Privacy Policy | Open Palm

Our Privacy Policy

How We Keep Your Personal Information Safe

As a charity working to advance education and promote racial harmony, how we act is just as important as what we do. Our mission is to allow people to thrive regardless of their background and we’re committed to protecting the data of those who support us – whether you’re a donor, volunteer, service-provider or beneficiary.

What Information Do We Collect?

Personal information is any information that can be used to identify you. For example, if you donate money, use our services, provide us with a service, or become involved in our campaigns or volunteering work, we will collect and process the personal information that you’ve provided.

We may also collect information from you when you report a problem with our website or if you complete a survey which we use for research or evaluation purposes.

This personal information may include

Basic personal details (your name, email address, postal address, telephone or mobile number and date of birth)
Financial details (bank account number, UK tax payer information for gift aid, credit or debit card information)
IP address (this is a number that identifies a specific computer or other internet device)
Photos, videos or audio recordings used as part of our work with you (for example, volunteers might submit a video recording to assist with one of our projects or a beneficiary might record a video to evidence the support they have received from us)

How Do We Use Your Personal Information?

There are a number of ways that we may use your personal information, all to help us undertake our core activities. The following are some of the ways we use your personal information for our core activities:

To provide you with information (such as fundraising or campaigning activities), services or products you’ve requested or which we feel may interest you. When you interact with an email sent from the Open Palm, such as opening an email or clicking on a particular we link, we will receive information about that interaction. We use this information to ensure that we understand how our campaigns are being received, as well as to ensure that we continue to act in accordance with how you've chosen to hear from us.
To provide disclosures for the safeguarding of young people. This could include the collection of the young person’s name and age. This helps us ensure that we are able to effectively escalate any safeguarding issues to the appropriate agencies.
To enable us to further our purposes. Sometimes we may use mobile phones or laptops for filming, voice recording or slideshows as part of our work. These may be used help beneficiaries, volunteers, donors and partners to understand our work better, and may also be used to help us learn how to support beneficiaries better.
To provide our beneficiaries with opportunities with third parties, such as work experience. This may involve providing your basic personal information and application to the third party who will consider the work experience application.
To evaluate and improve our fundraising activities as well as the services we provide to beneficiaries. This could be analysing demographics to inform our campaign, marketing and service provision strategies. This helps us ensure we understand how effective our services are and ensures we spend our charitable donations in the most effective way.
To analyse and improve the services offered on our websites. This means we can provide you with the most user-friendly navigation experience we can. This may involve using third party automation services to improve your experience and our response times when you interact with us.
To allow you to participate in interactive features on our website, when you choose to do so. For example, we may help you auto-complete forms by inserting your contact details for you to edit. We may also use automation services.
To use your IP addresses to identify relevant information. This may include information such as your approximate location. It also helps us to block disruptive use or establish information like the number of visits to the website from different countries.
To make our marketing campaigns more targeted and relevant to potential donors and beneficiaries.
To record and respond to any compliments, comments or complaints from supporters or service users and to appropriately investigate and implement necessary changes. All feedback helps us to learn and to improve what we do.
To promote our activities. Where you have given us your consent we may use photos of you, or testimonials, for promotional activities and communications.
To assess your suitability for a role at Open Palm as a volunteer. This may involve conducting internal searches against our database as part of the application process.

Research and Evaluation

We might use personal data for the purposes of research. This might include research such as assessing the effectiveness of our programmes based on feedback from individuals (young people, parents). We don’t seek consent to use your personal data for this purpose, but rely on legitimate interests as our lawful basis. For our research activities, we ensure that we have conducted an assessment to ensure that our interests as a charity have not outweighed your rights and freedoms as an individual.

How Long Do We Keep Your Information For?

We will not retain your personal data for longer than necessary in relation to the purposes for which it was originally collected, or for which it was further processed. We're legally required to hold some personal information to fulfil statutory obligations. For example, for the collection of Gift Aid or to support certain financial transactions. We may be asked to keep records for longer periods or receive statutory instruction not to delete records.

If you've used any of our services, we will keep these notes for 6 years.

We will ensure that when collecting information such as debit cards, credit cards or personal information that this done so securely. We and our partners use TLS (Transport Level Security) to encrypt data sent between the beneficiary and us or from us to our bank.

How Do We Handle Your Direct Debit or Credit Card Information?

Open Palm uses external Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant providers to collect this data on our behalf. We do not store PCI data on our own systems.

How Can You Protect Yourself And Your Personal Information?

To protect yourself when sending us sensitive information, please ensure that you use devices running supported operating systems that are regularly patched, and incorporate some form of malware protection. Only connect your devices to networks that you trust.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our website, or that allows you to access encrypted emails, you are responsible for keeping the password confidential. You agree not to share that password with anyone else.

Where Do We Store Your Information?

We have taken all steps reasonably necessary to make sure that your data, whether in paper or electronic form, is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

The personal information collected from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA"). It may also be processed by individuals operating outside the EEA who work for us or work on our behalf. This includes staff engaged in, among other things, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services.

By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing and processing at a location outside the European Economic Area. Where data is transferred outside the EEA, we have gone through a full due diligence process to help ensure the data is afforded the same levels of security.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the Internet is never 100% secure and we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our website. This means any such transmission is at your own risk.

Keeping Your Information Up To Date

To make sure we always have the most up-to-date information about how to contact you, we may also, from time to time, update your records to reflect any changes to your personal information.

This information may come directly from you, or it may come from a third party that we consider is legitimate and trustworthy and in circumstances where it is appropriate and where you will have had a clear expectation that your details would be passed on for this purpose.

We may also combine the information you provide us with information we collect from trusted third parties and partners such as business partners, search information providers, credit reference agencies as well as publicly available sources. These third parties include Post Office Address File and Experian Quick Address.

We may use your cookies to give you a more personalised experience online. It helps us create a more effective website that reflects your needs. We may also collect and record information about how you use our site by collecting your IP address.

By continuing to use our site, you agree to our use of cookies - but these cookie files and IP addresses will never identify you as an individual. For more information on cookie files and IP addresses read our cookies policy. You can disable cookies on your internet browser if you don’t want them to be used.

Your Rights

If you'd like to access any of your rights, please contact us using the information below.

a. Right to access your personal information

You have the right to access the personal information that we hold about you in many circumstances, by making a request. This is sometimes termed ‘Subject Access Request’. If we agree that we are obliged to provide personal information to you (or someone else on your behalf), we will provide it to you or them and aim to do so within 30 days from when your identity has been confirmed. No administration fee will be charged for considering and/or complying with such a request unless the request is deemed to be excessive in nature.

We would ask for proof of identity and sufficient information about your interactions with us that we can locate your personal information.

b. Right to correct your personal data

If any of the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate or out of date, you may ask us to correct it.

c. Right to stop or limit our processing of your personal data

You have the right to object to us processing your personal information if we are not entitled to use it any more, to have your information deleted if we are keeping it too long or have its processing restricted in certain circumstances.

Updates Or Changes To This Policy

We reserve the right to make changes to this Privacy Policy. Each time you visit this site you should check this Privacy Policy to check that no changes have been made to any sections that are important to you. Where appropriate, any changes will be notified to you by email.

Complaints

If you're concerned about the way your personal data is handled, please contact us at info@openpalm.org.uk.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) regulates data protection and privacy matters in the UK. They make a lot of information accessible to consumers. You can access this here: https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public.

You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office on 0303 123 1113, via their website www.ico.org.uk or via post:

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