Privacy policy

We are a community dedicated to beating blood cancer. We do this by funding research and supporting those affected. Since 1960, we've invested over £500 million in blood cancer research, transforming treatments and saving lives. The day we beat blood cancer is now in sight and our researchers are determined to finish the job.

Blood Cancer UK, 5-11 Theobalds Rd, London WC1X 8SH is a company limited by guarantee 738089 (registered in England and Wales). Blood Cancer UK is a registered charity 216032 (England and Wales) and SCO37529 (Scotland).

Please read this policy carefully, along with our Terms and Conditions and any other documents referred to in this policy, to understand how we collect, use and store your personal information.

If you have any questions regarding Blood Cancer UK’s privacy policy, please contact our Data Protection Officer at: The Data Protection Officer, Blood Cancer UK, 5-11 Theobalds Rd, London WC1X 8SH.

Blood Cancer UK has been at the forefront of medical research into blood cancer since we were founded in 1960. We also provide practical and emotional support, through our support line and patient information booklets.

Our main priorities are:

• Providing vital funds for new research
• Being there for people affected by blood cancer
• Building awareness of blood cancer
• Raising money to fund research and patient support
• Being as effective and efficient as we can be

At Blood Cancer UK we are committed to protecting your personal information and privacy.

When you engage with us by phone, mail, in person or online, we receive personal information about you. This information helps us understand you and your interests and allows us to improve our communications with you and increase the effectiveness of our organisation. We will never sell any of your personal information to any organisation for any reason.

We do however need to collect and use your personal information for carefully considered and business critical purposes, which helps ensure that Blood Cancer UK operates efficiently and can raise funds effectively in order to help us achieve our goals.

It is important that you read this policy carefully to understand what information we hold, how we may use it, and what your rights are.

Personal information is data that can be used to help identify an individual, such as name, address, phone number or email address.

Sensitive personal information is data that consists of racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, gender reassignment, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data, data concerning health or data concerning an individual’s sex life or sexual orientation.

Blood Cancer UK may use your personal information to help us deliver our charitable mission to beat blood cancer. We will always try to be as transparent and honest as possible regarding how we collect, use and store your personal information. Below we have summarised the different ways we may use your personal information, and our purposes for doing so.

Blood Cancer UK will only collect and use your personal information when there is a lawful basis to do so. The law allows for six legitimate ways to process an individual’s personal information. However, only three of these ways to process an individual’s personal information are relevant to charities for the types of purposes we have listed above.

• Information is processed on the basis of a person’s consent
• Information is processed on the basis of a contractual relationship
• Information is processed on the basis of the “legitimate interests” of Blood Cancer UK.

Blood Cancer UK will only send you marketing and fundraising emails, and text messages when we have your consent. We will only collect and use your personal information and in some cases sensitive personal information in the ways we have laid out in this privacy policy. We will also ask for your explicit consent if we wish to undertake any automated wealth screening, unless it falls under the legitimate interest of the business. You can withdraw or update your consent at any time for any or all of our channels or activities by getting in touch with us. You can call our Supporter Relations team on 0808 2080 888 or email [email protected].

When it may not be practical to get consent from an individual, Blood Cancer UK may still process personal information under legitimate interest. This is because the law allows personal information to be legally collected and used if it is in line with the legitimate business interest of the organisation. However, the processing of personal information still has to be carried out in a fair and balanced way that does not overly impact the rights of the individual concerned.

Governance

• The delivery of our charitable mission as set out in our charitable priorities
• Internal and external audit for financial or for regulatory compliance purposes
• Statutory reporting

Publicity and income generation

• Conventional marketing, publicity, advertising and fundraising
• Unsolicited commercial or non-commercial messages, such as campaigns or charitable fundraising
• Tailoring and enhancing the supporter experience across our digital and postal communications
• Exercising of the right to freedom of expression or information
• Analysis, targeting, and segmentation of data to help develop organisational strategy and improve marketing and fundraising communication efficiency
• Processing for research purposes, such as marketing research
• Using publicly available information to profile potentially important supporters

Operational management

• Monitoring and recording information on employees and volunteers for the purpose of recruitment, safety, performance management and planning procedures
• Provision and administration of staff benefits and learning and development opportunities
• Physical security, IT and network security
• Maintenance of suppression files
• Processing data for historical, scientific or statistical purposes

Financial management and control

• Processing of financial transactions and the maintenance of financial controls
• Preventing fraud, the misuse of our services, or money laundering
• Enforcing legal claims, including debt collection via out-of-court procedures

Administrative purposes

• Responding to any solicited enquiry from any of our supporters
• Providing products, information and/or fundraising packs requested by a stakeholder
• Communications designed to administer existing services that an individual has asked or registered for
• Administrating Gift Aid
• Thank you communications and receipts
• Administrating existing financial transactions
• Maintenance of “do not contact lists”

Unfortunately, the transmission of data across the internet is not completely secure and whilst we do our utmost to try to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of data will not occur whilst data is being transferred – therefore any personal information you give to us is done at your own risk.

All confidential information we hold is kept securely and only transmitted in protected form. Your credit card details remain with our payment partner SagePay and do not reach us. Customer details are not passed to third parties (unless the party is directly subcontracting and covered by a comprehensive non-disclosure agreement) and are used only in accordance with all relevant legislation.

If we know or reasonably believes that a supporter is unable to make an informed decision or is in a position which does not allow them to make a donation, then a donation is not to be taken or accepted. We will not market to anyone we know are in vulnerable circumstances.

We will hold your data for a reasonable period of time after your most recent interaction with us, in line with our data retention policy. Our retention periods are determined by best practice and/or legal requirements.

Blood Cancer UK will not exchange or sell your personal information to another organisation for their own marketing purposes. However, there are legitimate situations where we may have to share your personal information with other organisations. An example could be where we are using an external service provided via a technical supplier, email broadcaster, or mailing services provider. In these situations, the relationship between Blood Cancer UK and the third-party data processor will be governed by a contract and strict security requirements will be in place to protect your personal information.

We will only disclose your information if:

• We are required to do so by law, for example if a law enforcement agency requires information or if compelled by a court order
• We believe it is necessary to protect or defend our rights, property or the safety of staff, volunteers, visitors to our offices or website
• We work with partners for business-critical activity under strict non-disclosure agreements.

Blood Cancer UK will only use your personal information when we have your explicit consent or if the requirement falls under legitimate interest. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You also have the right to ask Blood Cancer UK to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes. Simply contact our Supporter Relations team and they will amend and update your contact preferences. You can call our Supporter Relations team on 0808 169 5155 or email [email protected].

• Right to be informed: You have the right to be told how your personal information will be used. This privacy policy is designed and intended to be a clear and transparent description of how your data may be used.
• Right of access: You can write to our Data Protection Officer asking what information we hold on you and to request a copy of that information.
• Right of erasure: You have the right to have your personal information deleted when there is not any compelling reason for it to be processed.
• Right of rectification: If you believe our records are inaccurate you have the right to ask for those records concerning you to be updated.
• Right to restrict processing: In certain situations you have the right to ask Blood Cancer UK to stop or suppress the processing of your personal information.
• Right to data portability: Where we are processing your personal information under your consent the law allows you to request data portability from one service provider to another. This right is largely seen as a way for people to transfer their personal information from one service provider to a competitor.
• Right to object: You have an absolute right to stop the processing of your personal information on the basis of legitimate interest, direct marketing and processing for purposes of scientific/historical research and statistics.
• Right to object to automated decisions: In a situation where a data controller is using your personal information in a computerised model or algorithm to make decisions “that have a legal effect on you” without human intervention, you have the right to object. Blood Cancer UK does not undertake any complex computerised decision-making that produces legal effects.

If you would like more information on your rights please see the ICO's explanation.

We only want to contact you with information that will be of genuine interest to you as well as being relevant and appropriate. Therefore, we will only send you marketing information by email, SMS or phone if you have given us clear and specific consent to do so. If at any time you change your contact preferences or withdraw your consent and opt out, then the most recent preference will be used.

You can change your marketing preferences on this website if you have an account, or you can call our Supporter Relations team on 0808 2080 888 or email [email protected].

We market ourselves to potential new supporters who are similar to our core supporters via Facebook’s “Lookalike Audience” feature. If you have given us permission to contact you by email or SMS, we will provide your email or phone number to social media companies to build a view of our core audience.

Find out more about ‘Lookalike Audience’ on Facebook or see Facebook’s Data Policy.

Our website may include links to other sites, not owned or managed by us. Please note that when you click on one of these links, you are entering another site. We cannot be held responsible for the privacy of information collected by websites not managed by us and encourage you to read the privacy statements of these linked websites as their privacy policy may differ from ours.

Cookies are simple text files stored by your web browser that provide a method of distinguishing among visitors to the website. We use cookies to identify your browser as you visit pages on our website. Cookies created on your computer by using our website do not contain personally identifiable information and do not compromise your privacy or security. Cookies allow us to gather anonymous information. Cookies also allow us to provide more relevant, targeted content and are used on our trading website to keep track of items in your shopping cart.

When you use the Blood Cancer UK website, social media pages (such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram), subscribe to any of our services, donate to us and/or make an online purchase or sign up to an event, you agree that unless you have set your computer's browser to reject cookies, we can place them on your device and use that data in accordance with this policy.

We use Google Analytics to understand the performance of our website. This is conducted exclusively at an aggregated level and does not involve the disclosure of personal information. Our web server registers the IP addresses of all devices accessing our website in order to deliver content back to you.

We may change this privacy policy periodically if we make any significant changes in the way we handle and treat your personal information or to reflect any changes to legislation. If our policy changes we will make this clear on our website or by contacting you directly.

If you are not happy with anything you have seen in this policy or you have any questions regarding data protection, we ask that in the first instance, please talk to us directly so we can help to resolve any problem or query that you may have. Our Supporter Relations Team is here to help and you can contact them on 0808 2080 888. You can also contact our Data Protection Officer by emailing [email protected].

You can also register with the Fundraising Preference Service (FPS). This service is run by the Fundraising Regulator and allows you to stop email, telephone, addressed post, and/or text messages from a selected charity or charities. Once you have made a request through the FPS, we will ensure that your new preferences take effect within 28 days.

You can also register with the free Telephone Preference Service which gives you the opportunity to opt out of receiving unsolicited calls. The Mailing Preference Service will enable you to register to have your name taken off direct mailing lists.

You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) if you have any concerns about Data Protection.