Privacy Policy

The Wildlife Trusts are a movement of more than 800,000 members, 40,000 volunteers, 2,000 staff and 600 trustees, from a wide range of backgrounds and all walks of life.

For more than a century, we have been saving, protecting and standing up for wildlife and wild places, increasing people’s awareness and understanding of the natural world, and deepening people’s relationship with it.

Our roots are local. Each Wildlife Trust has been formed by groups of active and motivated people getting together to make a difference where they live and work.

We look after more than 2,300 nature reserves, covering 98,500 hectares, and operate more than 100 visitor and education centres in every part of the UK, on the Isles of Alderney and Man.

We work on land and sea, from mountain tops to the seabed, from the remotest wilderness to city streets. Wherever you are, our people, places and projects are never far away.

We work productively with more than 1,800 companies, with other environmental organisations, community groups, local authorities, national governments, schools, universities, lotteries, charitable trusts and foundations, fishermen, divers, farmers, landowners, politicians from across the political spectrum, and more.

There are 37 individual Trusts covering England, five in Wales and single Trusts covering each of Scotland, Northern Ireland and two Crown Dependencies. Wherever we work, we are accountable to people who live nearby.

The Trusts are supported in doing this by the central charity, RSWT (the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts), the purpose of which is “to lead the movement’s development, to build trust and to represent the interests of the movement whenever a strong united voice is required”.

This policy applies to your interactions with the central charity, each Wildlife Trust has its own privacy policy (for further details, please visit the website of the Trust concerned).

We are committed to keeping your personal details safe. This policy explains how and why we use your personal data, to ensure that you remain informed and in control of your information.

Any references to the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, or to ‘we’ or ‘us’ refer to:
• The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. We are a registered charity in England and Wales, and our registered charity number is 207238.
• Wildlife Trust Services Limited, our charitable trading company; (registered company number 02540956). The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, which trades only to raise funds for our charitable organisation.
We use three key definitions to describe people mentioned in this policy. These are definitions enshrined in GDPR and used by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s independent body set up to uphold information rights (www.ico.org.uk)

• ‘Data subject’: this is you. As the data subject, we respect your right to control your data.
• ‘Data controller’: this is us, the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. We determine why and how your personal data is used (as outlined in this policy).

• ‘Data processor’: this is an organisation that processes data on behalf of RSWT or at RSWT's discretion. RSWT takes full responsibility for what they do.

When we work with other organisations or individuals in this way, we always set up a written contract with them to protect your data. The third parties we work with at no point ‘own’ your data, so you will never hear from them independently and they will always delete your data from their systems when they have completed the task in hand. We always send your data to partner organisations securely, to minimise the risk of it being intercepted by unknown individuals and/or organisations.

We will never sell your personal data.

Should you wish to find out more about the information we hold about you, or about our privacy policy, please contact us:

Telephone: 01636 677711
Email: enquiries@wildlifetrusts.org
The Kiln, Mather Road, Newark, NG24 1WT

Our office hours are Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm.

We use your personal data to keep in touch with you.

We will only ever collect, store and use your personal data when we have an identified purpose and reason to do so. The ICO refers to this as a ‘lawful basis’. Further information about why we collect your personal data is outlined below.

a) To administer your donations

We collect your personal data to administer your donations, which may involve:
• Sending you a thank you letter or email
• Getting in touch should there ever be any issues processing your donation

The lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes may be ‘contractual’ or 'legitimate interest'.

b) To send you items purchased from our online shop

We collect your personal data to send you:
• items you have purchased from our online shop

The lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes is ‘contractual’.

c) To send you information about our work

We also collect your personal data so that we can send you information about our work that we feel will be of interest to you, this includes your Natural World magazine, fundraising appeals, campaigning opportunities, Wildlife Watch and other activities.

This information is in addition to that outlined in sections a) and b) and is interpreted as ‘direct marketing’ by the ICO.

Your personal data also helps us to get to know you better and to develop a ‘profile’ of you on our secure supporter database. This ‘profile’ enables us to send you the information listed above in a timely and relevant way, to suit you. For example, keeping track of the donations you make to our organisation helps us to send you information about fundraising appeals that we feel you would like to hear about.

We also use your data to analyse and refine our campaigning, advertising and other operations to increase our effectiveness and allow us to refine our audiences to make sure the ads you’re seeing are relevant to you, this process could include uploading data to various advertising platforms that the Wildlife Trusts uses.  

We may use your data when using social media advertising platform advertising tools, to further ensure that our advertising campaigns are as effective as possible, by making sure both our budget is used effectively and the ads that you see are relevant to you. This means we can target based on specific characteristics and interests. We collect the data from campaigns, adverts, posts and interactions with our website and social platforms.

Processing this information may also help us to evaluate how we are performing in terms of our charitable objectives. Doing this enables us to track and keep you updated about how we are caring for wildlife and wild places, and inspiring and empowering people to take action for nature.

We use two different lawful bases for processing your data for ‘direct marketing’ purposes:

i) Legitimate interest
This is where we have identified a genuine and legitimate reason (see section 3c) for contacting you, which crucially does not override your rights or interests

We use legitimate interest to send you the information listed above by post or telephone (if you are not registered with the Telephone Preference Service, and you have given us your telephone number).

ii) Opt-in consent
This is where you have given us express permission to contact you by particular communication channels.

We use opt-in consent to send you the information listed above by email, text message (SMS) or telephone (if you are registered with the Telephone Preference Service)

We respect your right to update the way we get in touch with you about our work at any time.

d) To enable you to volunteer with us

If you are a Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts volunteer, we collect your personal data so that we can keep in touch with you about, for example:
• changes to planned volunteer work programmes that you may be taking part in
• the positive impact you have on our work

e) If you have made a general enquiry, which we think is better handled by a local Trust, we will pass this enquiry on

The lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes may be ‘contractual’ and ‘legitimate interest’ (when sending you information about our work).

a) Basic information
We will usually collect basic information about you, including your name, postal address, telephone number, email address and your bank details if you are supporting us financially. 

Most of the time, we collect this data from you directly. Sometimes this is in person; other times, it is over the telephone, in writing or through an email. Occasionally we obtain information, such as your telephone number or other contact details, from external sources (only where you have given permission for such information to be shared).

b) Getting to know you better
We also collect information about you that helps us to get to know you better. This may include:
• records of donations you’ve made
• your preferences of how you would like us to contact you
• ways you’ve helped us through volunteering your time
• records of events you’ve attended, or campaigns or activities that you’ve been involved in

Sometimes we will collect other information about you such as your date of birth and gender. When we do so, we will be very clear as to why we are collecting such information, and we will only do so with your specific consent and permission.

Once again, most of the time we collect this data from you directly.

We may also collect demographic and consumption data generated through geodemographic tools (such as CACI Acorn), as well as information related to your wealth. This may 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 collected in any of these ways, or have questions about them, please contact us.

Telephone: 01636 677711
Email: enquiry@wildlifetrusts.org
The Kiln, Mather Road, Newark, NG24 1WT

Our office hours are Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm.

Other ways in which we collect personal data to get to know you better include:

i) Our website
Our website uses ‘cookies’ to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites.

Our cookies help us:
• Make our website work as you'd expect
• Remember your settings during and between visits
• Improve the speed/security of the site
• Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook
• Continuously improve our website for you

c) Sensitive personal data
We do not normally collect or store sensitive personal data, also known as special category data, (such as information relating to health, beliefs or political affiliation) about supporters. However, there are some situations where this will occur.

When we do so, we will be very clear as to why we are collecting such information. In most cases we will only collect such information with your specific consent and permission. In these situations, we collect the data from you directly. There are limited cases where permission is not required for processing special category data.

If you are a volunteer then we may collect extra information about you, for example:
• references
• criminal records checks
• details of emergency contacts
• medical conditions

We may also collect sensitive personal data in case of an accident on our premises. This information will be retained for legal reasons, for safeguarding purposes and to protect us (including in the event of an insurance or legal claim). If this does occur, we’ll take extra care to ensure your privacy rights are protected.

d) Children and young people 
In line with data protection law, if we receive any information through any data collection channel that indicates an individual is under 13 years old age, we will not store or process that individual’s personal details, unless we have the express permission from your parent or guardian to do so.

a) Security
All of 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.

Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems and we control who has access to information (using both physical and electronic means). Our staff receive data protection training and we have a set of detailed data protection procedures which personnel are required to follow when handling personal data.

b) Payment security
All electronic Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts forms that request financial data will use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to encrypt the data between your browser and our servers.

If you use a credit card to donate, purchase a membership or purchase something online we will pass your credit card details securely to our payment provider (Stripe; PayPal). Other payment methods (e.g. ApplePay) are handled in a similar manner.

The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts complies with the payment card industry data security standard (PCI-DSS) published by the PCI Security Standards Council, and will never store card details.

Of course, we cannot guarantee the security of your home computer or the internet, and any online communications (e.g. information provided by email or our website) are at the user’s own risk.

c) Data retention policy
We will only use and store information for as long as it is required for the purposes it was collected for. We continually review what information we hold, and delete what is no longer required.

We would also like to state that only those who have authorisation within The Wildlife Trusts have access to your personal data and all staff are trained in data protection and are compliant in making sure that this is used in the correct manner. Those who have access to personal data will only do so for the necessary tasks and will make sure to handle this data in the safest way possible. We will never use your data for anything other than what is stated within our privacy policy.  

We respect your right to control your data. Your rights include:

a) The right to be informed 
This privacy notice outlines how we capture, store and use your data. If you have any questions about any elements of this policy, please contact us.

b) The right of access
If you wish to obtain a record of the personal data we hold about you, through a Subject Access Request, we will respond within one month.

c) The right to rectification
If we have captured information about you that is inaccurate or incomplete, we will update it.

d) The right to erase
You can ask us to remove or randomise your personal details from our records.

e) The right to restrict processing
You can ask us to stop using your personal data.

f) The right to data portability
You can ask to obtain your personal data from us for your own purposes.

g) The right to object
You can ask to be excluded from marketing activity.

h) Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling
We respect your right not to be subject to a decision that is based on automated processing.

For more information on your individual rights, please see the Information Commissioner’s Office.

The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts want to exceed your expectation in everything we do. However, we know that there may be times when we do not meet our own high standards. When this happens, we want to hear about it, in order to deal with the situation as quickly as possible and put measures in place to stop it happening again.

We take complaints very seriously and we treat them as an opportunity to develop our approach. This is why we are always very grateful to hear from people who are willing to take the time to help us improve.

Our policy is:
• To provide a fair complaints procedure that is clear and easy to use for anyone wishing to make a complaint.
• To publicise the existence of our complaints procedure so that people know how to contact us to make a complaint.
• To make sure everyone in our organisation knows what to do if a complaint is received.
• To make sure all complaints are investigated fairly and in a timely way.
• To make sure that complaints are, wherever possible, resolved and that relationships are repaired.
• To learn from complaints and feedback to help us to improve what we do.

Confidentiality
All complaint information will be handled sensitively, in line with relevant data protection requirements.

Responsibility
Overall responsibility for this policy and its implementation lies with the Director of Marketing and Development

For further information on how to make a complaint, please click here.

Information Commissioner’s Office
For further assistance with complaints regarding your data, please contact the Information Commissioner’s Office, whose remit covers the UK.

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Email: casework@ico.org.uk

Our website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites.

We use cookies, which are issued by third party service providers that we continuously assess to make sure the data is secure. We collect these cookies in order to ensure that anything we do in our online advertising and campaigns are cost effective and relevant. We track how well our adverts perform and then analyse this data to make sure we can continue to make improvements.  

Our cookies help us:

• Make our website work as you'd expect
• Remember your settings during and between visits
• Improve the speed/security of the site
• Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook
• Continuously improve our website for you

We do NOT use cookies to:

• Collect any personally identifiable information (without your express permission)
• Collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
• Pass personally identifiable data to third parties
• Pay sales commissions

You can learn more about all the cookies we use below.

 

Cookie provider: The Wildlife Trusts

Purpose: Used by the website to remember cookie preferences.

Cookies: cookie-agreed, MCPopupClosed

 

Cookie provider: Facebook

Purpose: Used by Facebook for sharing content, conversion tracking, optimisation, creating audiences for Facebook Ads and marketing.

Cookies: _fbp, fr

Provider policy: Facebook

 

Cookie provider: Paypal

Purpose: Used to support payment services.

Cookies: AKDC, LANG, X-PP-SILOVER, akavpau_ppsd, enforce_policy, nsid, ts, ts_c, tsrce, x-csrf-jwt, x-pp-s

Provider policy: Paypal

 

Cookie provider: Vimeo

Purpose: Used to embed videos from Vimeo using cookies that we consider essential to the video player experience. Does not use third-party analytics or advertising cookies.

Cookies: player, vuid

Provider policy: Vimeo

 

Cookie provider: Eventbrite

Purpose: Used to deliver event booking services and content tailored to the user’s interests.

Cookies: _ga, _gat, _gid, AS, csrftoken, eblang, G, janus_re, mgref, SP, SS, ebGAClientId, lux_uid, SERVERID

Provider policy: Eventbrite

 

Cookie provider: New Relic

Purpose: Anonymously maintains a user’s browsing session on the website to allow us to monitor and troubleshoot website performance.

Cookies: JSESSIONID

Provider policy: New Relic

 

Cookie provider: Engaging Networks

Purpose: Maintains a user’s browsing session on the website when participating with our online campaigning activities.

Cookies: en_sessionId

Provider policy: Engaging Networks

 

Cookie provider: Google

Purpose: Used to understand website usage including how users found and explored our site and how their experience can be enhanced. Google also provides campaign tracking, advertising and website functionality services.

Cookies: IDE, _ga, _gat, _gat_UA-xxxxxxx-xx, _gid

Provider policy: Google

 

Cookie provider: Stripe

Purpose: Used for making card transactions on the website. Provided by Stripe.com which allows online transactions without storing any credit card information.

Cookies: __stripe_mid, __stripe_sid

Provider policy: Stripe

 

Cookie provider: Hotjar

Purpose: Anonymously analyses how the website is being used to improve the user experience.

Cookies: _hjSessionUser_xxxxxx, _hjFirstSeen, _hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress, _hjIncludedInSessionSample, _hjSession_xxxxxxx, _hjIncludedInPageviewSample

Provider policy: Hotjar

 

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

We also use data such as email for tracking purposes. Hashed data is used to create targeted advertising for our fundraising and campaigning activities on social media and web platforms.  

Hashing means that data such as email addresses are turned into unreadable codes for security and privacy during data transfer. We delete the hashed data after a short period of time and it's not used for any other purpose. 

This helps us reach and inspire new people to take meaningful action for nature and to create an inclusive society where nature matters. It's both cost-effective and helps us grow support for wildlife. 

If you opt into Marketing Cookies when using our website we will employ Google Analytics, a web analysis service provided by Google LLC. We also employ Google Ads conversion tracking, Google remarketing and Google Signals, all of which are services offered by Google.

We implement Google Analytics to track, monitor and report on websiite traffic. Google Analytics uses cookies and similar technologies to analyse and enhance our website based on how people use it and their behaviour on the website.

Google Ads conversion tracking and Google Ads remarketing employ cookies and similar technologies to measure the performance of our advertising and to display personalised advertising messages on websites collaborating with Google. This helps us to efficiently reach people to support our work and protect wildlife for the future.

Google Signals, integrated with Google Analytics, creates data reports from multiple platforms or devices from people who are signed into their Google accounts, but only if they have enabled personalised advertising within their account. This information may include a person’s location, search history, YouTube history and data from sites that partner with Google. It is used to provide aggregated and anonymous insights into behaviours across more than one device.

You can opt out of Google Analytics Advertising Features through various settings and tools provided by Google including from within your Google account settings, ad settings for mobile apps, Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on and NAI’s consumer opt-out. For more information, please refer to Google Privacy Controls. https://safety.google/privacy/privacy-controls/

We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any other websites linked to our website. If you have followed a link from this website to another website you may be supplying information to a third party.

We will never sell your personal data. When sharing your data with us, if you have opted-in to receive further contact, we may get in touch with information about our partners, or third party products and services, but these communications will always come from The Wildlife Trusts. In some circumstances where we are using subcontractors or suppliers we may share your personal data so that they can carry out their contractual services. For example, if you order something from a Wildlife Trust shop that uses a third party delivery company, your name and address will be shared with them. Occasionally, where we partner with other organisations, we may also share information with them (for example our Wild About Gardens campaign which is a partnership campaign with The RHS). The Wildlife Trusts also share personal data with your local Wildlife Trust, but only where permission has been given when the data was gathered.

Should you wish to find out more about the information we hold about you, or about our privacy policy, please contact us.