The BEARR Trust’s Privacy Policy

The BEARR Trust is committed to protecting your privacy and being transparent about how we collect, use and store your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we use the personal data you provide to us, or that we collect, when you interact with The BEARR Trust. This policy also tells you about your rights to control this data.

The BEARR Trust is a UK-based charity registered with the Charity Commission under charity number 1011086. We operate in compliance with UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a Data Controller (reference ZB684317).

1. What personal information we collect

We may collect and process the following types of personal information:

• Contact information: Your name and email address and sometimes other contact details, such as postal address or telephone number.
• Financial information: Details of donations or payments you have made to us, and grants or payments that you have received from us, including credit or debit card information.
• Event participation: If you register for or attend one of our events, we may collect your name, contact details and any special requirements such as dietary or accessibility needs. We may also take recordings and/or photographs of events. We may sometimes need to take photocopies of identification documents (e.g. to organise visas for attendees).
• Website interaction: Information about your visits to our website, including your IP address, browser type and pages accessed, collected through cookies.
• Social media interaction: Information about your interactions with our social media channels, such as your social media username or profile name.
• Communication preferences: Your email address and communication preferences, if you sign up to BEARR newsletters or other communications from us.
• Recruitment information: If you work or apply to work for BEARR as a trustee, officer, volunteer or in any other capacity, we may collect other information such as employment history and criminal record data.
• Other partner and grant recipient information: If you work with BEARR as a partner and/or grant recipient, we may collect other personal information, with your prior consent, for the purposes of administering, evaluating and reporting on the work.

2. How we use personal information

We use personal information for the following purposes:

• To manage donations: We use personal information to process donations, manage Gift Aid claims and sometimes send acknowledgements or thank-you messages.
• To administer grants: We use personal data to process grant applications, manage payments to grant recipients, and to communicate and report on grant-funded initiatives.
• To manage payments: We sometimes use personal information to make payments and/ or handle correspondence, for example with trusted service providers.
• To facilitate partnership working: We sometimes share contact information between partners and grant recipients to facilitate partnership working between organisations, with your prior consent.
• To manage events: If you register for an event, we use your data to handle registration, attendance and any follow-up communication.
• To improve our website and social media: We analyse your interactions with our website and social media channels to ensure a positive user experience and make improvements.
• To communicate with you: We send newsletters, updates about our work and other relevant information based on your communication preferences.
• To comply with legal obligations: We may be required to process personal information to meet tax, legal, employment or other regulatory requirements.

3. Use of cookies

The BEARR Trust’s website uses cookies to enhance your experience and collect information about how you use the site. A cookie consists of information sent by a web server to a web browser and stored by the browser. The information is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. This enables the web server to identify and track the web browser.

We do not use any third-party cookies, such as are placed by advertisers, as our website does not host any advertisements.

We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of this website. Google Analytics generates statistical and other information about website use by means of cookies, which are stored on users’ computers. The information generated tells us in anonymised form where and how often unidentified computers access the website and is used to create reports about the use of the website. This information is stored by Google. Google’s privacy policy is available at: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html.

You can manage cookies when you access The BEARR Trust’s website via a Privacy & Cookies Policy pop-up that you will see at the bottom of the page. You can choose to accept all cookies, or to manage your cookies by disabling cookies categorised as ‘non-necessary’.

You can also manage cookies via your web browser settings. Most browsers allow you to reject all cookies, whilst some browsers allow you to reject just third-party cookies. Blocking all cookies would, however, have a negative impact on the usability of the BEARR website and other websites.

The BEARR website contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of third-party websites, so you should check these if you follow any links.

4. Our lawful bases for processing personal information

We process your personal information under the following lawful bases:

• Consent: Where you have provided your consent (for example, to receive newsletters or event information).
• Contract: To fulfil contractual obligations (for example, processing your donation or registering you for an event).
• Legal obligation: Where we are required by law to process your data (for example, for tax or employment purposes).
• Legitimate interests: Where it is in our legitimate interest to do so and does not override your rights (for example, communicating with our partners, grant recipients and supporters, or analysing website usage).

5. How we share your information

We will not sell or rent your personal information to third parties, or share your information for marketing purposes. However, we may share your data with:

• Service providers: Third-party providers who assist us in delivering our services (for example, IT and financial service providers).
• Event partners: If you attend one of our events, we may share necessary information with trusted event partners.
• Legal and regulatory authorities: If required by law, we may share your personal data with UK law enforcement or regulatory bodies.

We may also share personal information on our website or social media (for example, names or photographs in reports about our projects with partners and grant recipients, or reports about our events) but only with your prior consent.

All third parties that we work with are required to comply with data protection regulations and ensure that your personal data is handled securely.

6. How we protect your information

We are committed to keeping your personal information secure through continual review and improvement of our data protection and cyber security processes and practices.

We store personal information on secure networks, using software companies with data centres in the European Economic Area (EEA). Only BEARR information officers, trustees, IT administrators or other individually authorised workers for BEARR will have access to these networks and all have undertaken to protect data stored on there in accordance with UK GDPR regulations. Additional access restrictions and encryptions are applied to some personal information held on our systems.

Website data collected by Google Analytics may be transferred outside the UK or EEA for processing. Where data processing happens in the United States, suppliers need to meet the certification standards set out in the UK-US data bridge agreement. This facilitates flows of personal data to certified US companies that have opted in to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

We may, on occasion, need to send specific and limited personal information to countries outside the EEA (for example, information relevant to the grants we administer and individuals we work with in the non-EEA countries where our partners operate). You should be aware that, in general, legal protection for personal information in countries outside the EEA may not be equivalent to the level of protection provided in the EEA.

Please be aware that there are always inherent risks in sending information by public networks or processing information on internet-connected computers and we cannot 100% guarantee the security of data (including personal information) disclosed or transmitted over public networks.

7. How long we keep your information

We only retain your personal information for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, or as required by law.

We retain the following categories of personal information for limited periods of time:

• Donation records: Kept for up to seven years to meet tax and accounting requirements.
• Grant payments: Payment information kept for seven years to meet tax and accounting requirements.
• Communication preferences: Kept until you unsubscribe or request deletion of your data.
• Event participation records: Kept for up to seven years after the event for follow-up or reporting purposes.
• Supporter, donor and volunteer contact information: Retained for seven years after the last interaction with The BEARR Trust.
• Employee and trustee information: Retained for seven years from the end of employment or the end of service as a trustee.

We retain the following categories of personal information indefinitely for archiving and historical research purposes in the public interest:

• Grant applications: Contact information of grant applicants.
• Grant records: Contact information of grant recipients.
• Partner records: Contact information of project and event partners.

8. Your rights

Under UK GDPR regulations, you have rights regarding your personal information. These include:

• Right of access: You can request access to the personal information we hold about you.
• Right to rectification: You can ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Right to erasure: You can request the deletion of your personal information where there is no longer a valid reason for us to keep it.
• Right to restrict processing: You can ask us to restrict how we use your personal information.
• Right to data portability: You can request your personal information in a machine-readable format for reuse across other services.
• Right to object: You can object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us by emailing info@bearr.org or via the postal address given below. We will respond within one month.

You can also update your communication preferences or unsubscribe from the BEARR newsletter at any time by clicking on the ‘update your preferences’ or ‘unsubscribe from this list’ links at the bottom of each newsletter.

9. Contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we process your personal information, please contact us by emailing us or by writing to the postal address below. We will respond within one month.

Email: info@bearr.org

Address:

The BEARR Trust
Voluntary Action Islington
200a Pentonville Road
London
N1 9JP

10. How to raise a concern or make a complaint

If you wish to raise a concern about how we handle your personal information, please contact us by emailing info@bearr.org or via the postal address given above.

If you wish to make a complaint, please contact us, following the Information Commissioner’s Office guidance on how to make a data protection complaint to an organisation. Send your complaint or concern to info@bearr.org or to the postal address above. We will respond within one month.

If you are not happy with the response you receive, you can pursue your complaint further with the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is the relevant statutory body:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

For more information, see the complaints page on their website.

11. Changes to our Privacy Policy

Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time, so please check this page occasionally to see if we have included any updates or changes, and to ensure that you agree with any changes.

(Last updated: 14 January 2025)