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Our Privacy Policy

At Cure4DM we know how important it is to protect your privacy and personal information.

This policy sets out how we use your information to help further our work in supporting dogs with

Degenerative Myelopathy. 

We want you to feel confident how we use your information when you support our mission,

to 'Strive for Education and awareness about DM

while supporting DM Research'

This policy covers all personal information collected by Cure4DM. It applies to you if you

interact with us, for example if:

​

  • You are a supporter of Cure4DM (this includes donors, volunteers)

  • You use any of our services

  • You visit our website.

  • You email, call or write to us.

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Our privacy and cookie policy may change from time to time. To keep up to date, please visit these pages occasionally.

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If you have any questions relating to this policy or how we use your personal information, please contact us:

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  • By post: Cure4DM, Watts Cottage, Guildford Road, Shamley Green, Guildford, Surrey GU5 0RS

 

 

Last updated: May 2024.

Who are 'we'?

In this policy, whenever you see the words ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’ or ‘Cure4DM’, it refers to Cure4DM. Cure4DM is the data controller responsible for keeping your personal information safe and using it wisely. We do share your information within the Cure4DM organisation, which is: • Cure4DM registered charity number 1206120

What information do we collect?

Depending on how you interact with Cure4DM, we might collect your personal information to help us provide and improve our services as a charity and to keep a record of our communications with you. The information we collect might include: • Contact details, like your name, email address, postal address and phone number; • IP address, username and other network activity data (see our Cookie Policy for more information about what data we might collect using cookies); • Responses you provide to our surveys and research, which might include gender, marital status and age bracket; • Professional information, like job title and organisation; • Date of birth; • Bank account number and other financial details; • Sponsorship or membership information; • Taxpayer status, so we can claim Gift Aid; • Communication preferences • A record of our communications with you; • Your supporter and engagement history; • Photography and videography; • Sensitive information (see below); • Publicly available information from social media. If you are looking for personal advice about your dog we might collect information specifically about your dog, such as their medical conditions, behaviour and treatments to give some ‘general, personal advice’ but we are not vets and you should always consult with your own vet for advice or confirmation. If you are looking for a cart or mobility aid for your dog through an external, independent organisation we utilise to offer this service, we may request measurements, weight, age, sex and breed of your dog along with your own contact details. In some cases, we may also collect information about you from publicly available sources, such as financial, philanthropic and professional information.

Special catagories of sensitive personal information

We do not normally collect any special catagories of sensitive, personal information about you, such as your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. Nor do we collect any information about criminal offences and convictions.

Where we collect your information?

Cure4DM will process your personal information when you: • Sign up for any of our publications or newsletters • Become a regular donor • Volunteer for us • Purchase from our online shop if we have one • Visit our website • Telephone, write, contact us online, or provide your personal information in some other way, such as filling in a form or application on our website. • Take part in any research that supports DM dogs, their owners and our charitable purposes.

information from third parties and public sources

In an interaction with another organisation (e.g., signing up for a service), you may have agreed for your personal information to be passed to organisations like us for lead generation purposes. We would use that lead generation data to contact you about our work, subject to your communication preferences. For example, we may send you a message/post or email after receiving your information from a third party. If we do that, we ensure to put text on the mailing itself to let you know exactly where we sourced your data from and how you can change your preferences; we do not store this personal information ourselves unless you respond to the communication. In some situations, we may update our supporters’ personal information using information from public registers or other agencies. For example, we may check the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), Fundraising Preference Service (FPS) or the Royal Mail's National Change of Address Database to ensure our records are up-to-date and accurate. We may also check for deceased and gone-away records to make sure we are not attempting to contact those who have deceased or moved. We also use publicly available information to identify potential donors who may like to support our work by donating a gift. The information will be used as the basis for the development of a fundraising relationship should you wish to.

Our legal basis for collecting information

We always make sure that we have a valid ground for processing your personal information. Depending on the circumstances in which it has been collected and used, we rely on one of the following legal bases: • Where you have provided your consent to allow us to use your personal information in a certain way, such as receiving news by email, phone, post or text message • Where the processing is necessary to honour a contract with you, such as providing DM Information, promotional items for fundraising or sale of goods through an online store • A legal obligation to use or disclose information, such as keeping records for Gift Aid purposes • Where it is in our legitimate interest to perform administrative functions or for governance, such as; processing donations or following up an information request, or • Where it is in our legitimate interest to generate funds or publicise our work, such as send you marketing communications by post or email, according to your preferences.

When we use legitimate interest

Legitimate interest is a legal ground for processing your data. It means that our use of your information must be fair and balanced to ensure we consider your privacy rights and interests as an individual. Listed below is a summary of all Cure4DM legitimate interests to hold and process your information. GOVERNANCE • Delivery of our charitable purpose, which you can see in detail in the Cure4DM Constitution • Reporting criminal acts and compliance with law enforcement agencies • Internal and external audit for financial or regulatory compliance purposes • Reporting required by law or regulation GENERATING FUNDS AND PUBLICISING OUR WORK • Direct marketing, which is marketing that is actionable by the recipient and measurable by us • Other forms of free or paid for marketing, publicity or advertising including campaigns, income generation and fundraising to support our work • Marketing communications by post where our legitimate interest is to raise funds to deliver our charitable purposes • Digital marketing, using tools on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Google, Twitter, TikTok or LinkedIn to support our work and increase engagement with us • Personalisation of communications such as post or email, so they are relevant and interesting • Analysis, targeting, and segmentation to improve our understanding of our audiences and our ability to do more for DM dogs • Processing for research purposes, including market research MANAGING OUR OPERATIONS • Physical security, information technology and network security • Processing for historical, scientific or statistical purposes • Financial control and management • Processing financial transactions and keeping financial controls • Prevention of fraud, misuse of our services, or money laundering • Where Cure4DM has been named as beneficiary or gifts in Wills ADMINISTRATIVE PURPOSES • Responding to enquiries or complaints • Delivering orders for products or information • Delivering any membership benefits • Administration of Gift Aid • Maintenance of suppression files, to ensure we honour ‘do not contact’ requests • Sending thank you communications and receipts • Administration of active financial transactions

Children and vulnerable people

CHILDREN We are always happy to have the support of children and young people who we hear would like to fundraise for us. Children should always ask a parent or guardian for permission before sending personal information to anyone online. If you or your child are planning to fundraise for us, and you contact us, we may collect information on either/ or both of you for publicity/promotional purposes. For those under 16, where appropriate we may seek consent from a parent, guardian or carer before collecting their information. VULNERABLE PEOPLE We care about the safety of vulnerable persons and, while we welcome their support, if we become aware they are fundraising for us we may collect information to ensure their needs and rights are being upheld.

Accuracy, profiling and analysis

You our supporters make all of our vital work for dogs with DM possible. We have a duty to make sure that we are spending your donations wisely and that means doing some research and analysis to inform our decisions. ACCURACY To improve the relevance of the communications we send you, and to ensure we are using your information efficiently, we may check, analyse and enhance your personal information. From time to time, we may contact you to ensure that the information you have provided remains accurate and up to date. If we have not heard from you for some time, we may also contact you to check that you are happy for us to continue sending communications. PROFILING AND ANALYSIS We may also analyse your information to help us understand the likelihood that you will be interested in, or responsive to communications such as news or information about DM. This helps us to take a more personal and informed approach to our communication with you and allows us to raise funds to support dogs more effectively and efficiently. Following regulatory obligations and our policy, we may also use such personal information to carry out due diligence on potential or actual donors. If you opt-out of analysis of your data in this way, we may not be able to accept donations from you. If you would prefer us not to analyse your information, or to add to it, you can let us know.

How we use your information

In brief, we process your personal information to help us with our mission to provide our charitable services, comply with the law and to help us raise funds for our charitable purposes. PURPOSES OF PROCESSING Below are summeries of the main ways we use personal information, we have provided some possible examples of purposes for which we may collect, store and process your data. These uses depend on how you interact with and use our various services, websites and activities and our relationship with you. Please also see our ‘When we use legitimate interest’ section, which includes details on how we may process your data when it is within our legitimate interest to do so. KEEPING YOU INFORMED If you agree to receive communications from us or it is in our legitimate interest to contact you, we may be in touch with you about the following: • Newsletters and updates, keeping you up to date on everything to do with Degenerative Myelopathy (DM) • Any website changes such as an online shop, promotions or any other news or information we feel may be of interest to you. • Appeals and fundraising – everything from requests for donations, new ways you can raise funds for our work, for example: how you can leave us a gift in your will or organising a quizz night • News about the difference your donations are making • Latest research news • New opportunities to support us • Volunteering to support our charity, eg: new role positions we are looking for. Depending on your preferences, you may receive communications by post, email, or phone. You can change your preferences at any time. We’ll never share your personal information with organisations outside the Cure4DM charity organisation for their own marketing purposes. We may also process your information to communicate with you regarding an enquiry you make. DONATIONS AND FUNDRAISING If you donate or fundraise for us, we’ll use any personal information you give us to process your gift and claim Gift Aid if you have told us you’re eligible. We may send you a thank you letter and send you administrative communications. If you’ve told us about leaving a gift in your will, we will keep details of this. Where a donor has passed away and we are receiving their legacy gift, we will manage and administer their legacy donation. This involves processing personal information of individuals involved in the estate administration. Cure4DM does not organise any fundraisers directly at this time, but if you fundraise for us (we have lots of exciting ideas and information about how to do this on our website) and you let us know, we may process your personal information to assist with prizes, promotional items or publish your images, names and stories to promote your fundraiser that you are doing for our cause, but always with your prior permission. COOKIES For information on our use of cookies, please see our Cookie Policy. RESEARCH We may carry out our own research with our supporters to get feedback on our services, how we can improve them and better meet the needs of our supporters with information, services and supporting research funding. If you choose to take part in one of our research projects, we will ask for your consent to use the information you provide for our research purposes. CASE STUDIES Stories, photos and case studies from our supporters are a vital and important part of the content we share to illustrate our work, which we couldn’t do without you. We might use these in places such as on our website, our social media pages, newsletters, promotional literature. Wherever we use such information, we will always obtain your prior consent. BUYING FROM OUR ONLINE SHOP If we have an online shop. when you buy goods from the shop, we’ll collect information from you so that we can process and fulfil your order or contact you if we have any queries about your order. We may use that information to send you updates on products or DM VOLUNTEERS If you’re a volunteer we will collect details to support, provide training for and communicate with you about your work. Although highly unlikely, as we are an online charity, we may also need extra information about you, (such as references, criminal records checks, details of emergency contacts or medical conditions) . We will keep this information for legal or contractual reasons, to protect us (including in the event of an insurance or legal claim), and for safeguarding purposes. We may keep your personal information for a register of current volunteers, which will be held and processed so that we can contact you about future volunteering opportunities. We’ll only hold information relating to the nature of your voluntary work and we’ll delete it in accordance with our retention policies.

Keeping your information safe

We employ a variety of physical and technical measures to keep your personal data safe and to prevent unauthorised access to, or use or disclosure of it. Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems and we control who has access to them (using both physical and electronic means). FINANCIAL DATA We ensure that additional controls are in place for financial Information, to make sure we meet regulatory and legal requirements for managing this type of transaction/ information. Your payments via debit or credit card are passed securely to our payment processing partner which ensures you can be confident your donations are secure. They are a Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant platform with over 10,000 charities utilising their services. We cannot absolutely guarantee the security of the internet, external networks or your own device, accordingly any online communications (e.g. information provided by email or through our website) are at your own risk.

How we disclose and share your information

We share personal information within our organisation, Cure4DM registered charity No. 1206120 SERVICE PROVIDERS We may share your information with trusted service providers who work on our behalf, for example, software platform providers and IT maintenance providers. We only provide them with the information they need to deliver the relevant service. In some circumstances relevant staff of our service providers will have access to your personal information. This access is granted to the extent necessary for them to perform their services for us. All our service providers must comply with strict rules to protect the information you have given us. REQUIRED SHARING Where necessary and proportionately, we may need to share your information for legal and compliance reasons. For example, we must share Gift Aid data with HMRC. If we have a safeguarding concern, we may share your personal information with the relevant authority. We also share information to further fraud protection and reduce the risk of fraud, or when requested by the police or a regulatory or government authority investigating illegal activities.

How long we keep your information

We will retain personal information for different periods of time depending on your relationship with us and in line with our Retention Policy and Schedules, relevant laws and best practice recommendations. Once we no longer need to keep it we will delete or dispose of it safely and securely. If you request no further contact from us, we will only keep basic information about you on our suppression list to avoid sending you unwanted materials in the future.

Your data protection rights

You have a number of rights under data protection legislation. YOUR RIGHT OF ACCESS You have the right know what information we hold about you and you can request to see it verbally or in writing. This is called a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR). We will supply any such information you ask for as soon as possible and within 30 days, although this timeframe may be extended by up to two months if your request is particularly complex. You will be asked for proof of identity as we need to be sure we are only releasing your personal information to you. You can call, write to, or email us with your request. Please put ATT. DATA PROTECTION - SUBJECT ACCESS REQUEST on your envelope, or in the subject line of your email, so we can process your request as quickly as possible. YOUR RIGHT TO BE INFORMED You have the right to be informed how your personal information will be used. This policy, as well as any additional information or notice that is provided to you either when you provided your details, or otherwise, is intended to provide you with this information. YOUR RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CONSENT OR OBJECT Where we process your personal information based on your consent (such as sending emails or text messages) you can withdraw that consent at any time. You also have a right to object to us processing data where we are relying on it being within our legitimate interests to do so, such as sending you information by post. YOUR RIGHT TO RESTRICT PROCESSING In certain situations, you have the right to ask for processing of your personal information to be restricted, such as a disagreement about its accuracy or legitimate usage. YOUR RIGHT OF ERASURE In some cases, you have the right to be forgotten, which requires that your personal information is deleted from our systems. Where you have requested that we do not send you communications, we will need to keep some limited information on a suppression list, so we know not to contact you again. OTHER RIGHTS As well as rights of access and amendment referred to above, individuals may have other rights in relation to the personal information we hold, such as the right to data portability, the right to rectification, and rights relating to automated decision making and profiling. CONTACTING THE DATA PROTECTION TEAM If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact the Data Protection Team: By email: dataprotection@cure4dm.org By post: Cure4DM -Data protection Watts Cottage, Guildford Road, Guildford, Surrey, GU5 0RS If you wish to change your communication preferences or update your contact details, please see how to do so in the ‘Contact us’ section below.

Contact us - what to do if you would like to update your information -  change your communication preferences - or you are not happy about anything.

Please help us get things right by telling us when your contact details and other personal information changes. You can change your communication preferences or opt-out of marketing at any time: • By email: contact@cure4dm.org • Through our website: https://www.cure4dm.org/contact-us Please note that if you tell us if you no longer want to hear from us, and you are on our supporter database, you may receive a few items in the following weeks. This is because we select supporter information a few weeks in advance of sending information to you. If you ask us to stop contacting you altogether, we will keep your contact information on our suppression list to ensure that you do not receive unwanted future communications. DATA PROTECTION ENQUIRIES AND COMPLAINTS The Data Protection Team can answer any queries you have about how Cure4DM processes your personal information: • By email: contact@cure4dm.org • By our website: https://www.cure4dm.org/contact-us • By post: Watts Cottage, Guildford Road, Guildford, Surrey. GU5 0RS If you have a complaint regarding data protection, please contact the Data Protection Team directly in the first instance using the contact information above. If you are not satisfied with the response from the Data Protection Team, you can email complaints@cure4dm.org and it will be handled in accordance with our Complaints Policy.

In addition, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office or to the Fundraising Regulator. Please note that Cure4DM has no affiliation with, and is not responsible for, third party websites linked in this policy.

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