Privacy policy

Who are we?

In this policy references to the Woodland Trust, or Trust, or to ‘we’ or ‘us’ are to the Woodland Trust which is a registered charity in England and Wales 294344, and in Scotland SC038885. A non-profit making company limited by guarantee. Registered in England No. 1982873 at Kempton Way, Grantham, Lincolnshire, NG31 6LL.

This also includes our trading company – Woodland Trust (Enterprises) Limited (registered company number 2296645) a wholly owned subsidiary of the Woodland Trust which trades only to raise funds for its parent company – the Woodland Trust.

What personal data we collect and how we use it

What we need

The Woodland Trust is what’s known as the ‘controller’ of the personal data you provide to us. We will usually collect basic personal data about you like your name, postal address, telephone number, email address and your bank details if you are supporting us financially.

Sometimes we will collect other information about you such as your date of birth gender and health details. We will be very clear with you that we wished to collect such information, our reason for collecting such information, and we would only do so with your specific consent and permission.

Why we need it

We collect your personal data in connection with specific activities, such as campaign updates, newsletter requests, registration or membership requests, product purchases, feedback, donations, competition entries, information you provide in public forums on our sites and applications.

The information is either needed to fulfil your request or to enable us to provide you with a more personalised service. You don't have to disclose any of this information to browse our sites. However, if you choose to withhold requested information, we may not be able to provide you with certain services.

Our marketing

Sometimes, with your consent, we will process your personal data to provide you with information about our work or our activities that you have requested or are expecting.

On other occasions, we may process personal data when we need to do this to fulfil a contract (for example, if you have purchased something from our web shop) or where we are required to do this by law or other regulations.

The Trust also processes your data when it is in our legitimate interests to do this and when these interests do not override your rights. Those legitimate interests include providing you with information on our appeals, conservation, campaigning, membership, services, products, fundraising, newsletter requests, feedback, competitions and other activities and those of other carefully selected organisations. Please see the section on 'Legitimate interest' for more information.

How we obtain your details

We will also hold information about your details so that we can respect your preferences for being contacted by us.

We collect your personal information in a number of ways:

• when you provide it to us directly
• when you provide permission to other organisations to share it with us (including Facebook or Twitter)
• when we collect it as you use our websites or apps
• when you have given it to a third party and you have provided permission to pass your information on to us
• from publicly available sources (where possible) to keep your information up to date (e.g. the Post Office’s National Change of Address database).

We combine the information from these sources with the information you provide to us directly.

From time to time we may pay for the contact details of people who might be interested in hearing from us in future. Before we purchase contact information, we always check the wording used when your information was originally collected, to make sure that we only contact people who have actively expressed an interest in receiving information from third parties.

When providing permission for 3rd party organisations to share your data you should check their Privacy Policies carefully to understand fully how they will process your data.

Building profiles of supporters

The Trust may make use of profiling and screening methods to produce relevant communications and provide a better experience for our supporters. Profiling can help us target our resources more effectively through gaining an insight into the background of our supporters and helping us to build relationships that are appropriate to their interests and capacity to give.

To do this we may use additional external sources of data to increase and enhance the information we hold about you. This may include obtaining details of changes of address, date of birth, telephone numbers and other contact details, information related to your wealth, and consumption and demographic data generated through the MOSAIC geodemographic tool. It may also include information from public registers and other publicly available sources such as Companies House, newspapers and magazines.

If you do not wish your data to be used in any of the ways listed above or have questions about this then use the contact form on our 'Contact us' page or go to our online permission portal.

Children

If you are under 18 please ensure you obtain your parent/guardian's consent before sending any personal information to any website or the Woodland Trust. We do have activities for those under 18 so we may ask your age. Before taking part please ensure you speak to your parent or guardian.

Please note that we will not knowingly market to or accept donations or orders for goods or services from persons aged under 18 years.

As a parent or guardian we encourage you to be aware of the activities in which your children are participating, both offline and online. If your children voluntarily disclose information, this may encourage unsolicited messages. We suggest that you discourage your child from providing any information without your consent.

Volunteering

When you volunteer with the Woodland Trust, we will keep you up to date with the work that we are doing and events we are involved with. We will also let you know of any changes that might affect you volunteering with us and which you need to be aware of. We will only use this information in relation to your volunteering with us and whilst you remain a volunteer with the Woodland Trust. By agreeing to volunteer with the Woodland Trust you are agreeing to us to sending you emails about volunteering and your volunteer role. We will on occasion share your email address with other Woodland Trust volunteers, for instance in the process of organising an event you have chosen to attend.

Scientific data

If you supply the Woodland Trust with scientific or environmental records e.g. as part of a citizen science or volunteer project, they will be carefully stored and used by us and/or our project partners. Such records may include, for example, species information, location, dates and photographs.

Scientific data sharing helps to further research, education and our national understanding of biodiversity and conservation issues. Hence anonymised scientific data may be shared with project partners and third parties such as the National Biodiversity Network, organisations such as local authorities, academic researchers and students.

In some circumstances such scientific data may be sold, but the income will be directly used to support the running cost of these data-gathering projects. By submitting your scientific or environmental records you are indicating agreement with our approach.

Anything else?

All the personal data we process is processed by our staff in the UK however for the purposes of IT hosting and maintenance your information may be situated outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). This will be done in accordance with guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

If you would like to change the way you hear from us or no longer wish to receive direct marketing communications from then use the contact form on our 'Contact us' page or go to our online permission portal.

Legitimate interests

We have a number of lawful reasons that mean we can use (or 'process') your personal information. One lawful reason is something called 'legitimate interests'. Broadly speaking Legitimate Interests means we can process your personal information if:

• we have a genuine and legitimate reason and are not harming any of your rights and interests

Please read the 'Legitimate interests' statement for more information.

Sharing your information

We only disclose information to third parties or individuals when obliged to by law, for purposes of national security, taxation and criminal investigations and the following:

• If you have agreed that we may do so.
• When we use other companies to provide services on our behalf, e.g. processing, mailing or delivering orders, answering customers’ questions about products or services, sending mail and emails, customer analysis, assessment and profiling, when using auditors/advisors or processing credit/debit card payments.
• To our subsidiaries (i.e. the companies owned by the Woodland Trust).
• If we receive a complaint about any content you have posted or transmitted to or from one of our sites, to enforce or apply our Terms and Conditions or if we believe that we need to do so to protect and defend the rights, property or personal safety of the Woodland Trust, our websites or our visitors and for other lawful purposes.
• If we merge with another organisation to form a new entity, information may be transferred to the new entity.
• We may disclose aggregate statistics about our site visitors, supporters, customers and sales to describe our services and operations to prospective partners, advertisers and other reputable third parties and for other lawful purposes, but these statistics won’t include any personally identifying information.
• If we run an event in partnership with other named organisations your details may need to be shared. We will be very clear what will happen to your data when you register.

And, we will never sell or rent your personal information to other organisations.

Retaining your information

We hold your information only as long as necessary for each purpose we use it. This period will normally be for seven years after your last financial contribution or other activity with us, unless we have a good reason to keep your information for a longer period. This is based on any legal, regulatory or business reasons we may have to retain your information.

You have the right to ask us to remove your personal information from our records. We will inform you in writing when we have actioned your request and if we need to refuse you we will give you the reasons why.

Your details on the web

What are your rights?

A new data protection law, starting in May 2018, gives everyone a number of very important rights. These are:

• transparency over how we use your personal information (right to be informed).
• request a copy of the information we hold about you, which will be provided to you within one month (right of access).
• update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong (right of rectification).
• ask us to stop using your information (right to restrict processing).
• ask us to remove your personal information from our records (right to be 'forgotten').
• object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes (right to object).
• obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes (right to data portability).
• not be subject to a decision when it is based on automated processing (automated decision making and profiling).

If you would like to know more about your rights under the data protection law see the Information Commissioners Office website.

Remember, you can change the way you hear from us or withdraw your permission for us to processing your personal data at any time by using the form on our 'Contact us' page or by using our online permission portal.