Preservation of your privacy is important to dates-n-mates Scotland and we are committed to letting you know how we use your personal information and to making only responsible use of your data.
References to ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘you’ or ‘our’ in this Privacy Policy are references to dates-n- mates Scotland and its various branches in Glasgow, Renfrewshire, Falkirk and Aberdeen. Dates-n-mates is a project of C-Change Scotland, Scottish Company Number SC262558 and Scottish Charity Number SCO35124.
What data we collect and how we use it
The type and quantity of data we collect and use depends on why you have provided it.
We will only collect, use and otherwise handle your personal data:
• where you have consented to this for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes
• where this is necessary to fulfil legal obligations that apply to us
• where it is necessary for our legitimate interests relating to running our daily
operations, as long as, in each case, these interests are in line with applicable law and your legal rights and freedoms.
Members
dates-n-mates is Scotland’s national dating and friendship agency run by and for adults with learning disabilities.
We will collect your contact details and preferences, and any other data that is relevant to delivering the dates-n-mates service to you, including personal data about your sexuality and gender identity.
This information will only be used for the purposes of the dates-n-mates service and not shared with the rest of C-Change Scotland unless you give us permission to do so.
If you join dates-n-mates we will continue to store your data for up to two years after you have ceased to be a member. If your membership is terminated for reasons of safeguarding other members, then your data may be held indefinitely.
If you enquire about membership and subsequently do not become a member, we will store your information for a maximum of 3 months thereafter.
Volunteers
If you volunteer with us, or enquire about our volunteering opportunities, we will usually collect your name, contact details, emergency contact details, bank details, contact preferences, ethnicity, gender, availability to volunteer, disability (including physical and mental conditions) and criminal convictions.
We collect this data so that we can contact you about volunteering opportunities that come up; so that we ensure the safety of our volunteers, staff and customers; can pay expenses; carry out our awards programme; and to help us anonymously measure our inclusion and accessibility across our volunteering programmes.
We will keep this data for three years after you stop volunteering for us, in order to be able to provide employment references if requested.
Emergency Contacts
If you are an emergency contact for one of our members or volunteers, we will usually collect your name, job title, organisation, mobile telephone number and email address and details of your relationship with the member.
We collect this data so that we can contact you at short notice should the volunteer or the dates-n-mates member you support need your help, or should we need your advice.
We will keep your data for up to two years after the person has ceased to be a member or three years after the person has ceased to volunteer for dates-n-mates.
Referees
If you are referee for one of our members or volunteers, we will usually collect your name, contact details, telephone number, email address, job title and information about your relationship with the person concerned. We will also store the reference information you provide.
We collect this data to help us ensure that dates-n-mates provides a safe service to its members, who are all vulnerable individuals.
We will keep your data for up to two years after the person has ceased to be a member or three years after the person has ceased to volunteer for dates-n-mates.
As our volunteers and members have the right to see all the information we hold about them, they may ask to see your reference. We will ask you at the time of providing the reference whether you wish us to contact you before we share your reference with the person concerned.
Supporters
If you support us, for example by signing up to a fundraising event, donating, signing up to Gift Aid, or signing up to a campaign, we will usually collect your name, contact details, and whether you would like to be contacted, and how we would do so. If appropriate, we may also ask to collect your date of birth, financial details, Gift Aid eligibility, reasons for support, information relating to health and disability, and responses to our campaigns.
We collect this data so we can keep you up to date with information and products you have requested, or may be interested in, and to ask for more support, in the way that you have chosen; to run our events; and to fulfil our legal responsibilities for financial and Gift Aid reporting.
We will keep your data only for as long as necessary. If you have kindly donated to us, we are required to keep this data for seven years. If you have not donated to us, we will only keep your data for three years.
Video and Photography
Our members, volunteers and supporters kindly let us use video, photography and images of them to help us illustrate our materials and campaigns and to bring our activities to life.
We keep these images stored in a secure location and will only use them with the subject’s permission.
We keep these images indefinitely in our archive, unless you ask otherwise. These images provide a historical record which people who use our services may wish to access in future. They also provide a safeguarded record of the evolution of society’s view of disability.
Research
Part of the work we do involves carrying out research. If you agree to take part, we will record responses to questions that you give us, and your personal details.
This data will be used to fulfil our research objectives, and may be shared for relevant projects. Your data will remain anonymous unless you consent to it being disclosed.
The data we collect will be kept for five years.
Complaints
Should you wish to register a complaint we will collect your name, contact details and details about the complaint to enable us to respond, monitor and improve our organisation.
This data will be shared with any parts of C-Change Scotland or any third parties who are involved in resolving the complaint, for example, agencies that we have partnered with.
We will hold this data for six years.
Website
When someone visits dates-n-mates.co.uk we use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out information, such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site.
Our current website does not collect cookies.
We may also obtain your personal data through your use of social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter or LinkedIn, depending on your settings or the privacy policies of these social media and messaging services. To change your settings on these services, please refer to their privacy notices, which will tell you how to do this.
E-mails
We use a third-party provider, Mailchimp, to deliver emails and e-newsletters. We collect statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our communications. For more information, please see Mailchimp’s privacy notice.
dates-n-mates’ Blog
The dates-n-mates blog is currently hosted on WordPress.com, which is run by Automattic Inc. By subscribing to the blog, your email and IP address will be collected so that you can be kept up to date with new blogs and to ensure that the house rules are adhered to.
For more information about how WordPress processes data, please see Automattic’s privacy notice.
Comments left on our blog are kept indefinitely.
Sharing your data
Unless we are required to share your data for legal or regulatory reasons or to help with a complaint we will never share your data with other organisations.
We do use third-party organisations to help us collect donations such as Everyday Hero and Virgin Money Giving, and to help us fulfil our marketing. Where we use external companies to collect or process data on our behalf, we carry out comprehensive checks on these companies, and put in place contracts to control how they manage the data they may collect or have access to.
Keeping your data safe and up to date
At dates-n-mates Scotland and C-Change Scotland we ensure that the most appropriate technical controls are in place to keep your data safely. Access to your data is regularly reviewed and only accessible to the relevant trained staff, volunteers and contractors.
Where we use external companies to collect or process data on our behalf, we carry out comprehensive checks, and put in place contracts to control how they manage the data they may collect or have access to.
Your data will be hosted on servers located in the UK, which will not be transferred out of the European Union, or in the case of our blog and Mailchimp, the data will be stored in the US.
Your rights
We will only collect the data that we need to carry out the purposes you have contacted us for, or given us permission to use it for.
To enable us to carry out the purposes you have contacted us for, there will be occasions when we will make some data collection mandatory i.e. your name and address to send your monthly event information, or details of your emergency contact when you attend events. If you don’t provide this data, we cannot carry out the purposes you have contacted us for.
We will always tell you why these are mandatory. At any time that you wish you can:
• gain access to your personal information,
• object to the processing of your personal information,
• object to the use of automated decision-making and profiling,
• restrict the processing of your personal information,
• ask for a copy of your personal data (known as data portability),
• rectify or correct your personal information, and
have your personal information removed (known as Erasure or the ‘right to be forgotten’).
Where you have provided consent to be contacted or to receive a service, you will be entitled to withdraw that consent at any time.
If you are at any point unhappy with the way that we handled your personal data, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
To make changes to how we contact you, please contact the dates-n-mates Team at
[email protected]
Changes to this Policy
We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make any changes in the way we use your personal information we will make this clear on the dates-n-mates website or by contacting you directly.
