At Support Dogs we take your privacy seriously and are committed to protecting it. This statement describes how Support Dogs collects and uses personal information. The terms of this statement may change, so please check it from time to time.

Under the Data Protection Act 1998, we have a legal duty to protect any information we collect from you. We use appropriate technologies to safeguard your details, and keep to strict security standards to prevent unauthorised access to it.

If you have any queries about this privacy statement, please contact us at: [email protected] or by post at Data Protection Officer, Support Dogs, 21 Jessops Riverside, Brightside Lane, Sheffield, S9 2RX.

Support Dogs - a charity registered with Charity Commission (1088281), and with the Fundraising Regulator. As a charity, we strive for the highest possible standards.

When we obtain personal information from you and use it as follows:

From information requests
We use contact information from web forms, emails, mail and telephone to send you information or materials that you have requested or to provide you a service. Your contact information is also used to contact you when necessary, for example, to fulfil a query or to provide a service. 

Donations or shop orders

Any orders and donations you make will require personal and financial information. We will collect your contact information (such as contact details), and financial information (such as account numbers).

Contact information and financial information from the order, donation forms or enquiries are used to fulfil orders or provide services. Your contact information is also used to get in touch with you when necessary, for example to be able to fulfil an order. Financial information that is collected is held securely and deleted on an ongoing basis (credit card details are not stored).

As a small charity it is hugely important for us to increase better understanding of our work, so that we can grow and help more people. To help us to do this we want to share stories about how we use your donation, about our charity,  the impact of our work, events and campaigns with you. We will do this through sending your our charity newsletter twice year in the post. You can stop this at any point by phoning 0114 261 7800 or email [email protected]   

Applying to a job vacancy or volunteering opportunities 

We will collect data about you, both personal data (such as your name and contact details) and also sensitive personal data (such as information in your CV). The personal data and sensitive personal data will be stored, processed, used and disclosed by us in the following ways:

• To facilitate the recruitment process
• To enable you to submit your CV to apply online for jobs or opportunities.
• To answer your questions and enquiries
• To third parties where necessary for the verification of the details you have provided for references, qualifications and criminal reference checking services.
• To use your information on an anonymised basis to monitor compliance with our equal opportunities policy

Applying for our services

We will collect data about you, both personal data (such as your name and contact details) and also sensitive personal data (such as information about your mobility requirements and health). The personal data and sensitive personal data will be stored, processed and used in the following ways:

• Providing and administering our services
• Monitoring the quality of services provided
• To answer your questions and enquiries
• To use your information on an anonymised basis to monitor compliance with our equal opportunities policy

Information you give to us indirectly

This covers information that you don’t share with us directly but that is shared with us by other organisations with your permission.

This may include:

• The data we receive from independent fundraising platforms (e.g. JustGiving or Virgin Money Giving). We’ll only receive your information from these companies if you have given permission for them to share it with us.
• The information that you have shared with us publicly on social media (e.g. Facebook or Twitter).
• Third party data about you through social media channels, for example, your Twitter or Facebook feeds, to get to know you better and to provide more relevant communications to you.
• Non-personal information such as IP addresses (the location of a computer on the internet), pages accessed, and files downloaded. This helps us to determine how many people use our sites, how many people visit on a regular basis, and how popular our pages are. This information doesn't tell us anything about who you are or where you live. It simply allows us to monitor and improve our service.

If you have provided consent for another organisation to share your personal information with us, but you no longer wish to hear from us, you can change your mind at any time. Please contact us using the details provided in this policy or on the communication you have received.

Information about you obtained from third parties

This covers information that has been shared with us about you by someone else. This includes:

• When a friend sponsors a puppy for you as a gift or makes a donation in your name. 

This information will be used to complete the transaction or order as requested. If at any point you no longer wish to hear from us, you can contact us at any time. Please contact us using the details provided in this policy or on the communication you have received.

Further information on how we use your data

We treat information about you with great care and respect, and your information is only used if we have legal grounds to do so, which might be because:

• you have provided consent
• it is necessary to allow us to deal with your request, enquiry or purchase; (contract)
• we have a regulatory or legal obligation to do so;
• or the information is being used with Legitimate Interest to further our charitable aims.

What is Legitimate Interest?

This legal ground for processing means that organisations can process your personal information if they

1. have a genuine and legitimate reason for doing so and
2. That use does not harm any of your rights and interests as an individual.

We do not unduly prioritise our legitimate interests as a charity over your interests as an individual. We always respect your rights. Which is why we carry out a balancing exercise of the rights of the Charity with the rights of our supporters for the marketing communications we send.

We may use the information we collect to:

• Fulfil your requests – such as applications for services, donations, dog sponsorships, competition entries, participation in campaigns and provision of information or opportunities to volunteer or work for Support Dogs
• Process sales transactions, donations, other payments, verify financial transactions and process Gift Aid.
• Handle orders, deliver products and communicate with you about orders.
• Provide a personalised service to you when you visit our websites – this could include customising the content and/or layout of our pages for individual users
• Record any contact we have with you.
• Comply with legal and regulatory requirements and protect against fraud.
• Help diagnose problems with our website and server, administer our website, compile broad statistical data and update and maintain our website.
• Carry out research, profiling and screening on our supporters (using the data collection methods listed above) to help us gain a better understanding of them and to make appropriate requests to supporters who may be willing and able to give more than they already do.
• Communicate with our supporters and customers to share information about our work and how you can support it.
• We may upload your email address to third party sites (e.g. Mailchimp, Facebook and Google) to help us deliver targeted communications to you, and people similar to you, to help us improve the relevance and effectiveness of our fundraising and communications.
• If you enter your details onto one of our online forms, and you don’t ‘send’ or ‘submit’ the form, we may contact you to see if we can help with any problems you may be experiencing with the form or our websites.
• Identify visitors to our sites or locations where we undertake operations.

Legitimate Interest to send you direct mail

Unless you tell us not to, we will rely on our Legitimate Interest ground (explained above) for sending you direct mail. From time to time, we would like to post you exciting updates about our work, products, services and how you can support us, including fundraising activities and research. Unless you have requested that we do not send you some, or all of this, our direct mailings do include marketing and fundraising asks which are vital to the growth of our charity.

Who we share your personal information with

We have great respect for the information we know about you and we do not swap, sell or rent your personal information to anyone.

We will only share your information if:

• We are legally required to do so, e.g. by a law enforcement agency legitimately exercising a power or if compelled by an order of the court.
• We believe it is necessary to protect or defend our rights, property or the personal safety of our people or visitors to our premises or websites.
• We are working with a secure partner that is carrying out work on our behalf.

These secure partners will include our website providers, mailing houses and IT specialists. The kind of work we may ask them to do includes; processing, packaging, mailing and delivering of purchases, processing card payments or sending mail.

All our website financial transactions are handled through our payment services providers, Stripe or PayPal. You can review Stripes privacy policy at https://stripe.com/gb/privacy and Paypals at https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-prev . Direct Debits are handled through GoCardless. You can review the provider's privacy policy at https://gocardless.com/legal/privacy/  

Our website provider Raising IT will use data to carry out analysis and research on who is using our website, demographics, interests and behavior to help us gain a better understanding of them and improve our website and services.  This may include connecting data we receive from you on the website to data available from other sources. 

Where we store your personal information

Your information is stored on computers located in the UK or securely on the Microsoft cloud. We may transfer the information to other offices and to other reputable third-party organisations as explained above – they may be situated inside or outside the European Economic Area. We may also store information in paper files.

How long we keep your personal information

Without your kind support our charity simply wouldn’t exist. Because of this we value every interaction we experience with you. We believe it’s important to remember our history together, especially if you get back in touch with us or leave us a gift in your Will.

However, as with all relationships, we know that things can change and we understand that you may choose to have a break from supporting our work.

Therefore, if you do not make a donation or interact with us for seven years, we will remove your details from our database.

You have the right to request that we delete your details at any stage. Our contact details are at the top and bottom of this policy.

Cookies and online policy

‘Cookies’ are small text files that record information on your computer about the websites you visit and how you use them. Our website uses cookies to help us understand who is visiting our website, how they interact with it and to make sure it’s working effectively. We do not access any information stored in cookies placed on your machine by other websites.

If you would like to stop our cookies from being stored on your computer in future, you can do so by following instructions on your Internet browser.

For more information on this and the cookies we use please refer to our Cookies policy.

Web security

We place a great importance on the security of all personally identifiable information associated with our kind supporters, customers and users.

• We have security measures in place to attempt to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of personal data under our control. For example, only authorised personnel are authorised to access user information and we use Secure Server Software (SSL) to encrypt financial and personal information you input before it is sent to us.  
• Financial transactions made online to Support Dogs using this website are secure.  No one can access your credit card details when you use our site.
• We use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) across our website to encrypt all personal and financial data, including your name, address, email address and direct debit details.
• You can see the connection is secure by looking at the padlock or key icon in your browser.
• While we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of data will not occur while it is under our control, we use our best efforts to try to prevent this.

Unfortunately, the transmission of data across the internet is not completely secure and whilst we do our best to try to protect the security of your information we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of data will not occur whilst data is being transferred.

Your rights and contacting us

The General Data Protection Regulation gives you certain rights over your data and how we use it. These include:

• The right to be informed
• The right of access
• The right to rectification
• The right to erasure
• The right to restrict processing
• The right to data portability
• The right to object
• Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

You have a right to ask us to stop processing your personal data, if it is not necessary for the purpose you provided it to us for (e.g. processing your donation or registering you for an event) we will stop.  Please contact us on 0114 261 7800 or email [email protected] if you have any concerns and we will be happy to help.

If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, you wish to exercise any of your rights above, or you wish to change your contact preferences at any point you can do so by contacting us on 0114 261 7800 or email [email protected] You have a right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you,  if there are any discrepancies in the information we provide, please let us know and we will correct them.

If you want to access your information, please send a description of the information you want to see and proof of your identity (photo copy or scan of document with proof of who you are) by post to Rita Howson, Chief executive, Support Dogs, 21 Jessops Riverside, Brightside Lane, Sheffield, S9 2RX. We may not accept these requests by email to ensure that we only provide personal data to the right person.

For more information about your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation, please visit the website of the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.