingly send communications about campaigns to children aged 12 years or under.

The Children’s Society relies on the following legal conditions that are described in the EU General Data Protection Regulation to use your personal information in the ways described in this privacy notice:

• Consent: when you consent or opt-in to receive information and marketing by email or mobile phone text message. We use this consent to offer you marketing using email and mobile phone text, as well as targeted advertising, including through social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
• Legal obligations: where we are under a legal obligation to process your personal data for a particular purpose. For example, obligations we have to hold information about donations or manage Gift Aid information in compliance with applicable tax laws. We may also sometimes need to process personal information for the purpose of us being able to establish or exercise our legal rights or to defend legal claims.
• Legitimate interest: where we have a legitimate interest. This is the legal basis that we rely on to send information and marketing by post or telephone when you take part in supporting The Children’s Society’s mission by making a donation, or requesting information about our work, marketing, campaigns and events or other services.
  Telephone marketing will not include people who have registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) or indicated to us that they don't want to receive marketing calls made this way. The only time we will contact you by telephone when you have registered with TPS is if you have given your consent directly to The Children’s Society to receive marketing calls.
  We will also have a legitimate interest in being able to use and process personal information for internal administrative purposes, and when it is necessary to take measures to protect our IT network and data security or to protect ourselves (and our beneficiaries and supporters) from risks to our charity such as fraud, criminal conduct or reputational damage.
  When processing your personal information based on a legitimate interest, we will make sure that it is exercised proportionately and is always balanced against the privacy rights and other legal rights you have as an individual.
• Contract: where we agree to provide any products and/or services to you, we will use your personal information in order to arrange for the provision of those products and/or services as well as performing obligations to you or enforcing our rights under any contract we have with you.
• If we are processing any personal information that is regarded as ‘special category’ or ‘sensitive’ as referred to above, we will only do this with your explicit consent; or, where needed to protect your vital interests (or those of someone else) in an emergency; or, where you have already publicised such information (such as your political affiliations); or, where we have a need to use such data in connection with a legal claim relevant to us.

10.1 Marketing, campaigning and fundraising

We provide direct marketing and fundraising communications to supporters which includes news, information and data about:

• The Children’s Society and our work with children and young people, and related events and campaigns.
• Campaigns to support the rights of children and young people, and the issues that they encounter, in order to bring about positive change in their lives.
• Online and paper petitions relating to campaigns.
• Opportunities to volunteer (for example as a box coordinator, or as a volunteer in one of our shops).
• Collection box holders.
• Appeals and fundraising (including donations, competitions, raffles and similar promotional activities).
• Our events, activities, local groups and committees.
• Products and services offered by The Children’s Society Online shop.
• Leaving a legacy.
• Newsletters.

The Children’s Society relies on donations and support from others to continue its work on behalf of children and young people. Being able to contact you for marketing and campaigning purposes is an important part of our fundraising activity and purpose.

Fundraising is an important part of our marketing, but we will not share your data with any other organisation, individual or company to allow them to use your personal information for marketing or campaigning purposes, unless we have obtained your specific, freely given, informed and unambiguous consent to do so.

10.2 Anonymised data

We may aggregate and anonymise personal information so that it can no longer be linked to any particular person. This anonymised data can be used for a variety of purposes (such as recruiting new supporters) or to identify trends or patterns within our existing supporter base. This data helps inform our actions and improve our campaigns, products, services and materials.

You can change your personal information and preferences about how we contact you whenever you choose.

11.1 How to change or stop us contacting you by post, telephone, email or text message

You can change your contact preferences at any time by contacting our Supporter Care team at The Children’s Society, Whitecross Studios, 50 Banner Street, London, EC1Y 8ST, emailing supportercare@childrenssociety.org.uk or calling 0300 303 7000.

11.2 How to unsubscribe from The Children’s Society email newsletters

If you have previously opted-in to receive email communications from The Children’s Society but no longer wish to receive email communications, please click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of our emails to be removed from our list.

The Children’s Society considers keeping your information safe to be vitally important. We employ a variety of physical, organisational and technical measures to ensure we do this, and prevent unauthorised access to – or use or disclosure of –your personal information.

Electronic data and databases that contain supporter personal data are stored on secure computer systems and we manage who has access to that data (using both physical and electronic means). Our staff receive data protection training and we have a set of detailed data protection procedures and policies which staff must follow when handling personal information.

All hard-copy records and data are managed securely in lockable and access-restricted storage.

12.1 Payment security

All electronic forms that request financial data will use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to encrypt the data between your browser and our servers.

If you use a credit card to donate or purchase something online your debit/credit card details are transferred securely to our payment card providers World Pay, Sage Pay and PayPal who comply with the payment card industry data security standard (PCI-DSS) published by the PCI Security Standards Council. We do not store any payment card information.

We cannot guarantee the security of your home computer or any information sent over the internet or any publicly accessible communications network and using any online communications services are at the user’s own risk.

Where we store personal information:

The Children’s Society is based in the UK. Wherever possible we store our data in the UK or within the European Union (EU). Some organisations and companies that provide services to us transfer personal data to territories outside of the EU such as Canada, a country whose legal system the EU Commission considers to have adequate data protection standards, or to the United States which does not have such EU approval in relation to its data protection standards. However in that case, we will only allow such a transfer when there is recognised assurance, such as the service provider being a member of the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework (eg Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) or we have put other legally appropriate safeguards and/or contracts in place to ensure that your data is adequately protected in accordance with EU privacy standards.

13.1 How long we store data

We will only use and store personal information for as long as it is required for the purposes it was collected for.

We have adopted a data retention policy (available on request) that sets out the different periods we retain personal information for in respect of these relevant purposes in accordance with our duties under applicable data protection law. The criteria we use for determining these retention periods is based on various legislative requirements; the purpose for which we hold data; and guidance issued by relevant regulatory authorities including but not limited to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). Personal information that we no longer need is securely disposed of and/or anonymised so you can no longer be identified from it. Some personal information may be retained by us in archives for historical research purposes, although we will do this in a manner that complies with applicable data protection law.

We continually review what personal information and records we hold, and delete what is no longer required. We never store payment card data.

Some of The Children’s Society’s premises have CCTV and you may be recorded when you visit them. CCTV has been installed at Edward Rudolf House in London, as well at some of our charity shops and programmes that work with children and young people. We use CCTV to help provide security and protect both you and The Children’s Society. CCTV will only be viewed when there is a need, for example to detect or prevent crime, and footage is only retained temporarily in accordance with our data retention policy.

The Children’s Society complies with the ICO CCTV Code of Practice.

As part of our Supporter Promise we want to make sure that you are able to make your own choices about how we use your personal information. Part of this is making sure you understand your data protection rights, which are set out as follows:

• You have certain rights of access in relation to your personal information. We will confirm whether or not we have your data and, if we do, provide a copy of the personal information we hold and other information about how we process your information within relevant timescales (usually a month for simple requests and timescales can be extended for complex requests) (Right of Access – Data Subject Access Request).
• The right to have your personal information that we no longer need erased from our records (Right to be Forgotten).
• The right to have inaccurate personal information amended (Right to Rectification). The right to ask us to stop using your information in certain situations (Right to Restrict Processing).
• The right to object to your personal information being used for marketing or profiling (Right to Object).
• A right (in certain circumstances) to have a copy of your personal information provided for reuse in another service (Right to Data Portability).

If you would like further details about your rights or would like to exercise them, please write to our Data Protection Officer at:

data-protection@childrenssociety.org.uk or addressed to The Data Protection Officer, The Children’s Society, Whitecross Studios, 50 Banner Street, London, EC1Y 8ST.

We reserve the right to ask for further information to verify your identity (or clarify the information that you are seeking) when we receive such a request.

If you are dissatisfied with the response from The Children’s Society you can contact the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) as follows:

Information Commissioner's Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire,
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745

Fax: 01625 524 510