We’re making some updates to our Privacy Policy. Because this will change the kind of data we collect and what we do with it, we’re publishing these changes here 30 days before they go live.
These changes will help us to raise the funds we need to keep our services free and accessible to everyone who needs them, to develop more services in the future, and to fight for better cleft care.
We know that most of our fundraisers and donors have a close personal connection to cleft, and it’s always been important to us that you feel your data is safe with us. That’s why we’re explaining these changes as clearly as possible so you can continue to feel confident that we’re treating your data respectfully and responsibly.
Please get in touch if you have any questions or concerns.
Contacting you by telephone
Our current Privacy Policy states that we will only contact you by email or post to ask for donations (assuming you have given consent for us to do so). Our new policy will say that we can also contact you by telephone if you’ve given consent for us to do so.
This doesn’t mean we’ll start calling you out of the blue to ask for donations! Wherever possible, we’ll contact you by email or post first to see if you’d like to arrange a phone call. This will only happen if you’ve supported CLAPA before and we think you may want to find out more or get more involved.
Can I opt out?
We’ll only contact you by telephone in this way if you’ve given consent for us to do so. If you’ve already opted-in, you can update your preferences using our online form.
Research using public sources of information
Our current Privacy Policy states that we’ll only use our own data on your past donations and fundraising practices to inform our communications to you. Our new Privacy Policy will state that we may also use publicly available information sources (like Companies House, business-related resources, or property websites) for these purposes.
This also helps us with:
- Due diligence before seeking or accepting significant donations
- Carrying out required identity, source of funds, and money laundering checks.
- Assessing whether individuals are subject to sanctions.
We will only research current or prospective supporters, and the details of this research won’t be attached to your personal records
Can I opt out?
Yes. We have added a ‘Don’t research me’ opt-out to our ‘Update my details’ form. You can update this now if you’d prefer that we don’t research you like this.
Please note that in some cases we will still need to research you as part of our legal obligations before asking for or accepting support.
Demographic data
Demographic data includes things like your age, gender and ethnicity.
We already collect data which helps us to provide you with a better service, such as (for example) the fact that you or your child were born with a cleft, or your child’s birth date.
We are going to start asking for data which we won’t use day-to-day, but which will be very useful in helping CLAPA to understand how different groups of people use our services and how we can make these more welcoming and accessible, such as your ethnicity and gender.
You will now be asked to (optionally) provide this data when you sign up for our e-newsletter or after you sign up for certain services and events. We will make sure you’re not asked for this more than three times, and that you can opt-out of being asked again.
The key change here is that this data will now be linked to your personal record on our secure database, but it will be carefully restricted. We’ll only ever look at this data together with lots of other people’s data, never to identify you personally.
Can I opt-out?
It’s completely up to you whether you give this extra data to us or now. You can skip any of these questions which you don’t want to answer on any form where they appear. On these forms, there will also be a ‘don’t ask me again’ option which will stop you from being asked again directly.
Questions and concerns
It’s important to us that you feel confident about how we’re handling your data. This is why we do our best to communicate our policies and changes like this in ‘Plain English’.
If you have questions or concerns about anything you’ve read here, please get in touch.