Privacy and Cookies Policy

1. Who are we?

Dorset Wildlife Trust is the largest conservation charity in Dorset with over 27,000 members. We are committed to ensuring that there is a secure future for Dorset’s nature - its distinctive wildlife and natural spaces. We use a sound evidence base, influence and wide practical experience of land management and marine conservation to inspire, inform and engage people in Dorset.

Through our guidance we help others to carry forward policies that are beneficial for nature within both the rural and urban economy. We provide opportunities for everyone to appreciate and understand Dorset's unparalleled natural heritage and strive to ensure that future generations will be able to enjoy a quality of life at least as rich and diverse as we have now.

We do this in Dorset through co-operating in partnerships and also regionally and nationally, through our affiliation with 45 other Wildlife Trusts within the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts.

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.

2. Our commitment to your privacy

We are committed to keeping the personal details of our members and supporters 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 Dorset Wildlife Trust, DWT, the Trust, or to ‘we’ or ‘us’ refer to:

  • Dorset Wildlife Trust. We are a registered charity in England and Wales, and our registered charity number is 200222. We are also registered as a company in England and Wales under registration number 688439.
  • DWT Services Ltd, our charitable trading company; (registered company number 2293763). The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dorset Wildlife Trust, 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 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, Dorset Wildlife Trust. With your permission, we determine why and how your personal data is used (as outlined in this policy).
  • ‘Data processor’: this is a person, or organisation, who processes data on our behalf. For example, this might be a mailing house who sends your membership magazine to you, on our behalf (due to the size of our organisation, it’s more cost-effective to outsource ad-hoc and large-scale tasks like this). Dorset Wildlife Trust 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:

Sara Thompson
Director of Fundraising & Marketing
Telephone: 01305 264620
Email: enquries@dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk
Brooklands Farm, Forston, Dorchester, DT2 7AA
Our office hours are Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm.

3. Why do we collect your personal data?

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 Dorset Wildlife Trust membership
We collect your personal data to administer your membership, which may involve:

  • Sending you your membership welcome pack when you first join us.
  • Processing your Direct Debit membership payments, if you have set this donation process up with us.
  • Sending you your membership renewal letter.
  • Getting in touch should there ever be any issues processing your membership payment.
  • Enquiring about Gift Aiding your membership payments and/or donations to Dorset Wildlife Trust.

The ICO define the lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes as 'contractual'.

b) To send you items purchased from our online shop, including event bookings

We collect your personal data to send you:

  • items you have purchased from our online shop
  • information about events you have booked onto

The ICO define the lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes as 'contractual'.

c) To send you information about our work and ask for your opinion

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 membership magazine, fundraising appeals, events, campaigning opportunities, membership, services, products, newsletter requests, feedback, competitions and other activities, as well as information about other carefully selected organisations that we work in partnership with. From time to time, we may also use your personal data to ask for your opinion about our work.

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

i) Joint and family membership

If you are a 'joint' member of Dorset Wildlife Trust, we will address communications to all those listed on your membership.  If you are a 'family' member, we will address communications to the parents/guardians listed on your membership.  If you wish to update this at any point, please let us know.

ii) Gift membership

If your Dorset Wildlife Trust membership was purchased as a gift, we will use the address provided by the purchaser by to send you information about our work in the post. This will include a 'renewal letter', which we will send you when your membership is due to expire, to see if you would like to continue supporting our charity. 

iii) When your membership has ended

Unless we hear from you directly, we will continue to send you information about our work for up to three months after your membership has ended. This is just in case your support was cancelled accidentally, by for example changing your bank account details, and you wish to update your details with us.

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. Likewise, keeping a record of your wildlife interests that you may tell us about in one of our Membership Surveys, helps us to send you relevant project updates.

As defined by the ICO, 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 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 emailtext 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 Dorset Wildlife Trust 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, by sending you our volunteer newsletter
  • dedicated volunteer thank-you events

As defined by the ICO, the lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes is 'contractual' (where administering your volunteer record) and 'legitimate interest' (when sending you information about our work).

e) To buy or sell goods or services

We collect personal data to comply with contractual responsibilities when we buy and sell goods and services from others. 

The ICO define the lawful basis for processing personal data for these purposes as ‘contractual’.

f) To meet our legal obligations 

We collect personal data in order to comply with legal obligations such as providing information to bodies such as HMRC, Charity Commission, Companies House, HSE. 

The ICO define the lawful basis for processing personal data for these purposes as ‘legal obligation’.

g) To enable effective functioning of our organisation

We collect personal data to enable the Trust to operate effectively in a variety of ways such as: 

  • responding to complaints,
  • complying with regulators eg Fundraising Preference Service, Fundraising Regulator
  • safeguarding, health and safety, security
  • maintaining records to comply with donor requirements
  • maintaining historical records of reserve management and biological field records
  • liaising with landowners and tenants about conservation activities
  • running engagement activities such as events and competitions
  • evaluating events, campaigns and website activity
  • research and statistical analysis

The ICO define the lawful basis for processing personal data for these purposes as ‘legitimate interest’.

4. What kind of personal data do we collect? How do we collect it?

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:

  • information about your wildlife interests, which you tell us through our Membership Surveys
  • records of donations you've made towards fundraising appeals
  • 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. Occasionally we also obtain data from external sources. For example, we may check against Royal Mail's National Change of Address database to ensure that the address we have listed for you is up to date. We know moving to a new house can be a busy time and appreciate that you don't always have the chance to send us your new address. By undertaking this exercise, we can update your record without you needing to get in touch.

We may also collect demographic and consumption data to postcode level, 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. 

Sara Thompson, Director of Fundraising & Marketing

Telephone: 01305 264620. Email: enquiries@dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk

Brooklands Farm, Forston, Dorchester, DT2 7AA

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.  See below for our full cookies policy.

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 (such as information relating to health, beliefs or political affiliation) about supporters and members. 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, and we will only do so with your specific consent and permission. In these situations, we collect the data from you directly.

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 if you have an accident on one of our reserves. 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, we will not collect, store or process your personal details if you are under 13 years of age; unless we have the express permission from your parent or guardian to do so.

If we have the permission of your parent or guardian, and you are a Wildlife Watch member, we will capture your date of birth at the point of joining. This is so that we can send you information that we feel is suitable to your age. 

For further information, please see our Safeguarding Vulnerable People policy and Data Retention Policy.

5. How do we store your data?

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 Dorset Wildlife Trust 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 (Sage Pay). Other payment methods (e.g. ApplePay) are handled in a similar manner.

Dorset Wildlife Trust 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) CCTV

Some of our premises have CCTV and you may be recorded when you visit them. CCTV is there to help provide security and to protect both you and Dorset Wildlife Trust. CCTV will only be viewed when necessary (e.g. to detect or prevent crime) and footage is only stored temporarily. Unless it is flagged for review CCTV will be recorded over.

Dorset Wildlife Trust complies with the Information Commissioner's Office CCTV Code of Practice, and we put up notices, so you know when CCTV is in use.

d) Data retention policy

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

For further information, please see our Data Retention Policy.

6. Your rights

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.

7. Making a complaint

Dorset Wildlife Trust 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 complaints 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 Laura McLellan, from our management team.

For further information on how to make a complaint, please see 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

8. Leaving our website

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.

9. Get in touch

 

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

Sara Thompson, Director of Fundraising & Marketing 

Telephone: 01305 264620. Email: enquiries@dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk

Brooklands Farm, Forston, Dorchester, DT2 7AA

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

10. Cookies Policy

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.

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

There are two types of cookie you may encounter when using this site:

First party cookies: these are our own cookies, controlled by us and used to provide information about usage of our site.

Third party cookies: these are cookies found in other companies’ internet tools which we are using to enhance our site.

First party cookies

This site uses cookies in several places – we’ve listed each of them below with more details about why we use them and how long they will last.

Cookies set by this website

Name

Purpose

Typical content

Expires

SESSxxxID

Authentication session to prevent having to login multiple times in one browser session. This is only set if you authenticate via the site. This may happen if you purchase items from the shop or make use of our commenting

A unique id that ties the current session to a database settings table

One week

cookieconsent_dismissed

This cookie collects information about whether or not the user has agreed to cookies. Yes/No  70 years 6 months

 

Third Party Cookies

We use a number of suppliers who may also set cookies on their websites on their behalf. This site does not control the dissemination of these cookies. You should check the third-party websites for more information about these.

Provider

Name

Purpose

More info

Google Analytics

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These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.

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 (if you aren’t using these two already, still worth including so you can in future) and Google Signals, all of which are services offered by Google. 

We implement Google Analytics to track, monitor and report on Site 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/

Google Privacy policy

Google Tag Manager: Facebook and Google

 

Online advertising and network cookies are used to track when you have clicked on an advert, to see what pages of the website are used and this provides insight as to how improvements can be made. We also have relationships with carefully-selected advertising partners (such as Facebook and Google) who may also set cookies during your visit to allow them to serve online advertising that we believe will be of interest to you based on information about your visit to this and other websites (this is called re-targeting). This information is anonymous and does not include personal data.

 

WebChoices Digital Advertising Alliance Opt-Out Tool

 

Your Online Choices Guide to Online Behavioural Advertising

 

MailChimp

 

MailChimp automatically places single pixel gifs, also known as web beacons, in bulk email sent by Dorset Wildlife Trust including Wildlife Matters, Volunteering Alert, Kingcombe Centre e-news, Species of the Month, Marine news and The Great Heath Watch. These are tiny graphic files that contain unique identifiers that enable DWT to recognize when their subscribers have opened an email or clicked certain links. These technologies record each subscribers email address, IP address, date, and time associated with each open and click for a campaign. MailChimp uses this data to create reports for DWT and other Mailchimp customers about how an email campaign performed and what actions subscribers took.

WebChoices Digital Advertising Alliance Opt-Out Tool

 

Your Online Choices Guide to Online Behavioural Advertising

YouTube   We embed videos from YouTube. This may set cookies on your computer, particularly if you are logged into a Google or YouTube account. YouTube's embedding videos information page
Twitter   We embed twitter feeds from Twitter. Twitter cookies policy
Disqus   We embed commenting from Disqus Disqus use of cookies
Ecwid   We embed our shop from Ecwid. Ecwid privacy policy
Eventbrite   We embed events from Eventbrite Eventbrite cookie statement
Hotjar   We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behavior and their devices. This includes a device's IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf.   For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.

 

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.  

We update these policies periodically.
Last updated:  February 2024