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Fundraising Regulator privacy policy

This policy describes how we process personal information from individuals.

Who are we?

The Fundraising Regulator (FR) is the independent regulator of charitable fundraising. We were established following the cross-party review of fundraising self-regulation (2015) to strengthen the system of charity regulation and restore public trust in fundraising.

In this policy ‘FR’, ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ means the Fundraising Regulator, a Company Limited by Guarantee, registered in England, Number 10016446. Registered address is: Fundraising Regulator, Eagle House, 167 City Road, London, EC1V 1AW.

How do we collect personal information from you?

We obtain information about you in the following ways:

Information you give us directly

For example, we may obtain personal information about you when you register, take part in one of our events, supply goods and services, purchase products and services or contact us about campaigns or policies.

Information you give us indirectly

Your personal information may be shared with us by third parties, which might include subcontractors acting on our behalf who provide us with technical, payment or delivery services

You should check any privacy policy provided to you where you give your data to a third party.

When you visit this website

We, like many organisations, automatically collect the following information:

  • Technical information, including the type of device you’re using, the IP address, browser and operating system being used to connect your computer to the internet. This information may be used to improve the services we offer.
  • Information about your visit to this website, for example we collect information about pages you visit and how you navigate the website, i.e. length of visits to certain pages, products and services you viewed and searched for, referral sources (e.g. how you arrived at our website).

We collect and use your personal information by using cookies on our website – more information can be found in our cookies policy.

Social media

When you interact with us on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter we may obtain information about you (for example, when you publicly tag us in an event photo). The information we receive will depend on the privacy preferences you have set on those types of platforms.

Public information

We may source contacts for policy development and campaigns from information obtained from publicly available sources such as the Houses of Parliament, newspaper and publication websites, central and local government websites.

What type of personal information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect, store and use might include:

  • Your name and contact details (including postal address, email address and telephone number);
  • Information about your activities on our website and about the device used to access it, for instance your IP address and geographical location;
  • Any other personal information shared with us.

Data protection laws recognise certain categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore requiring greater protection, for example information about your health, ethnicity and religion.

We do not usually collect sensitive data about you unless there is a clear and valid reason for doing so and data protection laws allow us to, for example, we may provide you with the opportunity to provide information on your ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion and any disability, so that we can monitor and ensure the effective delivery of our services.

Where appropriate, we will make clear why we are collecting this type of personal information and what it will be used for.

How and why is your personal information used?

We may use your information for a range of different purposes, which may include:

  • to respond to or fulfil any requests, complaints or queries you make to us;
  • to pass on or seek further information on any complaints or queries received by the Fundraising Regulator that your organisation may be subject to;
  • to process payments and register you when you sign up to our registration scheme;
  • to notify you of our voluntary levy and when payment is due, if your charity is identified as falling within the levy threshold published on our website;
  • to inform our work on developing the Code of Fundraising Practice, policies and guidance by conducting consultations and analysing the results;
  • to understand how we can improve our services or information by conducting analysis and market research;
  • to keep a record of your relationship with us;
  • to send you correspondence and communicate with you;
  • to administer our websites and to troubleshoot, perform data analysis, research, generate statistics and surveys related to our technical systems;
  • to test our technical systems to make sure they are working as expected;
  • to contact you if you enter your details onto one of our online forms, and you don’t ‘send’ or ‘submit’ the form, to see if we can help with any problems you may be experiencing with the form or our websites;
  • to display content to you in a way appropriate to the device you are using (for example if you are viewing content on a mobile device or a computer);
  • to generate reports on our work;
  • to safeguard our staff;
  • to monitor website use to identify visitor location, guard against disruptive use, monitor website traffic and/or personalise information which is presented to you;
  • to process your application for a job position;
  • to conduct training and quality control;
  • to audit and administer our accounts;
  • to meet our legal obligations, for instance to perform contracts between you and us, or our obligations to regulators, government and/or law enforcement bodies;
  • to carry out fraud prevention and money laundering checks;
  • to undertake credit risk reduction activities;  and/or
  • to establish, defend or enforce legal claims.

How long is your personal information kept for?

We keep your information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes it was collected for. The length of time we retain your personal information for is determined by operational and legal considerations. For example, we are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory and regulatory obligations (e.g. health/safety and tax/accounting purposes).

We review our retention periods on a regular basis.

Who has access to your information?

We do not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We do not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

However, we may disclose your information to third parties to achieve the other purposes set out in this policy. These third parties may include:

Third parties working on our behalf 

We may pass your personal information to our third-party service providers, suppliers, agents, subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process payments and send you mailings). However, when we use these third parties, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the services and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and prevents them from using it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.

We may transfer your personal information to a third party as part of a sale of some or all of our business and assets to any third party or as part of any business restructuring or reorganisation, or if we’re under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation or to enforce or apply our terms of use or to protect the rights, property or safety of our staff, members, users of the website or others. However, we will take steps with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected.

Lawful processing

Data protection law requires us to rely on one or more lawful grounds to process your personal information. We consider the following grounds to be relevant:

Specific consent

Where you have provided specific consent to us using your personal information in a certain way, such as to send you email, text and/or telephone communications.

Performance of a contract

Where we are entering into a contract with you or performing our obligations under it, like when you sign up to our terms and conditions of registration.

Legal obligation

Where necessary so that we can comply with a legal or regulatory obligation to which we are subject, for example where we are ordered by a court or regulatory authority like the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Legitimate interests

Where it is reasonably necessary to achieve our or others’ legitimate interests (if what the personal information is used for is fair and does not duly impact your rights).

We consider our legitimate interests to be running the Fundraising Regulator as a voluntary Regulatory organisation in pursuit of our aims and ideals. For example, to:

  • Send communications which we think will be of interest to you;
  • Conduct research to better understand the needs of the public and those we regulate;
  • Enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our services / communications for the benefit of those we regulate;
  • Understand better how people interact with our website.

When we legitimately process your personal information in this way, we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. We will not use your personal information where our interests are overridden by the impact on you, for example, where use would be excessively intrusive (unless, for instance, we are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

When we use sensitive personal information, we require an additional legal basis to do so under data protection laws, so will either do so based on your explicit consent or another route available to us at law (for example, if we need to process it for employment, social security or social protection purposes, your vital interests, or, in some cases, if it is in the public interest for us to do so).

Marketing communications

We may use your contact details to provide you with information about the work we do on fundraising regulation, policy initiatives and events if we think it may be of interest to you.

Email/text/phone

We will only send you non-transactional communications by email, text and telephone if you have explicitly provided your prior consent, or (in the case of corporate subscribers) your organisational contact details. You may opt out of our marketing communications at any time by updating your preferences via the link in our emails.

Post

We may send you marketing communications by post unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us.

Your choices

You have a choice about whether you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about our work and registering with us then you can select your choices by updating your preferences.

We’re committed to putting you in control of your data so you’re free to change your marketing preferences (including to tell us that you don’t want to be contacted for marketing purposes) at any time by contacting us:

We will not use your personal information for marketing purposes if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted and will retain your details on a suppression list to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you. However, we may still need to contact you for administrative purposes, such as where we are processing a payment or to fulfil our regulatory remit, such as to investigate a complaint.

We’re committed to putting you in control of your data so you’re free to opt out of your personal information being used in this way at any time by updating your preferences on our website or by contacting admin@fundraisingregulator.org.uk.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law, you have certain rights over the personal information that we hold about you. Here is a summary of the rights that we think apply:

Right of access

You have a right to request access to the personal data that we hold about you. You also have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you, and we will provide you with this unless legal exceptions apply.

If you want to access your information, please send a description of the information you want to see and proof of your identity by post to the address provided below.

Right to have your inaccurate personal information corrected

You have the right to have inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you corrected. The accuracy of your information is important to us. If you change email address, or if you believe any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please log into the website (members) or contact us:

Right to restrict use

You have a right to ask us to restrict the processing of some or all your personal information if there is a disagreement about its accuracy or we’re not lawfully allowed to use it.

Right of erasure

You may ask us to delete some or all your personal information and in certain cases, and subject to certain exceptions; we will do so as far as we are required to. In many cases, we will anonymise that information, rather than delete it.

Right for your personal information to be portable

If we are processing your personal information

  1. based on your consent, or to enter into or carry out a contract with you; and
  2. the processing is being done by automated means, you may ask us to provide it to you or another service provider in a machine-readable format.

Right to object

You have the right to object to processing where we use your personal information

  1. based on legitimate interests
  2. for direct marketing; or
  3. for statistical/research purposes.

If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please contact us:

We may be required to ask for further information and/or evidence of identity. We will endeavour to respond fully to all requests within 21 days of receipt of your request, however if we are unable to do so we will contact you with reasons for the delay.

Please note that exceptions apply to a number of these rights, and not all rights will be applicable in all circumstances. For more details we recommend you consult the guidance published by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Keeping your personal information safe

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that appropriate technical and organisational controls are in place to protect it.

When registering with the Fundraising Regulator, we use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption on all web pages where personal information is required. To take advantage of these online services, you must use an SSL-enabled browser. Doing so protects the confidentiality of your personal and credit card information while it’s transmitted over the Internet.

When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear on web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.