Privacy Policy

1. INTRODUCTION

At Avid’s Angels Cat Rescue, we are committed to protecting your privacy. This Policy explains how and why we use your personal data (i.e. any information which identifies you, or which can be identified as relating to you personally), to ensure that you remain informed and in control at all times. We will never sell your personal data. We will only ever share it with organisations who help us deliver our projects where strictly necessary and only if they comply fully with data protection law.

Please read this Privacy Policy, together with any other information that we may provide on specific occasions when we ask to collect or process your personal data, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using it. 

How to Contact us

If you are an Avid’s Angels Cat Rescue supporter and would like to update the personal data we hold about you, you can let us know by email:  

 

FAO: The Data Protection Officer Avid’s Angels Cat Rescue

Email: admin@avidsangelscatrescue.co.uk

Any questions?

If you have any data protection questions in relation to this Policy, about how we use your personal data in general, or if you would like to make a request to exercise any of the rights you have over your personal data (see section 11 of this policy for more details), please send them to the Data Protection Officer at Avid’s Angels Cat Rescue by emailing: admin@avidsangelscatrescue.co.uk

2. INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

2.1 Personal data you provide

We collect the personal data you provide to us. This includes information you give when you apply to adopt from us, make a donation, volunteer with us, request cat care advice, register or participate in an event or send an email to us.

The personal data we collect may include:

  • personal details (name, date of birth, email, address, telephone number, etc.);
  • financial information (payment information such as credit/debit card or direct debit details, and whether donations are Gift Aided); and
  • details of your preferences and interests e.g. which cat breed type you are most interested in. 

2.2 Personal Data Created Through Your Involvement with Us

Your activities and involvement with Avid’s Angels Cat Rescue will result in personal data about you being created. This may include details of cats you have rehomed, how you have helped us as a volunteer and/or your involvement with one of our appeals. If you decide to donate to us, we will keep a record of when/how much you have donated, and through what medium e.g. an appeal or via a charitable trust. If you choose to Gift Aid with a donation to us, then we will ask for your address and UK taxpayer status as this information is needed to fulfil our obligations under tax and charity law. It will also be shared with HMRC for tax regulation purposes.

2.3 Information from Third Parties

We sometimes receive personal data about individuals from third parties such as vet practices and other animal welfare organisations with whom we work. If you participate in an event organised by an external party or make a donation through a donation aggregator, such as GoFundMe, then they may pass personal data about you to us.

2.4 Special Categories of Personal data

We do not normally collect any special categories of personal data 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. However, there are some situations where we will collect special categories of personal data, such as your health, if you are adopting, and for fosterers and adopters we will ask regarding any animal welfare convictions. If we do need to collect this sort of data, we will take extra care to ensure that your privacy rights are protected. 

3. HOW WE USE PERSONAL DATA

We only ever use your personal data with your consent, or where it is necessary in order to:

  • enter into, or perform, a Contract with you, such as when you adopt a cat;
  • comply with a legal duty, such as under the Gift Aid scheme, where we are required to inform you of proceeds from fundraising events such as table-tops, or street collections;
  • protect your vital interests, for example in a life-or-death situation; or
  • for our vets and transporters to enable us to arrange the transportation of your pet.

In any event, we will only use your information for the purpose or purposes it was collected for (or else for closely related purposes). 

3.1 Administration

We use personal data for administrative purposes, i.e. to carry on our charitable work. These include:

  • sending appointment reminders to clients for neutering;
  • if you participate in an event organised by us, keeping you updated;
  • processing donations and Gift Aid declarations;
  • managing feedback and complaints;
  • maintaining databases of our volunteers and donors, e.g. to make sure that the personal data they contain is accurate and up to date. 

3.2 Using Your Information to Enforce and Comply with the Law

We must ensure our activities comply with the law. Therefore, we may need to share your personal data if we are required to do so by law, e.g. in connection with a court order. We may use your personal data for other purposes such as fraud prevention, to comply with money laundering regulations and to protect people’s rights, property or safety.

If certain levels of financial donations are made, the Fundraising Regulator’s Code of Fundraising Practice requires all charities in the UK to perform certain checks regarding the individual who has made the donation. More details can be found at www.fundraisingregulator.org.uk

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

3.3 Our Legitimate Interests

We may process your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interests, provided that your fundamental rights do not override those interests. Our legitimate interests are:

  • to keep our records updated;
  • to administer our relationship with you;
  • to determine how our limited resources might be used in the most effective way;
  • to protect our security, guard against fraud and other wrongdoing; and
  • to inform our communications and maximise support engagement and participation.

3.4 Who We Share Your Personal Information with and Why

We will never share your details with other organisations to use for their own marketing purposes. 

We may share your personal information with veterinary practices, pet insurers and microchip companies to provide the products or services you have requested or require from us, but only to the extent strictly necessary. 

4. FUNDRAISING

As a charity, we rely on donations and support from others to continue our important work. From time to time, we will contact existing donors with fundraising communications. This might occur after a predetermined period, relate to an appeal or suggest ways you can raise funds for us.

We will contact you by email where you have consented for us to do so.

We will not use your information for communications if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted for such purposes. You can let us know at any time if you would like to change your preferences or stop receiving communications altogether; please use the details in section 1 to let us know your preferences. 

5. OUR WEBSITE AND COOKIES

We do not collect or process personal data about visitors to our website. The only information our website collects is of site usage (analytics cookies).

5.1 Cookies

Our website may use ‘cookies’ to enhance your experience and enable certain functionality remembering that you have visited our website recently.) Web browsers place cookies on hard drives for record-keeping purposes and sometimes to track information (such as repeat visits). You can choose to set your web browser to refuse cookies, or to alert you when cookies are being sent. However, if you refuse to allow cookies, this may interfere with your ability to use our website in the most efficient way.

Please see our Cookie Policy for further details.

5.2 Hyperlinks to other websites

Our website may contain hyperlinks to pages maintained by third-parties. We are not responsible for the content or functionality of any of those external websites. If an external website requests personal data from you, whatever information you provide will not be covered by this Policy. We suggest you read the privacy policy of any website before giving up any of your personal data.

6. 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). Our volunteers have a set of detailed data protection procedures which they are required to follow when handling personal data. 

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.

7. STORAGE AND RETENTION

We only store personal data as long as it is required for the purpose(s) we collected it for (or for a related compatible purpose, such as keeping a record of a donation). Legal requirements mean that we have to retain certain items of personal data for a given period of time e.g. Gift Aid declarations must be retained for seven years. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of it, the purposes for which we process it and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, together with the applicable legal requirements. We regularly review what data we have and delete that which is no longer necessary. In certain situations, you have the right to request that your personal data be deleted (the ‘right to be forgotten’); please see section 8 for further details.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available in our Retention Policy and Schedule which you can request by contacting us. 

8. YOUR RIGHTS

We want you to remain in control of your personal information. Part of this is making sure you understand your legal rights, which are as follows: 

(a)    where data is processed on the basis of consent, the right to withdraw that consent; 

(b)    the right to confirmation as to whether or not we have your personal data and, if we do, to obtain a copy of it (subject access);

(c)    the right to have inaccurate data rectified;

(d)    the right to object to your data being used for profiling, or on the basis of our or a third party’s legitimate interest; 

(e)    the right to restrict how your personal information is used;

(f)    the ‘right to be forgotten’, which allows you to have your data erased in certain circumstances. Please note this is not an absolute right and may not apply if we need to continue using it for a lawful reason;

(g)    the right to data portability, which allows individuals to obtain and reuse the personal data they have supplied to Avid’s Angels Cat Rescue for their own purposes across different services in a safe and secure way.

 

If you would like further information on your rights or wish to exercise them, please write to the Data Protection Officer using the details given in section 1, with details of your request. Please keep in mind that there are exceptions to the rights above and, though we will always try to respond to your satisfaction, there may be situations where we are unable to do so (for example, because the personal data no longer exists or there is an exception which applies to your request). 

 

If you are not happy with our response, or you believe that your data protection or privacy rights have been infringed, you should contact the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which oversees data protection compliance in the UK. Details of how to do this can be found at www.ico.org.uk

9. UPDATES TO THIS POLICY

We may update this Policy at any time. We will amend this Privacy Policy periodically to ensure it remains up-to-date and accurately reflects how and why we use your personal data. The current version of our Privacy Policy will always be posted on our website. We encourage you to frequently check this page for any changes to stay informed about how we are helping to protect the personal information we hold.

Created: 24/03/23

Next review date: 24/03/24