Privacy Policy

Girlguiding Ulster is committed to protecting your privacy. This notice details the information we collect from you when you access the Girlguiding Ulster website and the steps we take to ensure this information remains confidential.

This notice gives you important information about your personal rights to privacy, and about how we use your personal information.

We all give our personal data out every day – our names, contact details, or other bits of information – and most of us want to be feel sure that our data is being handled properly.

As someone who is in contact with Girlguiding Ulster, you may have given us information about yourself, like your name, or email address, or other details. Giving your personal data is voluntary, although you often need to, for instance if you want to make a training or events booking, use our online shop or donate. This privacy notice explains what Girlguiding Ulster does with your information. It explains how we gather, use, disclose and manage your personal data, and it also tells you about your personal rights to privacy.

We take your privacy very seriously and we always aim to be clear to you about the way Girlguiding Ulster manages data. We make sure our privacy notice is up to date, and as comprehensive as possible. But it doesn’t cover every aspect of our collection and use of personal data, so please contact us if you need more information or have any questions about this notice.

What do: ‘Girlguiding’, Girlguiding Ulster’, ‘we’ or ‘us’ refer to?

“Girlguiding Ulster”, “Us”, “We” or “Our” refers to the registered charity The Guide Association Province of Ulster (NI Charity Commission NIC103728 )

Our registered / Head office address:
Girlguiding Ulster

Lorne Estate

30 Station Road

Holywood
BT18 0BP

What personal information does Girlguiding Ulster collect and how?

We collect this personal information when we need to:

  • Name
  • Parent/guardian name(s)
  • Contact details, including address, telephone number and email address
  • Date of birth
  • Health information
  • Payment information (bank or credit card details) if you donate to us or buy from training and events booking system or our online shop
  • Records of your correspondence with us
  • Records of your participation with us (including as a member or as a volunteer)
  • Donation history and gift aid details
  • Information you enter on our website
  • Photographs, video or audio recordings
  • Online identifiers and behaviour
  • Opinions and biographical information
  • Data about criminal convictions or offences
  • Data relating to fraud or financial irregularities
  • Any other information you share with us

We may collect this information in the following ways:

You give it to us directly. For example, when you give us your personal data through our website. This might happen when you make a donation or fill out digital forms and online surveys, or when you talk to us in person or by email, phone or letter.

It is available publicly. Your personal information may be available for anyone to see on external public sources like Companies House or the Charity Commission. We may access your personal information from social media accounts or services, depending on your privacy settings (for example when you choose to interact with us via Facebook, Instagram or Twitter).

  • When you visit our website. When you visit our website, we automatically collect the following types of personal information: Technical information, including the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions and operating systems and platforms.
  • Information about your visit to our website, including the uniform resource locator (URL) clickstream to, through and from the website (including date and time), services you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, referral sources, page interaction information (such as scrolling and clicks) and methods used to browse away from the page.

We also collect and use your personal information by using cookies on our website and we may combine your personal information from these different sources for the purposes set out in this privacy notice.

Do you process all data in the same way?

No. There are special categories of personal data, and data protection law recognises these as sensitive and therefore needing more protection. Examples are information about your health, ethnicity, criminal convictions and offences.

Sometimes we may need to collect and/or use these special categories of personal data, for example if we need to be aware of a medical condition that you or your child has, so they can participate in a Girlguiding Ulster event. We only process these special categories of personal data if there is a valid reason for doing so, and where data protection law allows us to.

We sometimes also collect sensitive personal data - like information about health, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, political and philosophical beliefs and criminal records. We normally only record this data where we have your consent. But sometimes we are permitted to do this in other circumstances, under data protection law. For example, we may make a record that a person is in a vulnerable circumstance to make sure that we don’t send fundraising messages to them. By doing this we comply with charity law and the Code of Fundraising Practice.

Why and how do you use my personal data?

Data helps us support and improve interactions with Girlguiding Ulster. It helps us:

  • Keep members and volunteers safe
  • Monitor equal opportunities
  • Manage guiding activities, making sure the right care is in place for activities
  • Communicate with you, for example when collecting membership details or arranging payments
  • Process donations and gift aid claims
  • Manage fundraising
  • Develop our services
  • Keep a record of your relationship with Girlguiding Ulster for our administration, and to let you know about changes to our services or policies
  • Investigate and respond to complaints, legal claims or other issues
  • Fulfil customer orders for goods or services, including processing payment and letting you know about delivery
  • Meet obligations under consumer protection law
  • Carry out research to improve our services and communications
  • Prevent and detect crime
  • Assess applications for volunteering and employment
  • Manage risks so our members can enjoy guiding in a safe environment
  • Keep you up to date with our fundraising and marketing activity through our website, direct mail, SMS/text campaigns, email and telephone

Data helps us engage on social media

If you post content on social media and share these posts to our social media channels we may ask for your permission to use your content. We do this under our legitimate interests of engaging with those who support us publicly.

Data supports and improves our research and your experience of us

We may use your personal information to create a record of your interests and preferences. With this we can make sure we send you information that is relevant to you. It helps us to understand a bit more about our supporters so we can make appropriate requests to those who may be willing and able to give more than they already do. This helps us raise funds sooner and more cost-effectively.

We also may also contact you to ask if you would like to take part in questionnaires, surveys or other research to help us understand where we can improve our offer for girls and women. We will always tell you if questionnaires, surveys or other research are anonymous or not.

To keep you up to date

In a similar way, we may use your personal data to give you information about our work, services, events or products which we think may be of interest to you, for example:

  • Updates about our work
  • Newsletters
  • Information about appeals and fundraising activities (this can include requests for donations, information about legacy gifts and updates about how funds have been used)
  • Volunteering information

We only send this information to you by email, SMS or telephone if we have your prior consent (unless we may do so by applicable law).

Can I change my consent?

Yes! You can withdraw your consent and unsubscribe from or update your marketing preferences at any time.

If you’ve given us your consent previously but don’t want to be contacted by us with marketing or fundraising material in the future, please let us know by email at info@girlguidingulster.org.uk

If you make changes to your consent, we will update your record as soon as we possibly can. Emails will be stopped immediately, but it may take up to 30 days for our systems to update and stop post being sent to you.

If you tell us you don’t want marketing, fundraising or campaign communications, you may still receive messages about transactions and services from other connections you have with us.

When is it legal to use personal information?

We need a lawful basis to collect and use your personal data under data protection law. The law allows for six ways to process personal data (and additional ways for sensitive personal data). Four of these are relevant to Girlguiding Ulster. We can use information on the basis of:

  • Your consent (for example to send you direct marketing by email or SMS)
  • Your contractual relationship with us (for example to provide you with goods or services that you have purchased from us)
  • Compliance with a legal obligation (for example to process a gift aid declaration and carry out due diligence on large donations)
  • Girlguiding Ulster’s legitimate interests

What does ‘legitimate interest’ mean?

Personal data may be legally collected and used if it is necessary for a legitimate interest of the organisation using the data, as long as its use is fair and consistent and does not adversely impact the rights of the individual concerned.

When we use your personal information, we will always consider if it is fair and balanced to do so, and if it is within your reasonable expectations. We will balance your rights and our legitimate interests to make sure we use your personal information in ways that are not unduly intrusive or unfair. Girlguiding Ulster’s legitimate interests include:

  • Charity governance. This includes delivery of our charitable purposes, statutory and financial reporting and other regulatory compliance purposes.
  • Administration and operational management. This includes answering enquiries, giving information and services, research, events management, administration of volunteers and employment and recruitment requirements.
  • Fundraising and campaigning. This includes administering campaigns and donations and sending direct marketing by post (and in some cases making marketing calls), sending thank you letters, analysis, targeting and segmentation to develop communication strategies and maintaining communication suppressions.

If you would like more information on our uses of legitimate interests or to change our use of your personal data please get in touch.

If you are 14 and under?

If you are under the age of 14, you must get permission from your parent or guardian before registering or giving us any information

How long do you keep personal data for?

Girlguiding Ulster keeps your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. We decide how long is appropriate to keep personal data based on necessity.

We do this by considering the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data:

  • The potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data
  • The purposes for which we process your personal data
  • Whether we can achieve those purposes through other means
  • Legal requirements

Do you share my data with other organisations?

We do not sell your personal information to third-party organisations for marketing, fundraising or campaigning purposes.

We share your personal information with relevant regional and local Girlguiding organisations to:

  • Administer your membership of Girlguiding Ulster
  • Manage your participation in Girlguiding Ulster activities
  • Conduct market research so we can improve

We also share personal information:

  • With data processors working on our behalf. For example, if you buy an item in our online shop, we use a third party to process payments
  • Where we are required to by law, for example to law enforcement or regulatory bodies
  • Where we think it is in the best interests of Girlguiding Ulster or a third party to make a disclosure, and where we are satisfied that a disclosure does not put us in breach of data protection law
  • Where it is necessary to protect the vital interests of an individual
  • If we have your consent

We may use third-party suppliers to manage events, campaigns or mailings for fundraising appeals, to carry out research surveys or for storage of your personal information on our behalf.

We screen and monitor these companies to get the best protection of your privacy and security. They may only use the data in accordance with data protection legislation, under strict instructions from Girlguiding Ulster and in accordance with a data processing agreement.

How do you protect my personal information?

We use technical and organisational ways to protect your data and prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information.

The transmission of data over the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal data we can’t guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our website. But once we receive your information, we use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

We process all credit card payments securely through our secure payment gateway which is PCI DSS compliant. We do not store credit card details. We only use the personal information and credit card details that we request to fulfil your order or process your donation.

And we keep the personal information that is required for our accounts secure, and only for as long as required by law.

How do you use cookies and digital marketing?

Cookies are small text files placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used to make websites work more efficiently for visitors, and to provide information to the owners of the site.

We use cookies to:

  • Remember certain information about users so they don’t have to give the same information again
  • Measure how people use our websites so we can improve the way information is provided
  • Display adverts based on what parts of Girlguiding Ulster’s websites people have visited

You agree to our use of cookies by continuing to use our websites. The Girlguiding Ulster website may share your personal data with remarketing services – including Facebook, Google Adwords and Google Analytics – to serve our adverts to you on third party websites.

Third-party vendors, including Facebook and Google, use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to the Girlguiding Ulster website.

Disclaimer

We cannot be responsible for any information you give in public community areas of the Girlguiding Ulster websites, or on websites that we link to from our platforms. This information can be viewed or collected by any third party - you should always be wary of publishing any personal information in public community areas.

You should also read the privacy notices of any other websites that we link to from Girlguiding Ulster websites which you visit. This is so you may understand what information is collected from you and for what purpose.

Girlguiding Ulster cannot be held responsible for the policies of any third party website that we link to, and you access these websites at your own risk.

This policy was last updated on 4th December 2021.


Thank you for organising such a great day for all of my students.They had a ball Suzette Butler from Monkstown Community School


Really enjoyed my stay. Very comfortable and welcoming. Beautiful grounds! Will definitely be returning soon! Rosie from London


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