Your Personal Information
To get you up and running with ‘Shifter Circles’ asap we firstly need information about you, your organisation and your organisation's current challenges. We ask for this information to help us assess your eligibility, to make sure the service is right for you, then to match those successful applicants appropriately with facilitators and peer groups.
In the case of ‘Shifter Circles’ we appreciate that some of this information is professionally and/or personally sensitive. We want everyone who comes to us for support to feel comfortable in sharing this information, and confident that we will use it responsibly.
In hitting the ‘submit’ button your information will be stored in our database and used for eligibility assessment and group matching purposes. It will be shared with group facilitators for this same purpose. For those who are not eligible, your data will be removed from our database.
Our ‘Personal Data and Privacy Policy’ explains how we collect, use and store your personal information (this means any information that is or could be used to identify you).
Social Shifters reserves the right to change their policy at any time. Rest assured that you will be notified if this happens and/or if there are any changes in our policy relating to your personal data.
1. Who we are
At Social Shifters we are committed to protecting your personal information and making every effort to ensure that your personal information is processed in a fair, open and transparent manner.
We are a "data controller" for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 and (from 25 May 2018) the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 ("Data Protection Law"). This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information.
For further information about our privacy practices, please contact our Data Protection Officer by emailing [email protected].
Social Shifters operates on a not-for-profit basis, as a company limited by guarantee registered in Scotland No. SC649437.
2. How we collect information about you
We want to make sure you receive the communications and information that are most relevant and helpful to you and your enterprise, be it through signing up to one of our services, visiting our websites, viewing our online learning material, downloading our resources or receiving emails.
We collect information from you in the following ways:
- When you interact with us directly: This could be if you register for a service, sign up to one of our platforms, complete an e-learning course, take part in training or provide us with your personal information via any of our online contact forms. This includes when you phone us, visit our website or get in touch through the post, or in person.
- When you interact with us through third parties: This could be if you provide information through a third party such as Common Good Solutions, Social Value Lab (SEI) or any one of our affiliate organisations that we work with and provide your consent for your personal information to be shared with us.
- When you visit our website: We gather general information which might include which pages you visit most often and which services, events or information is of most interest to you. We may also track which pages you visit when you click on links in emails from us. We also use "cookies" on our websites to help understand usage and make ongoing improvements to websites based on that usage data.
There is more information about the Cookies we use on this website below.
We use this information to personalise the way our website is presented when you visit to make improvements and to ensure we provide the best service and experience for you. Wherever possible we use anonymous information which does not identify individual visitors to our website.
From other information that is available to the public: In order to tailor our communications with you to your background and interests we may collect information about you from publicly available sources or through third party subscription services or service providers (we have provided further details about this below – see 'Profiling: Making our work unique to you').
3. Information we collect and why we use it
Personal Information
Personal information we may collect can include details such as your first name, second name, email address, postal address, telephone number and credit/debit card details (if you are making a purchase), as well as information you provide about your organisation which we may use to assess your eligibility for a support service. You will have given us this information whilst making a purchase, registering interest in a product, using a service or interacting with us (via the website) in a number of ways.
We will mainly use this information:
- To process your information or other payments and verify any financial transactions.
- To provide the services or materials that you have requested.
- To update you with important administrative messages about our services, an event or services or goods you have requested.
- To keep a record of your relationship with us.
If you do not provide this information, we will not be able to process your enquiry, sign you up for a particular service or provide the products and services you have requested.
We may also use your personal information:
- To contact you about our services.
- To invite you to participate in surveys or research.
Sensitive Personal Information
If you share your personal experience or the experiences of a friend or relative, we may also collect this information. If you provide us with any Sensitive Personal Information by telephone, email or by other means, we will treat that information with extra care and confidentiality and always in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
You can of course decide if you want to remain anonymous, if you are happy to share your personal details with staff members or if you would like us to share your story with the media or other parties as part of our work telling people’s personal stories about social change (for example, on our blog).
A special note about the Sensitive Personal Information we hold
Data Protection Law recognises that some categories of personal information are more sensitive. Sensitive Personal Information can include information about a person’s health, race, ethnic origin, political opinions, sex life, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.
We will only use this information:
- For the purposes of dealing with your enquiry, training, and quality monitoring or evaluating the services we provide.
We will not pass on your details to anyone else without your express permission except in exceptional circumstances. Examples of this might include anyone reporting serious self-harm or posing a threat to others or children contacting us and sharing serious issues such as physical abuse or exploitation.
Where you have given us your express consent or otherwise clearly indicated to us (for example, by submitting your story through our website) that you are happy for us to share your story, then we may publish it on our blog or in other media.
4. Profiling: making our work more unique to you
We want to improve how we talk to you and the information we provide through our website, services, products and information. To do this we sometimes use profiling and screening methods so that we can better understand our supporters, your preferences and needs to provide a better experience for you.
We may carry out targeted activities using profiling techniques based on the information that we hold about you. We may also work with third party organisations who provide additional insight, this may include providing wealth screening information or general information about you that is publicly available.
This information can be appended to the information that you have provided which allows us to use our resources more effectively by better understanding the background of our supporters and making appropriate requests based on what may interest them and their capacity to give.
You can of course opt out of this activity at any time. To do this, email [email protected] with the subject line ‘Please stop analysis of my data’.
5. Legal basis for using your information
In some cases, we will only use your personal information where we have your consent or because we need to use it in order to fulfil a contract with you (for example, because you have added your story on our website).
However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your personal information and one of those is called 'legitimate interests'. This means that the reason that we are processing information is because there is a legitimate interest for Social Shifters to process your information to help us to achieve our vision of a global community of millions of social purpose organisations united and delivering sustained social and environmental impact.
Whenever we process your Personal Information under the ‘legitimate interest' lawful basis we make sure that we take into account your rights and interests and will not process your personal information if we feel that there is an imbalance.
Some examples of where we have a legitimate interest to process your Personal information are where we contact you about our work via post, use your personal information for data analytics, conducting research to better understand who our supporters are, improving our services, for our legal purposes (for example, dealing with complaints and claims), or for complying with guidance from the Charity Commission.
6. Marketing
We will only contact you about our work at Social Shifters by phone, email or text message, if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner.
However, if you have provided us with your postal address we may send you information about our products and services by mail unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us in that way.
You can update your choices or stop us sending you these communications at any time by contacting [email protected] or clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the relevant communication.
7. Sharing your Information
The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff at Social Shifters so that they can support you.
We will never sell or share your personal information with organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities. Nor do we sell any information about your web browsing activity.
Social Shifters may however share your information with our trusted partners and suppliers who work with us on (or on our behalf) to deliver our services, but processing of this information is always carried out under our instruction. We make sure that they store the data securely, delete it when they no longer need it and never use it for any other purposes. Some examples of where we may share your information are with our fulfilment partners who help to create and send information to you to reduce our costs, with our partners who help us to deliver services and our partners who help us to manage our social media accounts.
We enter into contracts with these service providers that require them to comply with Data Protection Laws and ensure that they have appropriate controls in place to secure your information.
Legal disclosure
We may disclose your information if required to do so by law (for example, to comply with applicable laws, regulations and codes of practice or in response to a valid request from a competent authority); or, in order to enforce our conditions of sale and other agreements.
8. Keeping your information safe
We take looking after your information very seriously. We've implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information using the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information sent to us this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site.
Any debit or credit card details which we receive on our website are passed securely to Stripe our payment processing partner, according to the Payment Card Industry Security Standards.
9. How long we hold your information for
We only keep it as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations.
10. Your Rights
You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below. If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting Social Shifters by email at [email protected] You can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner's Office, https://ico.org.uk:
- Access to your personal information: You have the right to request access to a copy of the personal information that we hold about you, along with information on what personal information we use, why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it for and whether it has been used for any automated decision making. You can make a request for access free of charge. Please make all requests for access in writing and provide us with evidence of your identity.
- Right to object: You can object to our 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. Please contact us as noted above, providing details of your objection.
- Consent: If you have given us your consent to use personal information (for example, for marketing), you can withdraw your consent at any time.
- Rectification: You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information held about you.
- Erasure: You can ask us to delete your personal information where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, you have withdrawn consent, or where we have no lawful basis for keeping it.
- Portability: You can ask us to provide you or a third party with some of the personal information that we hold about you in a structured, commonly used, electronic form, so it can be easily transferred.
- Restriction: You can ask us to restrict the personal information we use about you where you have asked for it to be erased or where you have objected to our use of it.
- No automated-decision making: Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. You have the right not to be subject to automated decisions that will create legal effects or have a similar significant impact on you, unless you have given us your consent, it is necessary for a contract between you and us or is otherwise permitted by law. You also have certain rights to challenge decisions made about you. We do not currently carry out any automated decision-making.
Please note, some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to fulfil every request.
11. Cookies
'Cookie' is a name for a small file, usually of letters and numbers, which is downloaded onto your device, like your computer, mobile phone or table when you visit a website. They let websites recognise your device, so that the sites can work more effectively, and also gather information about how you use the site. A cookie, by itself, can't be used to identify you.
How do we use cookies?
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you come to our website and also allows us to improve the user experience.
We use all four categories of cookies:
- Strictly necessary cookies are essential for you to move around our website and to use its features, like our shopping basket and your account.
- Performance cookies collect anonymous information about how you use our site, like which pages are visited most.
- Functionality cookies collect anonymous information that remembers choices you make to improve your experience, like your text size or location. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog.
- Targeting or advertising cookies collect information about your browsing habits in order to make advertising relevant to you and your interests. As such if you visit the Social Shifters or Social Value Lab websites you may then be more likely to see adverts about the organisations work on other websites as your browsing suggests that this is an area of interest.
No cookies, please
You can opt out of all our cookies (except the strictly necessary ones). Find out how to control and delete cookies in your browser. But, if you choose to refuse all cookies, our website may not function for you as we would like it to.
12. Monitoring
Your communications with our teams (including by telephone or email) may be monitored and/or recorded for training, quality control and compliance purposes to ensure that we continuously improve our customer service standards.
To find out more about this policy and how we look after your personal information, contact our Team on [email protected].
