Privacy policy

Privacy policy last updated 28 October 2021.

1. Purpose of this Policy

Common Cause Foundation (“Common Cause”, “CCF”, “we”, “us” or “our”) takes the protection of your personal data seriously. This Privacy Policy explains how we use any personal information that you supply to us, or that might be collected from a third party, and sets out your rights in respect of our processing of your personal information.

In particular, this Policy explains: 

  • the kinds of personal information we collect about you; 
  • the means by which we obtain your personal information; 
  • the ways in which we use your personal information; 
  • the basis on which we use your personal information; 
  • the length of time that we keep your personal information; 
  • who we share your personal information with; 
  • how we protect your personal information; and 
  • where and why we transfer your personal information outside of the EU.

We may collect your personal data in your capacity as a partner, donor, volunteer, applicant, participant in a research project, training course or event, subscriber to our marketing lists, supplier, or because you are a visitor to our website (www.commoncausefoundation.org) (the “Site”). 

You provide your personal data to us on a voluntary basis. But without providing us with your personal data, you will be unable to (as appropriate) receive our regular update and events emails, access our training courses, make a donation or apply for employment with us.

This Privacy Policy is intended to assist you in making informed decisions about your personal data. Please take a moment to read and understand it.

2. About Us

CCF’s mission is to help build the foundations needed to shift cultures away from competition, inequality and oppression, and towards regeneration, equity and harmony, by celebrating and elevating the intrinsic values that underpin our care for one another and our living planet. We are a Company Limited by Guarantee with an asset lock, registered in England and Wales under registration number 09413020. Our registered office address is c/o Cohen Corkery, Chartered Certified Accountants, 30 Chertsey Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5AJ

3. How We Collect Your Personal Information

We may collect your personal information in the following ways:

(1) When you give it to us DIRECTLY

You may give us your personal data in various ways, including when you interact with us on social media, when you apply to participate in our training or events, when you opt-in to receive our update emails, when you apply for employment with us, when you apply to volunteer with us, when you contact us by phone, email or post, and/or when you donate money to us.

(2) When you give it to us INDIRECTLY

Your information may be shared with us by others including  our strategic partners, business contacts, sponsors and supporters of our organisation and services. Your information may also be provided to us when you follow us or otherwise interact with us on or via Twitter, when you like and/or join our page on LinkedIn or interact with us on other social media platforms.

(3) When you give permission to OTHER ORGANISATIONS to share it or it is AVAILABLE PUBLICLY

We may combine information you provide to us with information available from external publicly available sources. We use this information to gain a better understanding of you and to improve our communications, network facilitation, training and fundraising activities.

(4) When you visit our WEBSITE

We use cookies when you visit our website, which may record personal information about you. Please refer to our Cookies Policy for details on the way we use cookies.

4. The Information We Collect and Process

We may process the following kinds of personal data:

  • Your name and contact details, including physical address, telephone number and email address, and social media identity;
  • Financial information, such as payment-related information, including bank details or debit/credit card details;
  • Other personal information we receive in the course of providing services to you, including details of why you have decided to contact us/apply to one of our training courses, details of training you have attended, details of topics/areas of interest to you, responses to surveys you have completed, equal opportunities monitoring information and information about any health and disability-related requirements;
  • Technical information, including information about your visits to and use of our Site, your IP address, geographical location, browser type, length of visit and number of pages viewed;
  • Marketing information, including information about the services you use, services and products of interest to you or any marketing and/or communication preferences you give.

Processing special categories of personal information

Applicable law recognises certain categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore requiring more protection. These categories include health information, ethnicity, trade union membership, religious beliefs, sexuality, and political opinions. We may collect this type of data in the following circumstances:

  • For our training course applicants in order to monitor equal opportunities and the accessibility of our services;
  • To ensure our provision is sensitive to the health needs of participants;
  • In the interest of positive action/anti-oppression, where we’re running opportunities e.g. training courses with limited places;
  • Where you voluntarily share information about your political views or your trade union membership, which we use to better understand your interests and ensure we are providing appropriate services.

We only collect sensitive personal data if there is a clear reason for doing so and only when you have given explicit consent.

5. How and Why We Use Your Personal Data

We may use your personal information to:

  1. Manage and administer our relationship with you, including providing you with services, products and information that you have requested;
  2. Market our services, including sending you information about our work, trainings, events, organisation and any other information, products or services that we provide;
  3. Administer our Site, including monitoring its use;
  4. Administer payments;
  5. Administer applications to our training courses;
  6. Administer your employment and/or volunteering application;
  7. Conduct research and data analysis into the impact of our work, including using analytics tools such as Google Analytics;
  8. Deal with enquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to the Site or us in general;
  9. Carry out financial management and controls, including processing financial transactions and maintain financial controls; prevent fraud, misuse of services and money laundering; enforce legal claims; and report criminal acts and comply with law enforcement agencies;
  10.  Audit and/or administer our accounts and conduct other statutory reporting and regulatory compliance;
  11.  Manage individuals’ preferences, including administering suppression files;
  12.  Conduct member and supporter research;
  13.  Meet any other of our legal, regulatory and risk management obligations.

Using our services

If you apply to participate in one of our training courses or events, then we will process your personal information in order to provide that service to you and to monitor the effectiveness and reach of our services as described above.

If you participate in one of our courses or events, your information will be stored on TicketTailor. You can check TicketTailor’s Privacy Policy here: https://www.tickettailor.com/privacy-policy/ 

We also use Google Forms and Google Sheets to process applications for events and programmes. You can check Google’s Privacy Policy here: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en 

If you sign up to receive our newsletter, your information will be stored on Mailchimp. You can check Mailchimp’s Privacy Policy here: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/ 

Supporter research

We may use your personal information to undertake research to gather further information about you from publicly accessible sources. This helps us gain a better understanding of your background, interests and preferences, in order to improve our communications and/or interactions with you, to help ensure they are targeted to be relevant and appropriate, and to provide information about trainings and other aspects of our work which we consider may be of interest to you.

Marketing

Where you have provided appropriate consent, we may contact you by telephone and email, with targeted communications to let you know about our work and/or activities that we consider may be of particular interest, about the work of the company and to ask for donations or other support.

Using our Site

We use cookies on our Site, which may collect your personal information. For example, we may use Google Analytics to review some of your personal information, in order to analyse our digital performance, record how you are using our Site and/or assess the popularity of our email communications. This helps us improve our Site. For more information on how we use cookies, please view our cookie policy by clicking this link.

Payment processing

Financial transactions carried out on our website or when booking on to one of our trainings are handled through Stripe. This is a third party payment provider. We recommend that you read their privacy policy prior to affecting any transactions with us. Stripe’s privacy policy can be found here: https://stripe.com/gb/privacy. We will provide your personal data to Stripe only to the extent necessary for the purposes of processing payments for transactions you enter into with us. We do not store your financial details.

6. Lawful Basis for Processing your Personal Information

We are required to have one or more lawful grounds to process your personal information. We use your personal information on the following bases:

  1. Personal information is processed on the basis of a data subject’s consent
  2. Personal information is processed on the basis of a contractual relationship
  3. Personal information is processed on the basis of legal obligations
  4. Personal information is processed on the basis of legitimate interests
  1. Consent

We will ask for your consent to use your information to send you electronic communications such as newsletters and marketing or fundraising emails, for targeted advertising and profiling and if you ever share sensitive personal information with us.

  1. Contractual relationships

Most of our interactions with subscribers and website users are voluntary and not contractual. However, sometimes it will be necessary to process personal information so that we can enter contractual relationships with people. For example, if you apply for employment or to volunteer with us, or if you purchase something from us.

  1. Legal obligations

Sometimes we will be obliged to process your personal information due to legal obligations which are binding on us. We will only ever do so when strictly necessary.

  1. Legitimate interests

Applicable law allows personal information to be collected and used if it is reasonably necessary for our legitimate activities (as long as its use is fair, balanced and does not unduly impact individuals’ rights). We will rely on this ground to process your personal data when it is not practical or appropriate to ask for consent. 

When we use your personal information, we will consider if it is fair and balanced to do so and if it is within your reasonable expectations. We will balance your rights and our legitimate interests to ensure that we use your personal information in ways that are not unduly intrusive or unfair in other ways.

Where we have relied upon your consent as the ground for lawful processing, you are entitled to withdraw your consent at any time, and such withdrawal of consent will not undermine the lawfulness of processing based upon consent prior to the withdrawal.

When we have relied upon legitimate interests as the ground for lawful processing, you are entitled to object to our processing on this ground.

If you wish to exercise either of these rights, then please contact us as directed in Section 14 of this policy.

7. Children’s Data

Our services are not aimed at children and we do not knowingly process data of any person under the age of 16. If we come to discover, or have reason to believe, that you are 15 and under and we are holding your personal information, we will delete that information within a reasonable period and withhold our services accordingly.

8. Other Disclosures

In addition to the disclosures reasonably necessary for the purposes identified elsewhere in this privacy policy, we will disclose your information to regulatory and/or government bodies and/or law enforcement agencies upon request only when absolutely necessary to do so in order to satisfy legal obligations which are binding on us.

9. Security of and Access to Your Personal Data

We want to ensure your data is safe and so have put in place appropriate and proportionate technical and organisational measures to prevent the loss, destruction, misuse, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of or access to your personal information.

Your information is only accessible by appropriately trained employees, contractors and volunteers of the Common Cause Foundation and we provide training on the protection of personal data.

10. Your Rights

Where we rely on your consent to use your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This includes the right to ask us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes or to be unsubscribed from our email list at any time. You also have the following rights:

  1. Right to be informed – you have the right to be told how your personal information will be used. This Policy and other policies and statements used on our website and in our communications are intended to provide you with a clear and transparent description of how your personal information may be used.
  1. Right of access – you can write to us to ask for confirmation of what information we hold on you and to request a copy of that information. Provided we are satisfied that you are entitled to see the information requested and we have successfully confirmed your identity, we have 30 days to comply.
  1. Right of erasure – you may ask us for your personal information to be deleted from our records in certain circumstances.
  1. Right of rectification – if you believe our records of your personal information are inaccurate, you have the right to ask for those records to be updated.
  1. Right to restrict processing – you have the right to ask for processing of your personal data to be restricted in limited circumstances, including if you dispute its accuracy or while an objection to processing on the ground of legitimate interests is under investigation.
  1. Right to data portability – to the extent required by the General Data Protection Regulations (“GDPR”) where we are processing your personal information (i) under your consent, (ii) because such processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are party or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract or (iii) by automated means, you may ask us to provide it to you – or another service provider – in a machine-readable format.
  1. Right to object to processing – you have an absolute right to object to processing for direct marketing purposes and a qualified right to object to processing in certain other circumstances, for example on the ground of legitimate interests.

To exercise any of the above rights, please contact us using the details in Section 14 below. Please note that some of these rights only apply in limited circumstances. For further information on your rights as a data subject, we suggest that you consult the guidance of the Commissioner’s Office (ICO): https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/ 

Finally, you are further entitled to make a complaint to the ICO about us or the way we have processed your personal data. For further information on how to exercise this right, please see the guidance at https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/. The contact details of the ICo can be found here: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/. 

11. Data Retention

We keep your personal information only for as long as is necessary for our purposes. In considering how long to keep it, we will take into account its relevance to our business and our legal and regulatory obligations. 

If (i) your personal information is no longer required in connection with such purposes, (ii) we are no longer lawfully entitled to process it or (iii) you validly exercise your right to erasure, we will remove it from our records at the relevant time.

In the event that you ask us to stop sending you direct marketing, fundraising or other electronic communications, we will keep your name on our internal suppression list to ensure that you are not contacted again.

12. Policy Amendments

We keep this Privacy Policy under regular review and reserve the right to amend it from time to time by posting an updated version on our Site, not least because of changes in applicable law. We recommend that you check this Policy occasionally to ensure you remain happy with it. We may also notify you of changes to our Policy by email.

13. Third Party Websites

We link our Site directly to other websites. This Privacy Policy does not cover third party websites and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any external websites you visit via links on our website.

14. Contacting Us

You may contact us with any privacy concerns – including to check the personal data we hold about you, update your information or exercise your rights as a data subject – by email at info@commoncausefoundation.org

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