Our Privacy Policy

At VSA, we are committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what data we hold and how we use it.

We will use your personal information, which you have provided to us, in accordance with the data protection law and the General Data Protection Regulation Act of 2018. (Known as GDPR)

Our privacy policy sets out clear explanations about how and why we, Aberdeen Association of Social Services (T/A VSA), use and protect and collect your personal information via the phone, email, online, any other correspondence, or from third parties.

Our privacy policy applies to our supporters, volunteers, people we support, customers, the general public as well as visitors to any of our premises.

If you are a VSA employee, please visit the employee handbook or ask HR for an up-to-date copy of our employee privacy policy.

This policy explains:

• What information the VSA may collect about you;
• How we will use that information;
• Whether we disclose your details to anyone else;
• Your rights regarding the information you provide to us.

If you have any queries about this privacy and cookies policy, please contact the Data Protection Officer at data.protection@vsa.org.uk or call 01224 212021. You can also write to us at VSA, Data Protection Department, 38 Castle Street Aberdeen, AB11 5YU

Changes To Our Privacy Policy

All policies across our organisation, including our data protection and privacy policies, are reviewed and updated if required annually. This policy may change from time to time throughout the year to reflect any changes in legislation, guidance or to capture any changes we have made to how we collect and use your data. Please visit this section on our website to keep up to date with any changes made to this policy.

Who we are

Aberdeen Association of Social Services T/A VSA, is a leading social care charity in Scotland and is a registered Scottish Charity SC012950 and a Company limited by guarantee under number SC018487. VAT Registration No. 265 8668 08.

We are also registered with the Information Commissioner's Office, registration number Z7253656.

Our privacy notice for the general public, supporters, and volunteers

Overview

VSA ("we") is committed to protecting any personal information you share with us and will always ensure you are happy with the way we handle it.

In order to help support the development of VSA's voluntary income, our Fundraising department uses a dedicated database to store personal information collected by VSA over the course of our relationship with our members, volunteers, donors, sponsors, employees and suppliers.

VSA only collects personal information that you have provided directly to us or have made publicly available (for example, on social media, blogs, websites, etc.).

N.B.: This privacy statement does not apply to the information VSA collects from people who are registered in our services. Their information is handled independently and according to the nature of each service and our regulators' requirements. Please see our‘people who use our services’ privacy notice.

What personal information we collect

When you support VSA, whether it is by becoming a member, making a donation, volunteering, taking part in an event to fundraise for us, we will usually collect:

• Your name and title
• Your contact details (phone number, home address, email address)
• Your date of birth (where appropriate)
• Donation history (including gift amount, purpose, date and how you donated)
• Gift aid declaration (including your tax status)
• Your communications preferences

We do not store any debit/credit card details.

Where appropriate, we may also record the following:

• Information relating to health issues we need to be aware of when you take part in one of our events (including an emergency contact)
• Dietary requirements when attending our events
• Personal areas of interest and philanthropic interests
• Your photo only if it was taken with your consent during an event; this is just to put a face to your name

How we use your personal information

VSA will use personal information for the following:

• Processing donations or other payments and verify financial transactions. Donations made online via our website is completed on behalf of VSA by a third-party data processor called Enthuse.
• Fulfilling membership requests
• Fulfilling requests to become a friend of Easter Anguston Farm (previously adopt an animal )
• Registering you for our events
• Registering you for fundraising challenges
• Contacting you to promote events, campaigns, and appeals, or make you aware of volunteering opportunities
• Processing requests for corporate volunteering or support
• Fulfilling requests to leave a gift in your will
• Sending updates and/or newsletters that we think would be of interest to you
• Sending our annual report and invitations to our AGM
• Recording any contact, we have with you (phone calls, face-to-face meetings, etc.)
• Identifying our visitors and supporters
• Preventing or detecting fraud or abuses of our website and enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf
• Where you have given us your express consent, we will use photos and videos in which you appear on our social media sites, website, annual report, promotional and campaigning publications – we will always offer you a clear opt-in option for this on our registration forms

Our direct marketing

We hope to develop a strong relationship with you and ensure we know how you want to be contacted and for what purpose, so we also record your communication preferences. This is why we have moved to an “opt-in only” marketing communication policy; this means that you choose what you want to receive and how. You will find opt-in options on all our registration forms and you can also update them at any time by contacting our Fundraising department on Fundraising@vsa.org.uk or our Reception 01224 212021 (Mon-Fri 9.00-17.00).

VSA will keep you posted on our progress, events, opportunities to support us in different ways or may ask for donations according to your preferences only.

VSA will never sell or share your personal information with third party organisations for marketing purposes. We will always be clear about how your information will be used and what will happen to it on our registration forms.

Building your profile

In order to get to know you better, VSA may also collect personal information when it is already publicly available from social media sites, for example Facebook and Twitter, or has been published in articles/newspapers. We may also collect information related to your professional career on sites such as Companies House or LinkedIn as well as business publications. This information helps us to better understand your interests and target our communications with you accordingly.

Sharing your personal information

VSA will only share your information if:

• We are legally required to do so, e.g. by a law enforcement agency legitimately exercising a power or if compelled by an order of the Court
• We believe it is necessary in order to protect or defend our rights, property or the personal safety of our staff or visitors to our premises, at our events or websites
• We are working with a carefully selected partner that is carrying out work on our behalf. These partners may include photographers and film companies. The kind of work we may ask them to do includes taking photos and videos at our events, promotional and campaigning events, rehearsals, etc.

VSA only chooses partners we can trust and will only pass personal data to them if they have signed a contract that requires them to abide by the requirements of the GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018, treat information as carefully as we do, only use the information for the purposes it was supplied (not their own purpose or the purposes of any other organisation) and allow us to carry out checks to ensure they are doing all these things.

How we store your personal information

The information we collect is stored by us on computers located in the UK. We may transfer the information to other departments within VSA and to other reputable third-party organisations, as explained above, and we will always check where they are situated (inside or outside the EEA) prior to any arrangements being made. We also store paper files.

VSA places a great importance on the security of all personally identifiable information associated with our members, volunteers, donors, sponsors, employees and suppliers. We have security measures in place to attempt to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of personal information under our control. For example, only authorised personnel are authorised to access user information and we use secure server software (SSL) to encrypt financial and personal information you input before it is sent to us. While we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of information will not occur while it is under our control, we use our best efforts to try to prevent this.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information across the internet is not completely secure and whilst we do our best to try to protect the security of your information, we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of information will not occur whilst information is being transferred.

Where you or we have provided a password enabling you to access parts of our website, it is your responsibility to keep this password confidential. Please do not share your password with anyone.

We will keep your personal information only for as long as we need it to provide you with the information you have required, to administer your membership, regular donations and sponsorships, or administer your marketing preferences to comply with the law. We do not communicate with people who have asked us not to.

When we no longer need the information, we will always dispose of it securely, using specialist companies if necessary to do this work for us. Some personal information we hold is retained to fulfil statutory obligations; for instance, HMRC requires us to retain Gift Aid declarations for a set period of 6 years from the end of the accounting period they relate to.

What we do not do with your personal information

VSA will never sell or share your personal information with other organisations to use for their own purposes.

Your rights

The GDPR gives you certain rights over your personal information and how we use it. These include the right to:

• Access to the personal information we hold about you, called a subject access request
• Object to our processing of your personal information
• Object to your personal information being used for marketing purposes
• Restrict the processing of your personal information
• obtain a copy of your personal information in a portable format so that you can reuse it with a third party
• Rectify your personal information if you believe it is incorrect; we want to ensure that your personal information is accurate and kept up to date so please let us know of any changes
• Request the erasure of your personal information. Please note that in certain circumstances, we may need to retain your personal information for a set period to comply with our legal obligation (for instance, Gift Aid declarations)

If you wish to exercise any of those rights, please contact the Data Protection Department in writing to VSA, 38 Castle Street, Aberdeen, AB11 5YU or by emailing data.protection@vsa.org.uk.

For more information about your rights under the Data Protection Act, visit the Information Commissioner’s website.

Cookies

VSA uses cookies on its website. Cookies are text files that contain two pieces of information: a site name and a unique user ID (your IP address). When you visit our website and accept our cookies, they are downloaded onto your device. They help enhance your experience on our website and we collect this information in a way that does not identify you.

You can find our cookies policy and instructions on how to control and delete them here

Other useful information

Children’s personal information

It is our policy not to request donations, subscriptions or membership, or accept orders (such as subscription to our newsletter, request to sponsor one of our animals and baby animals, registering for an event or a fundraising challenge) from children under the age of 18.

Links to third party websites

Our website contains links to various third-party websites which we believe may be of interest to our website visitors. There are also links to some of our sponsors (when they support a section of our website). This privacy statement only governs VSA’s website; we are not responsible for third-party websites, please check their privacy policy before sharing any personal or financial information on their website.

Social media websites

VSA operates a number of social media pages such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Although this privacy statement covers how VSA will use your personal information from those pages, it does not cover or govern how social media websites will use it. Please ensure you read their privacy policies before sharing any information and make sure you familiarise yourself and use their privacy settings and reporting mechanisms to control how your personal information is used.

Posting or sending inappropriate content

We may use your personal information to inform relevant parties such as law enforcement for any content you send us online, or via the post that we believe to be inappropriate, defamatory or content in breach of laws.

Other people’s data

Before providing someone else’s personal information, please ensure they are happy for you to do so (for example when you tag someone in a photo on social media or share their story with us, etc.). Under no circumstances should you make public someone else’s home address, email address or phone number.