Supporter and Customer Privacy Notice

At Helen & Douglas House we are committed to ensuring your privacy and the security of your personal information. We promise to respect any of your personal data that is shared with us, and to keep it safe. We aim to be clear where and when we collect your data and not do anything with it that you wouldn’t reasonably expect us to.

Please read this statement to understand how your personal information may be used.

Who we are

Helen & Douglas House is a registered charity caring for children and young people with life-shortening and life-threatening conditions, their families and carers, through specialist hospice care.

We aim to enable these young people to live as well and as fully as possible to the end of their lives, and to support their needs and wishes at the time of their death. We do this by providing specialist palliative care through medical and nursing expertise, emotional and practical support. We also support families and carers alongside these young people, and into bereavement.

As a charity, we rely almost entirely on donations to support our families.

Our Registered Charity Number is 1085951.

Data Protection

As an organisation Helen & Douglas House is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO is the UK’s data protection authority.

The UK General Data Protection Regulation is a legal framework that sits alongside the Data Protection Act 2018. The UK GDPR relates to people’s fundamental rights and freedoms concerning the control, processing, and protection of personal data (identifiable to an individual). More information about the UK GDPR can be found at the ICO web site.

Privacy Notices, like this, describe how your personal information is treated in line with the requirements of the GDPR.

Under the definitions of the GDPR, Helen & Douglas House is both a data controller and a data processor. This means that we determine the purpose and means of the processing of personal data, as well as undertaking processing.

We also work in compliance with other data protection legislation such as the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), which governs the usage of emails and telephone numbers for marketing.

What information do we collect and how do we use it?

Personal information is any information that can be used to identify you. For example, it can include information such as your name, email address, postal address, telephone number, credit/debit card details, as well as information relating to your health.

The kind of information we may collect from you, if you are making a donation to us or registering for an event, might include:

• Your name
• Your contact details
• Your bank or debit/credit card details

This information is essential to enable us to process your donation or event payment.

Where it is appropriate, we may ask for:

• Information relating to your health (for example if you are taking part in an event)
• Details of emergency contact (again, if you are taking part in an event)
• Your reason for giving

We may also ask for other information about you, such as age, gender, where you work, and your interests – this won’t be obligatory and helps us to understand our supporters better.

If you contact us to request we collect donated items from you, or you buy items from our shops that you request we deliver to you, we will collect your address details in order to fulfill those requests.

We may use your data to:

• Provide you with services, products, or information
• Process your donation or support your fundraising activity
• Keep a record of your relationship with us
• Ensure we are compliant with HMRC regulations
• Manage your marketing preferences

With your consent, or on a considered balance of legitimate interest, we may contact you to let you know about the work that we do, and to ask for financial and/or non-financial support.

Marketing Communications and Events

Helen & Douglas House undertake a range of marketing communications and activities to keep you up to date with news from the hospice, how you can get involved, including news and features which we feel will be of interest to you. This may include newsletters, surveys, fundraising appeals, events, and promotions from our shops.

As a charity we are dependent on the support and generosity of our donors and volunteers, and where you have shown an interest in our work, or supported us in some way, we believe that you may or will be interested in continuing to hear from us. We do not wish to cause any distress or upset so will always try to be as transparent as we can and will respect your rights and wishes if you ask us to stop contacting you.

This notice serves to advise you in detail about how we may use your data in our marketing activities.

What information we collect

Personal information such as name, postal address, phone number, email address, date of birth (where appropriate), medical information (where appropriate), your tax status (where you have agreed to Gift Aid), information about your interests and hobbies etc and online identifiers, such as IP addresses (the location of the computer on the internet).

How we will collect information

From your interaction with us when:

• visiting our website
• you engage with our social media channels
• donating direct to Helen & Douglas House or through our partner organisations such as Just Giving or Virgin Money
• contributing to our fundraising activities or events
• sponsoring a supporter
• making a purchase of any goods through our retail outlets
• where you have requested information from us

How we will use information

We use a variety of methods to send marketing to you including post, telephone, and electronic channels.

Electronic

Electronic marketing includes the use of:

• email
• text messages.

We’ll always ask your permission before we make use of these electronic marketing channels.

You can choose any combination of these methods and once you have told us how you want to hear from us, we’ll check in with you regularly (approximately every three years unless we advise you to the contrary) to make sure you haven’t changed your mind. You can always tell us, at any time, if you no longer want to receive these communications.

Social Media

Helen & Douglas House uses social media to communicate with you and share information about the hospice, fundraising campaigns, and events. Currently we use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. We do this through advertising on your social media or through posting messages and information on our own social media pages which you may choose to “like”, “follow” or interact with.

For our supporters who are also Meta Platform users (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp) we may advertise to you using tools that Meta provide. These tools enable our communications to appear on individuals’ news feed and are called “custom audiences” or “lookalike audiences”.  We will do this where we believe the marketing communication may be of interest to you or others who may have similar interests to you. Where this is the case, your name and e-mail address will be uploaded in an encrypted format to Meta or taken from a form you have filled in on a Meta platform or our website, such as an event registration form. Meta will determine if you have a Meta account and then place the marketing directly on your news feed, or on the news feed of other Meta users. We may also use the same tool in a slightly different way to ensure you don’t receive unnecessary marketing communications.

We take your privacy and rights seriously and we use our legitimate interest to use your information and communicate with you in this way as we believe it will be of interest to you. Therefore, we will not ask for your permission to market to you through social media, but you are always free to inform us that you do not want us to contact you in in this way. Please refer to the Changing Marketing Preferences section below.

You can also update your preferences within the social media site to stop receiving marketing. For further information on Facebook in particular, please see their Terms and Privacy pages.

Telephone and Postal

We may also undertake telephone and or postal fundraising based on our legitimate interest. This means we won’t ask you for prior permission, but you can always tell us if you no longer want to be contacted. Our decision to use legitimate interest has been carefully considered weighing up our interests against your rights to privacy.

Like with electronic marketing, we’ll check in with you regularly (approximately every three years unless we advise you to the contrary) to make sure you haven’t changed your mind and you can always tell us, at any time, if you no longer want to receive these communications.

Changing your marketing preferences

It is not our intention to cause you any distress with the marketing activities we undertake, and we take your privacy rights very seriously.

For this reason, you can stop receiving any marketing communications altogether or change your preferences at any time either by following the instructions in the communication you have received or by contacting our Fundraising Team on 01865 799150 or by email at fundraising@helenanddouglas.org.uk. You can also write to us at Helen & Douglas House, 14A Magdalen Road, Oxford, OX4 1RW.

We won’t use your information for marketing purposes if you have asked us not to. However, we may retain your details on a suppression list to help ensure we don’t continue to contact you.

Automated Decision Making

To help us to promote our products and services to appropriate individuals, and to provide our supporters with the best experience possible, we may from time to time undertake profiling and automated decision-making activities, to target key individuals to whom we will market specific products and services to.

Before we do this, we will:

• carry out a Data Protection Impact Assessment to consider and address the risks before we start any new automated decision-making or profiling
• tell our supporters about the profiling and automated decision-making we carry out, what information we use to create the profiles and where we get this information from
• Use anonymised data in our profiling activities.

You will always have the right to opt out of any or all forms of processing by Helen & Douglas House. For example

• we may carry out wealth screening, a process which uses trusted third-party partners to automate some of this work. You will always have the right to opt out of this processing
• we may use information gathered from public sources alongside the information you provide to undertake analysis of who might support Helen & Douglas House and to understand the preferences of our donors about events, communication and services. By doing this, we can focus conversations we have with you about fundraising and volunteering in the most effective way and ensure that we provide you with an experience as a donor or potential donor which is appropriate for you.

Who will have access to the data?

Access to your data held in our Marketing database is restricted to only those Helen & Douglas House staff who require access.

To support our marketing activities, we may make use of third parties in the processing if your data such as:

• database hosting and management
• platforms to enable text and email marketing messaging
• data screening services (for Mail/Telephone Preference Services screening and deceased & goneaway screening)
• wealth screening services
• social media engagement with platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Intragram, YouTube and Google
• event management companies
• survey hosting and admin
• mailing houses and printing services
• marketing consultants for specialist advice

For Facebook marketing: as noted above, we may participate in Facebook’s ‘Custom Audience’ programme which enables us to display ads to our existing supporters and others when they visit Facebook. We provide your email address, mobile number and address to Facebook so they can determine whether you are a registered account holder with them. Our adverts may then appear when you access Facebook. Your data is sent in an encrypted format that is deleted by Facebook if it does not match with a Facebook account.

For more information please see  https://www.facebook.com/business/help/744354708981227 and Facebook’s Data Policy at https://en-gb.facebook.com/policy.php

How long will your personal information be kept?

As a minimum, we will keep information about you for the required statutory periods, e.g. set out by HMRC with regard to Gift Aid, and in order for us to comply with the GDPR with regard to indications of your consent to be contacted by us.

We may keep information for longer than this for the purposes of reporting and analysis.

If we have collected your data for the purpose of collecting donated items or delivering purchases from our shops to your address, we will retain these details for no more than 3 months.

The lawful reasons by which we process your personal data

We are only allowed to process personal data if our requirements meet specified legal bases, as defined by the GDPR. Example of these bases are outlined below in bold italics.

If you make a donation or set up a direct debit on our website, or via one of our printed donation forms, we will process your data under our “legitimate interest” to do so – this data might include bank details, name and contact details, etc.

If you tick any of the contact preference boxes on our donation forms, or on our website, you are giving “consent” for us to use your personal data to get in contact with you about fundraising and other information, and also in ways outlined in this privacy notice.

If you agree to Gift Aid a donation you have made, we will use the personal data you have provided under “legal obligation” to claim Gift Aid.

We may contact you by post or phone if we feel you may be interested in supporting our work in some way, based on a consideration of a balance of “legitimate interest”.

If you make a purchase from our website or our shops, we may use your personal data under “contract” to you to complete the purchase or deliver your goods to you.

The full definitions of these specified legal bases can be found here. (A guide to lawful basis | ICO)

Your rights to your data

The GDPR sets out specific rights that people have to their data.

The information contained in this Privacy Notice is an important part of those rights – describing the personal data that we collect, how it will be used, and on what lawful basis.

The accuracy of your personal information is very important to us. If you find that they are incorrect or need updating, please contact the Fundraising Team on 01865 799150 or by email at fundraising@helenanddouglas.org.uk. You can also write to us at Helen & Douglas House, 14A Magdalen Road, Oxford, OX4 1RW.

The GDPR also permits you certain other rights:

• to have access to your personal information
• to request that we erase your personal information
• to request that we restrict processing of your personal information (e.g. while a query is resolved concerning your data), or
• to object to any processing of your personal information
• not to be subject to any individual decision based on solely automated processing (please note Helen & Douglas House does not make any such solely automated decisions about the way we fundraise)

Should you need to do so, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority for data protection – which in the UK is the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Contacting Helen & Douglas House

In the event that you need to contact us regarding any matters of data protection, you may do this via:

• Email: gdpr@helenanddouglas.org.uk
• Telephone: 01865 794749
• Post: 14a Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RW

We hope that this Privacy Notice is helpful in explaining our use of your personal information, and the rights that you have under the General Data Protection Regulation. The accuracy and security of your data is important to us; please contact us if you have any questions.

You can let us know at any time if you would prefer not to receive marketing from us, by emailing fundraising@helenanddouglas.org.uk, calling 01865 799150, or writing to Fundraising, Helen & Douglas House, 14a Magdalen Road, Oxford, OX4 1RW.