Our commitment to you
- We will always respect your personal information and privacy.
- All information which is shared is confidential, subject to the following conditions:
- All staff working at Mind in Mid Herts are required to have supervision for ongoing professional development. Individual cases and information might be discussed as part of this process, but service users’ anonymity will be protected at all times.
- We report to our funders to demonstrate that we are using their funds effectively and reaching the wider population. We also use data in our bids for new funding. All the information we collect for reports and bids is in statistical form and therefore no person is identifiable in the data.
- Project Officers have access to service users’ files to monitor and report on the services.
- Staff and volunteers are not permitted to keep secrets. They are bound by a duty of care to share any information which might give any cause for concern.
Your Rights
To comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation, we have procedures and technologies in place so by making a written request you can exercise your:
- Right to be informed about how we collect and use your information.
- Right of access: We have an ‘open file’ process which enables you to access all your records whenever you wish.
- Right to rectification and data quality: We will ensure that the personal data we hold remains up-to-date and accurate.
- Right to erasure: We have processes in place to securely dispose of personal data that is no longer required, or where you have asked for it to be erased. However, please note that Mind in Mid Herts is subject to laws governing retention periods.
- Right to object to the use of your personal data: We will not use your data for direct marketing without your positive consent. You also have the right to restrict our processing of your data while we address any objection you raise.
- Right to data portability: We will provide your data to a new or additional service provider if you so wish.
Research and analysis
We may undertake research and analysis to help inform our decisions as a fundraising charity. This may include analysing our supporter base to identify, communicate and engage with philanthropists and people who might choose to give significant donations.
We may carry out in-house research, or from time-to-time, engage specialist third-party research consultancies, to determine whether an individual could be a potential major supporter and what aspects of our work might be of particular interest to them. This helps us to identify and engage with people who may wish to have a closer and more informed relationship with the charity and make a significant gift. We may use publicly available information from third party resources such as Google, Companies House, trade press and published biographies. The type of information we collect can include:
- Career overview
- Gift capacity
- Areas of interest
- History of giving to us and others
- How the individual is connected with us and others
- Public information on philanthropic activities
In order to identify people who might benefit from this more personal approach we may screen our database or use a third-party organisation to do so. We may also use profiling information to produce short biographies of people who are due to meet our leadership or attend one of our events. This helps us to understand more about the people we engage with, their connection to us and their interests and to make the information we provide to supporters more relevant.
We rely on our legitimate interests to process this data, as connecting people to our cause is instrumental in meeting our charitable objectives. We are careful to ensure that the information we process is not excessive nor intrusive. Under data-protection law, you have the right to object to your data being processed in this way. You can do this by contacting us at [email protected]
We are also legally required to carry out checks on individuals who donate large donations, to comply with our duties in respect of anti-money laundering legislation and the prevention of fraud.
