Your Privacy

When you interact with us directly: This could be if you ask us about our activities, register with us for support or training, make a donation to us, ask a question about mental health, purchase something, complete a survey providing feedback on our services, apply for a job or volunteering opportunity or otherwise provide us with your personal information. 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 partners or suppliers working on our behalf: This could be when you interact with us through third parties: This could be if you provide a donation through a third party such as Just Giving or one of the other third parties that we work with.

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” to help our site run effectively. There are more details below – see ‘Cookies’.

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’).

• Identity Data includes first name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
• Contact Data includes billing address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.
• Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us
• Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
• Profile Data includes your email and password, purchases or orders made by you, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
• Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services.
• Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
• We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity.

You will have given us this information whilst making a donation, registering for a service or course/workshop, placing an order on our website or any of the other ways to interact with us.

• To process your donations or other payments, to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions.
• To provide the services or goods that you have requested.
• To update you with important administrative messages about your donation, an event, services, or goods you have requested.
• To comply with the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 and follow the recommendations of the official regulator of charities, the Charity Commission, which require us to identify and verify the identity of supporters who make major gifts so we can assess any risks associated with accepting their donations.
• To keep a record of your relationship with us.
• Where you volunteer with us, to administer the volunteering arrangement.

If you do not provide this information, we will not be able to process your donation, sign you up for a particular event or provide goods and services you have requested.

• To contact you about our services, work and how you can support us as a local Mind (see section below on ‘Marketing’ for further information).
• To invite you to participate in surveys or research.

If you share your personal experience or the experiences of a friend or relative, we may also collect this health 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.  Please do request our Confidentiality and Data Protection policy for further information.

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 mental health (for example, on our blog).

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.

If you contact us for mental health support and to access our services you may choose to provide details of a sensitive nature.

We will only use this information:

• For the purposes of dealing with your enquiry for support, training, and quality monitoring or evaluating the services we provide.
• We will not pass on your details to anyone else without your explicit consent 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 explicit consent or otherwise clearly indicated to us, for example, that you are happy for us to share your story, then we may publish it on our blog or in other media.

Our website is not designed for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

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 fundraising 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]  ‘Please stop analysis of my data’ or by contacting our team at Mind in Mid Herts, 11 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts AL1 3RR, or by phone on 03303 208100.

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 placed an order 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 MiMH’s to process your information to help us to achieve our vision we will work to ensure the mental health of everyone in Hertfordshire is supported and respected.

Whenever we process your Personal Information under the ‘legitimate interest’ lawful basis we make sure that we take into account your rights, 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.

We will only contact you about our work and how you can support us by phone, email or text message, if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner.

If you agree for us to contact you through one of these channels, we will send you information about our work and how you can help us to make sure that everyone experiencing a mental health problem receives both support and respect. As well as sharing our latest news, we will contact you about events and fundraising for Mind and the many ways you can shape our work – or you can choose just the areas that mean the most to you by ticking the boxes when you provide us with your information.

However, if you have provided us with your postal address we may send you information about our work and how you can support Mind 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]

Please note that when you update your communication preferences it can take up to 28 days to take effect across all of our systems.

The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff (and volunteers) at MiMH’s 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.

We may however share your information with our trusted partners and suppliers who work with us or on our behalf. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.  Some examples of where we may share your information are with our partners who help us to process donations and claim Gift Aid.

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.  All our website financial transactions are handled through our payment services provider, Stripe. You can review the provider’s privacy policy at https://stripe.com/gb/privacy. We will share information with our payment services provider only to the extent necessary for the purposes of processing payments you make via our website, refunding such payments and dealing with complaints and queries relating to such payments and refunds.

Each local Mind is an independent Charity and affiliated to National Mind through a membership agreement.

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.

We take looking after your information very seriously. We have 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.

Our websites may contain links to other sites. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites. Please be aware that Web sites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites.

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.

We only keep it as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, the collection of Gift Aid).

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 our [email protected] team at Mind in Mid Herts 11 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts AL1 3RR and by phone on 033030208100. You can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office, https://ico.org.uk/.  We would however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

• 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, or 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.

Please note, some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances, where one of your rights does not apply, we will communicate the reason to you.

‘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.

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 the categorisation set out by the International Chamber of Commerce in their UK Cookie Guide.

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 remember 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 Mind website you may then be more likely to see adverts about Mind’s work on other websites as your browsing suggests that this is an area of interest.

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.

If you have any questions about how we use cookies, please contact us at [email protected] or at Mind in Mid Herts 11 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts AL1 3RR and by phone on 033030208100

Our 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 service standards.