The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) is committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what we do with it. We are committed to compliance with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal information and not to do anything with your information you wouldn’t reasonably expect.
Under the new data protection law starting in May 2018 are a number of lawful reasons we can rely on for using (“processing”) your personal information. One of the lawful reasons is called legitimate interests.
Broadly speaking Legitimate Interests means that we can process your personal information if:
We have a genuine and legitimate reason and we are not harming any of your rights and interests.
So, what does this mean? When you provide your personal details to us we use your information for our legitimate business interests to carry out our work protecting life from conception to natural death across the UK. Before doing this though, we will also carefully consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights.
Some typical examples of when we might use this approach are for preventing fraud, direct marketing, maintaining the security of our system, data analytics, enhancing, modifying or improving our services, identifying usage trends and determining the effectiveness of our campaigns and fundraising.
This Privacy Policy explains:
How SPUC may obtain your personal information.
What information we collect.
How we will use that information.
Who we share your information with.
Your choices regarding the information we hold on you.
How we use cookies to provide services to you or to improve your use of our websites.
This policy was developed in accordance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR 2016) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR 2003).
This policy applies to SPUC Pro-Life Limited, Registered office: 3 Whitacre Mews, Unit B, Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB. Company registration number: 6195816.
SPUC Pro-Life Limited is registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner for the United Kingdom, registration number: Z133648X, and is referred to as “SPUC” in this document.
If you have any questions about this policy please contact our Data Protection Manager at SPUC, 3 Whitacre Mews, Unit B, London, SE11 4AB, email: dataprotect@spuc.org.uk, or telephone 020 7091 7091.
Contents
How do we obtain your personal information?
What information do we collect?
How do we use your information?
Who do we share your information with?
If you’re 17 or under
Dealing with people in vulnerable circumstances
How do we obtain your personal information?
When you give it to us directly:
You may give us your information in order to join as a member, make a donation to us, when you contact us about our campaigns, order products or campaign materials, seek assistance, fundraise or campaign for us, sign up to one of our events, collected through a local branch or otherwise give us personal information. This information could have been collected via our website, over the phone, through the post or from a local meeting (face-to-face).
Sometimes, when you support us by signing a petition or postcard, your information is collected or processed by an organisation working for us (e.g. a professional fundraising agency or a data processing company). Where they are doing it purely on behalf of SPUC, we will be responsible for your information at all times.
When you give permission to other parties to share it with us:
Your information may be shared with us by independent event organisers, for example Christian Resources Exhibition. These types of independent third parties will only share your information when you have indicated that you wish to support SPUC with your consent. You should check their Privacy Policy when you provided your information to understand fully how they will process your information. We may also obtain information about you from a family member or a friend who contacts us on your behalf.
When your information is available publicly or from other external sources:
We may combine information that we already have about you with information available publicly or information available form external sources in order to gain a better understanding of you and to improve our fundraising methods, products and services.
The information we get from other external sources may depend on your privacy settings of the responses you give, so you should regularly check them. For example, you may have provided permission to a company or other organisation to share your data with third parties including charities. This could be when you buy a product or service, register for an online competition or sign up with a comparison site.
Depending on our settings or the privacy policies on social media and messaging services like Facebook, WhatsApp or Twitter, you might give us permission to access information from those accounts or services.
We may also obtain information about you where it is publicly available and found in places such as Companies House, the Land Registry website and information that is published in articles and newspapers.
To understand how we use information about the communication services you use, such as an IP address (the location of the computer on the internet) and cookies, please see the “How we use cookies” section below.
We may use additional information such as geographical information, measures of affluence, professional memberships, where these are available from publicly accessible sources (such as companies house, trade & industry references, the Charity Commission website, print and broadcast media and other online sources), to assist us and ensure that our direct marketing communications are apt for supporters. We may use the services of external research companies to assist in the gathering of such information.
If you do not wish the Society to undertake these activities, please email dataprotect@spuc.org.uk , phone 020 7091 7091, or write to Data Protection Manager, SPUC, Unit B, 3 Whitacre Mews, Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB.
What information do we collect?
Personal information is any information that can be used to identify you. For example, it can include information such as your name, postal address, telephone number, email address, and credit/debit card details, fax number, as well as information relating to your health or personal circumstances which may change your standing as a member.
Data protection law recognises that certain categories of personal information are more sensitive. This is known as sensitive personal information and covers health information, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs or other beliefs or a similar nature, political opinion and trade union membership. We would only collect sensitive personal information where there is a clear need to do so such as participation in a particular campaign, to ascertain what services are relevant to you or to cater other services and support to you. Before collecting any sensitive personal information about you we will make it clear to you what information we are collecting and the purposes for collecting such information.
Our website utilises Google Analytics Advertising Features. Google Analytics collects data about visitors to the website via Google advertising cookies. This data is not used to personally identify any users.
How do we use your information?
How we use your information would largely depend on why you are providing it. We may use your information in the ways set out below:
We use your information to process your donations and membership.
We use your information to contact you about updates on current campaigns and events in your area.
We use your information to contact you about fundraising initiatives.
We use your information to keep a record of your relationship with us and for internal administrative purposes (such as our accounting and records), and to let you know about changes to our services or policies.
Branch members in your local area may contact you about events happening in your area.
We may use your personal information to contact you with communication which may be of interest to you.
We use personal data to carry out statistical analysis and research in order to help us to understand how we are performing and how we can improve our services and meet the needs of people that require our help.
We may also use your personal information for other purposes which we specifically notify you about and, where appropriate, obtain your consent.
We use your personal information to look into, and respond to, complaints, legal claims or other issues.
Digital Marketing:
Because of your continued interest in SPUC, we may use your information to send you communications about our work and how you can help us, for example, information about our campaigns, volunteering and fundraising activities and how you can donate to us. Our direct marketing forms clearly state how we will use and look after your personal data. We also include information on how you can say no to such marketing.
Targeting communications:
We may use your information to ensure communications are relevant and timely which may include campaigns, events and fundraising that is relevant to you or in your local area.
We also use cookies and tracking to help us understand more about how supporters use our website and to make improvements. Please see the “How we use cookies” section below.
As a fundraising organisation, we undertake in-house research and from time to time engage specialist agencies such as Prospecting for Gold to gather information about you from publicly available sources, for example, Companies House, the Electoral Register, company websites, ‘rich lists’, social networks such as Linkedin, political and property registers and news archives.
We may also carry out wealth screening to fast-track the research using our trusted third party partners. You will always have the right to opt out of this processing. We may also carry out research using publicly available information to identify individuals who may have an affinity to our cause but with whom we are not already in touch. We also use publicly available sources to carry out due diligence on donors in line with the SPUC’s Gift Acceptance Policy and to meet money laundering regulations.
This research helps us to understand more about you as an individual so 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.
If you would prefer us not to use your data in this way, please email us at dataprotect@spuc.org.uk or call us on 020 7091 7091.
Who do we share your information with?
We will not sell or swap your details with any third parties, but we may sometimes share your information with our trusted service providers who are authorised to act on our behalf in order to fulfil the above services. Where this service is done on behalf of SPUC, it is done under contract and relevant security measures are in place.
From time to time we may share information with our financial and legal advisers for the purposes of obtaining advice and protecting our legal rights. We may also share your information with the emergency services if we think there is a risk of serious harm or abuse to you or someone else.
When we collect your personal information we use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access. However, no data transmission over the internet is 100% secure. As a result, while we try to protect your personal information, SPUC cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us and you do so at your own risk.
The limited circumstances in which SPUC may share your information:
We will not sell or swap your information with anyone else and will only share your information with trusted third party service providers in order to fulfil some of our communications with you. Where other companies are used to capture data or undertake fulfilment services on our behalf, these activities are carried out under contract and in full compliance with General Data Protection Regulations.
Occasionally we may tell you about campaigns and events run by other organisations which share or complement the aims and objectives of SPUC. In these cases, we will not supply your information to partner organisations – though notifications of these types may provide opportunities for you to open up communications directly with our partners – unless we have your consent. SPUC cannot be held responsible for the privacy arrangements of its partners when communications with them are independently entered into.
SPUC guarantees not to disclose any of your personally identifiable information unless we have your permission, or under special circumstances, such as when we believe in good faith that the law requires it.
How do we use cookies?
How cookies work:
Cookies are small files that are downloaded onto your computer (or your mobile phone) from websites that you visit. Cookies contain information that allows websites to recognise that you have used the site before.
How we use cookies:
We use cookies, like most websites, to help us provide you with the best experience when you visit our site. Some cookies are crucial to the smooth running of our website – for example our donation pages rely on them. Other cookies allow us to understand (by using tools like Google Analytics) how visitors are interacting with our website, so that we can improve it. Cookies also make it easy for you to share the content on our site with your contacts on Facebook or other social networks.
We also use cookies to ensure that any investments we make in online advertising are as cost-effective as possible, by tracking how well individual adverts perform. These cookies are issued by third party service providers that we have assessed as secure. From time to time, we will display adverts on other websites to people who have visited our website before, and the technology behind these adverts is also based on cookies. These cookies, as with all others we use, do not contain information that can personally identify you.
Managing cookies:
All browsers allow you to control which cookies you accept and which you delete. You will usually find these settings under the “Preferences” or “Tools” menu of your browser. For more information about cookies, please see www.allaboutcookies.org.
If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics tracking, please visit: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/
Links
The SPUC website may include links to other sites, not owned or managed by us. We cannot be held responsible for the privacy of information collected by websites not managed by us.
If you’re 17 or under:
If you’re aged 17 or under, you must get your parent/guardian’s permission before you provide any personal information on our websites.
Dealing with supporters in vulnerable circumstances
We are committed to protecting all of our supporters, especially those who find themselves in vulnerable circumstances with regard to fundraising. Any out of the ordinary donations, though rare, are put through a query process to protect the interests of our supporters.
Accessing and updating your personal information
You can request access to any information we hold about you by contacting our Data Protection Manager at SPUC, 3 Whitacre Mews, Unit B, London, SE11 4AB, email: dataprotect@spuc.org.uk, or telephone 020 7091 7091.
Equally, please let us know of any changes to your personal information.
You can also let us know if you would no longer like to receive fundraising or campaigning communications from us by contacting our Data Protection Manager at the address above.
Changes to this policy
We may change our privacy policy from time to time so please check back periodically.
This Privacy Policy was last updated December 2022.