Privacy Policy

Aberdeen Cyrenians’ (“we”) are committed to ensuring any personal information (this means any information that identifies or could identify you) you share with us is kept safe and only used for the purposes you have agreed to. This Privacy Notice details the personal information we process, the bases for processing and your rights and obligations. The Privacy Notice details how, why and when we will process your personal data and the relevant retention periods of that data.

About Aberdeen Cyrenians

We have been supporting people in Aberdeen and the surrounding area who are affected by homelessness since 1968. We are registered in Scotland as a charity (SC014849) and a company limited by guarantee (SC070903). We are registered on the Information Commissioner’s Office Register of Data Controllers under registration number Z5986517.

Information that we collect and may hold about you

We may collect personal information from you when you engage with Aberdeen Cyrenians. Personal information includes details such as your name, date of birth, email address, postal address, and telephone number. We will never collect and retain any unnecessary personal data from you and will not process your information in any way other than already specified in this notice. We will mainly use this information:

  • To provide you with a service or information

  • To process donations or other payments, to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions

  • To update you with important administrative messages about your donation, an event or services you have requested

  • To keep a record of your relationship with us.

In addition, we collect personal information about the following groups:

Employees and Volunteers

Personal information of employees and volunteers is processed to allow us to comply with the employment contract or volunteer agreement, comply with any legal requirements, to pursue the legitimate interests of Aberdeen Cyrenians and protect our legal position in the event of legal proceedings. These are our lawful bases for processing this data. There is a separate Privacy Notice that outlines our processes with regards to Employee & Volunteer personal information and is accessible internally for our employees and volunteers. If you would like a copy, please contact us.

Service Users

Personal information of Service Users is processed to allow the organisation to comply with meeting our legal, statutory and contractual obligations to our Service Users as well as to allow the organisation to pursue its legitimate interests in providing the services. We will never collect any unnecessary personal data from you and do not process your information in any way, other than as specified in this notice. These are our lawful bases for processing this data. There is a separate Privacy Notice that outlines our processes with regards to Service User personal information and is providing to Service Users at point of contact. If you would like a copy, please contact us.

Legal basis for using your information

In some cases, we will only use your personal information where we have your consent. This consent is freely given and informed and we’ll make sure that you are clearly aware of this legal basis for processing your personal data. In other cases, the information is processed to allow us to pursue legitimate interests. This means that the reason that we are processing information is because there is a legitimate interest for Aberdeen Cyrenians to process your information to help us to achieve our aim of ending homelessness. Whenever we process your personal Information under the ‘legitimate interest’ lawful basis we make sure that we take into account your rights and interests and will not process your personal information if we feel that there is an imbalance. Some examples of where we have a legitimate interest to process your personal information are:

  • Where we contact you about our work via post

  • Use your personal information for data analytics

  • Conducting research to better understand who our supporters are

We may also process your personal data in order to comply with our legal obligations such as dealing with complaints or claims or to comply with guidance from the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (“OSCR”).

How we collect information about you

We collect information from you in the following ways: When you give it to us directly by:

  • Enquiring about our services and activities

  • Registering with us or subscribing to our email newsletter

  • Donating to us or fundraising for us

  • Engaging with us on social media

  • Applying for a job or volunteering opportunity

  • Engaging with one of our services

  • Otherwise contacting us by phone, email, post, or in person.

When you give it to us indirectly:

  • By registering with an event organiser or fundraising site where you have indicated that you wish to support Aberdeen Cyrenians and you have provided your consent for your personal information to be shared with us

  • By giving permission to other organisations to share your information

  • When we deliver services as part of a contract

  • Where is information publicly available

  • Where we have CCTV installed at our premises.

When you visit our website/receive email updates:

  • The Aberdeen Cyrenians website uses Google Analytics to find out how people use our website in order to make improvements. Google Analytics uses cookies, small text files which are placed on your hard drive to store information, however the cookies do not have access to or use any personally identifiable information

  • We may also track which links you click on from email updates/newsletters we send you. This helps us to ensure the information we are sending is relevant.

How we keep your information safe and who has access

We take looking after your data very seriously. We use a number of mechanisms to protect the security and integrity of your personal information. We undertake regular training to ensure that staff and volunteers are fully aware of these measures and the associated guidance in relation to your personal information. Only those staff members and volunteers who are authorised to access your personal information, and/or are required to do so as part of their regular duties, will have access to it. Unfortunately the transmission of information using the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information sent to us in this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site. We have procedures and security features in place to keep your data secure once we receive it.

Sharing your information

While the personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff and volunteers so that they can support you there are circumstances where we may share your information:

  • Where we engage a third party to deliver a service on our behalf, for example mailchimp or survey monkey. Only required data will be shared and this will be in line with data protection legislation and covered by a data sharing agreement. We make sure that they store the data securely, delete it when they no longer need it and never use it for any other purposes

  • Where you have chosen to share your story to help further our work and you have given your explicit consent we may share sensitive information in materials promoting our services, appeal or fundraising work in specific documents

  • We will comply and co-operate with regulatory authorities when we are legally required to do so – in such cases personal information would be passed on in accordance with the data protection legislation

  • Where there is a perceived threat to life due to suicidal intent or serious concern regarding a child or vulnerable adult, Aberdeen Cyrenians may be required, in line with its duty of care, to report these concerns to the police or social work

We will only ever share your data in other circumstances if we have your explicit and informed consent. We will never sell or share your personal information with organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities.

Marketing

We will only contact you about our work and how you can support Aberdeen Cyrenians by phone, email or text message, if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner. However, if you have provided us with your postal address we may send you information about our work and how you can support Aberdeen Cyrenians by mail unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us in that way. You can update your choices or stop us sending these communications at any time by emailing us at hello@aberdeencyrenians.org or calling us on 0300 303 0903 and selecting option 1. You may also click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the relevant communication.

Your rights

You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below. If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, please see the section below for our contact details.

  1. Access to your personal information: You have the right to request access to a copy of the personal information that we hold about you, along with information on what personal information we use, why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it for and whether it has been used for any automated decision making. You can make a request for access free of charge. Please make all requests for access in writing, and provide us with evidence of your identity.

  2. Right to object: You can object to our processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes. Please contact us as noted above, providing details of your objection.

  3. Consent: If you have given us your consent to use personal information (for example, for marketing), you can withdraw your consent at any time.

  4. Rectification: You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information held about you.

  5. Erasure: You can ask us to delete your personal information where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, you have withdrawn consent, or where we have no lawful basis for keeping it.

  6. Portability: You can ask us to provide you or a third party with some of the personal information that we hold about you in a structured, commonly used, electronic form, so it can be easily transferred.

  7. Restriction: You can ask us to restrict the personal information we use about you where you have asked for it to be erased or where you have objected to our use of it.

  8. No automated decision making: Automated decision making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. You have the right not to be subject to automated decisions that will create legal effects or have a similar significant impact on you, unless you have given us your consent, it is necessary for a contract between you and us or is otherwise permitted by law. You also have certain rights to challenge decisions made about you. We do not currently carry out any automated decision-making. Please note, some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we therefore may not be able to fulfil every request, depending on the circumstances under which the request is made.

Lodging a complaint

We only process your personal information in compliance with this privacy notice and in accordance with the relevant data protection laws. If, however you wish to raise a complaint regarding the processing of your personal data or are unsatisfied with how we have handled your information, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority i.e. Information Commissioners Office. We will provide contact details for this if necessary.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice may change from time to time. The most current version will always appear on the website and supersede any and all other versions. We reserve the right to change or modify this Privacy Notice at any time and at our sole discretion by posting revisions. We encourage you to check back often to learn about those changes. This Privacy Notice was last updated on 30 November 2019.

Contacting us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or any other Data Protection queries; would like to make a request to receive a copy of your personal information held by Aberdeen Cyrenians; would like to request your details to be deleted; or to change your ‘opt-in’ preferences please contact: hello@aberdeencyrenians.org or you can write to us at Aberdeen Cyrenians, 62 Summer Street, Aberdeen, AB10 1SD.