When you make a donation to our service – our privacy policy
This content applies to England and Wales.
When you donate to us we need to collect some of your personal information. We’ll always collect, use and store your data responsibly, and make sure your data is protected.
The policy might change from time to time, but we’ll update this page when it does.
What information we ask for
Our national donation platform is hosted by CAF Donate. They collect information on our behalf to process your donation and they store it securely. We make sure the suppliers we work with follow data protection law. We manage the relationship with them and their obligations through a legally binding data processing agreement. The agreement outlines our relationship: Citizens Advice is the data controller and CAF Donate is the data processor.
They’ll only use your information to do the work we’ve asked them to and only if that information is relevant to the work they’re doing. They can’t give, sell or rent your personal information to anyone else for any reason.
The information they collect and store on our behalf is:
- data to identify you, such as your name, username or your date of birth – for example, if you make a donation
- your contact details, such as email address, postal address and phone number – for example, to be able to process a donation, claim Gift Aid or if you sign up to receive communications from us
- financial data, such as your bank or card details – so that they can process your donation on our behalf
- marketing data, such as your preferences for how we communicate with you your reason for donating and specific interests relating to the work of Citizens Advice – this means we can make sure our communications with you are relevant
- records of your history with us, including transaction data, details of your donation
We sometimes receive donations via other third party donation platforms (e.g. Charities Aid Foundation, Charities Trust or other online donation platforms). Please refer to their privacy policies to find out how they keep your data secure.
We download the following information from our data processors to enable us to contact you if you have asked us to keep you up-to-date with our fundraising activities or our work:
- data to identify you, which includes your name, your address, your email address and phone number
- Information about your donations, including the number of times you have donated to us, the donation amounts and whether you have added Gift Aid to your donation (but we do not see any financial data, such as your bank or card details)
- marketing data, such as your preferences for how we communicate with you your reason for donating and specific interests relating to the work of Citizens Advice – this means we can make sure our communications with you are relevant records of your history with us
We do not see any of your financial data (i.e. bank or card details) relating to your donations that CAF Donate processes on our behalf or that any other third party donation platform processes on our behalf.
How we use your information
We’ll only use your data for the reason it was collected. For example, for:
- processing information internally
- deciding how we continue to communicate with you and what we send
- reviewing our services and how we operate
The lawful grounds we use to process your personal data are:
- contractual – if we enter into a contract with you, we’ll process information to administer that contract
- legal obligations – we’ll sometimes pass on personal information to comply with our legal obligations. For example, providing tax and gift aid information to HMRC in the UK
- legitimate interest – our legitimate interests enable us to meet our charitable objectives. This includes governance and operational management, publicity and income generation, administration and financial management and control
- consent – we rely on consent as a legal basis to process your information when we send you marketing communications about fundraising, campaigning or events. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time by emailing [email protected] or by clicking the unsubscribe link in any emails we send you.
As a charitable organisation, we undertake in-house research and from time to time engage specialist agencies to gather information about our supporters from publicly available sources, for example, Companies House, the Electoral Register, company websites, ‘rich lists’, social networks such as Linkedin, political and property registers and news archives.
You will always have the right to opt out of this processing. We may also carry out research using publicly available information to identify individuals who may have an affinity to our cause but with whom we are not already in touch. This may include people connected to our current major supporters, trustees or other lead volunteers. We also use publicly available sources to carry out due diligence on donors in line with the charity’s Gift Acceptance Policy and to meet money laundering regulations.
This research helps us to understand more about our donors so we can focus conversations we have about fundraising and volunteering in the most effective way, and ensure that we provide an experience which is appropriate.
When we share your information
We might share your information without your consent if we’re required to by law, for example:
- to assist police enquiries
- in response to court orders
- to prevent fraud
- to protect your safety or the safety of others
