Privacy Notice Customer Contact
This privacy notice tells you about the information we collect from you when you submit enquiries as external customers, either individually or on behalf of an organisation or otherwise access or use our services.
What is the purpose of this document?
Volunteer Scotland is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.
This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your contact with us as a customer, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Volunteer Scotland is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.
This notice applies to individuals who submit enquiries as external customers, either individually or on behalf of an organisation or otherwise access or use our services. This notice does not form part of any contract to provide services. We may update this notice at any time.
It is important that you read this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.
Data Protection Principles
We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
- Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
- Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
- Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
- Accurate and kept up to date.
- Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
- Kept securely.
The kind of information we hold about you
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
There are “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection.
We may collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:
- Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, job title, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses.
- Social media account names
How is your personal information collected?
We typically collect personal information about you when you submit an enquiry or to us by telephone, e-mail, in writing, by means of an online form / web chat (please note a separate Privacy Notice applies where you Contact Us online) or in person. We may also collect information about you as part of a transactional business relationship in order to contact you in the future.
We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties e.g. the organisation you work for or volunteer on behalf of.
How will we use the information about you?
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:
- Where we need to perform any contract we may enter into with you.
- Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:
- Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
- Where it is needed in the public interest [or for official purposes].
Situations in which we will use your personal information
We need all the categories of information in the list above (see The kind of information we hold about you) primarily to allow us to pursue legitimate interests of our own or those of third parties, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. The situations in which we will process your personal information are listed below.
- To respond to enquiries about volunteering, volunteering best practice, website and opportunity queries, training queries, Disclosure Services general queries, Finance/HR/Facilities queries, Research enquiries, marketing enquiries
- Storing your contact details in our customer database (CRM; Salesforce) for the purpose of contacting you at a later date in respect of your query
- Providing statistical information on the types of enquiries we receive and from which types of organisations in aggregate format
- To be able to contact you if an ongoing business relationship is developed in connection to the services that Volunteer Scotland offers.
- Maintaining basic personal information (e.g. name, job title and signature) for the purposes of keeping a record of a contract between your organisation and Volunteer Scotland.
- To approach you with a request to opt in to marketing information (please see separate Volunteer Scotland privacy notice in relation to marketing)
- Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.
If you fail to provide personal information
If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform any contract we have entered into with you, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations.
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
Sensitive personal information
It is not envisaged that we will collect particularly sensitive personal data or ‘special category’ data as part of this process..
Information about criminal convictions
We do not envisage that we will hold information about criminal convictions.
Automated decision-making
We do not envisage that any decisions will be taken about you using automated means, however we will notify you in writing if this position changes.
Data sharing
We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers and other entities in the group.
We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
Why might you share my personal information with third parties?
We may share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.
Which third-party service providers process my personal information?
Third parties” includes third-party service providers (including contractors and designated agents) and other entities within our group. The following activities are carried out by third-party service providers: payroll, pension administration, benefits provision and administration and IT services. The following third-party service providers process personal information about you for the following purposes: Salesforce – customer database management provider; Campaign Monitor – Email Management; Siteground – Website hosting; Extraordinary hosting – hosting provider; Red Mosquito – IT / Network Management.
How secure is my information with third-party service providers and other entities in our group?
All our third-party service providers and other entities in the group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
When might you share my personal information with other entities in the group?
We will share your personal information with other entities in our group as part of our regular reporting activities on company performance, in the context of a business reorganisation or restructuring exercise or for system maintenance support and hosting of data.
What about other third parties?
We may share your personal information with other third parties, for example in the context of the possible restructuring of the organisation. We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.
Transferring information outside the EU
We do not envisage that your personal data will be transferred outside of the EU. We will notify you if this position changes.
Data Security
We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information. Details of these measures are available upon request.
Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
Data Retention
How long will you use my information for?
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. We will retain your personal data for 2 years from the last email account activity (i.e. an email opened). 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 your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. Otherwise we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with the data retention schedule.
Rights of access, correction, erasure and restriction
Your duty to inform us of changes
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your relationship with us.
Your rights in connection with personal information
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
- Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
- Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
- Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
- Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
- Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
- If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please e-mail hello@volunteerscotland.org.uk
No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
Right to withdraw consent
In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact hello@volunteerscotland.org.uk Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.
Changes to this privacy notice
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.
If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact hello@volunteerscotland.org.uk
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Privacy Notice - Customer Contact
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