Privacy policy

Introduction

Here at the Thornbury Volunteer Centre we are committed to maintaining your trust and confidence in us by protecting your privacy. If we ask you to provide information by which you can be identified, the information will be used only in the ways we describe in this privacy policy. We will be open with you at all times about what information we collect and what we do with it. Everything we do takes account of the Data Protection Act and the General Data Protection Regulation.

What information we ask for

We will collect and store information about you or your organisation if you complete one of the forms on this site or use our contact form. We need this information to understand your needs and to provide you with an effective service. We will not collect more personal information than we need to fulfil our purposes and will not retain it for longer than necessary.

If you are intending to volunteer we will use the information you provide solely to communicate with you. We will not share your personal details with anyone else unless required by law.

On your behalf, we will approach organisations offering relevant opportunities but we will ask your permission before we identify you to them. We will also, as part of the registration process, ask your permission to include you in our mailing list. This is so we can send you e-alerts and updates on all volunteering issues related to the promotion and development of volunteering in the Thornbury and district area.

As part of our aftercare service and for statistical purposes we may contact an organisation to learn whether you have taken up an opportunity; necessarily we will have to mention your name when doing so but we will provide no other details.

If, after five years, you no longer have an active relationship with us our electronic records will be deleted and our physical records destroyed.

If you are an organisation that provides us with personal information about your staff (eg through an email address in the format jo.bloggs@nameofcharity.co.uk) we will pass that personal data to potential volunteers and will retain it, both on paper and electronically as long as your organisation has an active relationship with us.

What we use your information for

The information you provide will be used to match volunteers and organisations offering volunteering opportunities or to fulfil any legal or regulatory requirements. We use it:

• to provide our core service;
• to maintain records of our operations for management purposes;
• to bring you up to date with information and events; and
• to provide statistical information to grant-giving or statutory bodies.

This information — on gender, race, employment status and locality — is collected only to meet the requirements of external bodies. We do not use this information ourselves. It is provided to these bodies in a form that can’t identify any individual.

Keeping your information secure

We are committed to ensuring that any information you supply is secure. To prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable electronic, physical and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect.

We use Transport Layer Security (TLS) to protect the connection between your computer or handheld device and our website. This means that personal details you include in forms cannot be intercepted even if you use an unsecured wi-fi connection. Submission of your personal details from web forms to our computers is similarly protected.

We also use TLS to encrypt and protect email traffic between you and us. If your email service doesn’t support TLS, any emails we send or receive may not be protected in transit.

Our office computers and databases are protected by passwords. Personal information on paper is stored in locked cabinets. The office security systems are regularly reviewed.

Social media

We publish details of new opportunities to social media such as Facebook and Twitter. These do not contain personal information. If you access these sites via links on our website or otherwise, control of any personal information you supply is governed by their own privacy policies.

How to access your personal information held by us

You are entitled to view, amend or delete the personal information that we hold at any time. Please send your request to our Data Controller, whose details are below.

If you have a complaint concerning the information we hold

In the first instance, please contact the Data Controller, whose details are below. If jointly you are unable to resolve the complaint, you may take it to the Chair of Trustees.

Cookies

A cookie is a small file which many websites, as standard practice, place in your browser to manage your progress through a site. We set a cookie on a small number of our pages but these do not identify you personally and are deleted when you close your browser. No data from cookies is passed to any third party. Browsers usually allow you to prevent cookies being stored but if you do this the pages on our site that require them may not work. You will be warned about this when you open the page.

Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other websites of interest. We supply these in the hope that they may be useful to you but we are not responsible for their content.

Data Controller contact details

Our Data Controller is Kim Webb, Development Co-ordinator. Contact details.