Privacy Policy

Find information about how we collect, use and store your personal data. Learn more about changing or withdrawing consent for us to use your information.

About this policy

This privacy notice describes how we collect, use and store personal information about you during and after your business relationship with us. BWBF is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use and store personal information about you. We are required under the DPA 2018 / UK GDPR to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

It is important that you read this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using your personal information.

What is personal data?

Personal data is information that can be used to identify you, such as name, identification number, location data, or online identifiers. Special category data is personal information that is more sensitive. This can include information relating to health, race, ethnic origin, sex life and sexual orientation.

What information do we collect and why?

What information we collect

Your name and contact details
Payment information (we don't store card details)
Records of your donations
Photos from events (with your permission)
CCTV footage at our main office (kept for 30 days)

Why we need your information

We need your information to:

Send you equipment if you request it
Process your donations
Keep you updated about our work
Follow charity laws
Improve our services

How we use your information

To help you:

Send equipment you requested
Answer your questions
Process your donations
Send you information you asked for
To send you marketing (with your permission)
To send you news, events and promotions we feel may be of interest to you

To help us:

Understand who supports us
Make our services better
Plan fundraising activities
Keep records of our work
For the purpose of invoicing or paying our suppliers

Job and volunteer role applications

If you contact us about a job or volunteer role, we will collect all details necessary to your application including your name, date of birth, contact details, address details, right to work details, ID details and your relevant professional/personal history provided to us in your CV or application form.
If your application is unsuccessful or you chose not to proceed, we will retain this data for 6 months. If you are successful your data will be dealt with in accordance with our staff and volunteer privacy notice.
We may share your data for the purpose of obtaining references, background and DBS checks. You will be notified in advance if we are going to do this.

If you don't provide certain personal information when requested by us, we may not be able to provide you with our services or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations such as financial reporting.

Cookies and website data

Our website uses cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media advertising and analytics partners who may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services.

You can learn more about the cookies we use and change or withdraw your consent at any time on our cookies page.

Who we share your information with

We may share information with organisations only where necessary and covered by a contract, but these could include:

Selected partners who help us (like mailing companies)
Legal authorities if required by law
We never sell your information
Giving Platforms (for example, JustGiving).

Lawful basis for processing your personal data

Data protection law requires us to identify the lawful basis under which we collect and use your personal information. Depending on why we process your data one, or sometimes more than one of the following bases may be relevant.

Legitimate Interest - processing where we consider it is in the legitimate interest of BWBF to process your data. We will always balance any potential impact on you and your rights against the identified legitimate interests.
Consent – where you have given your consent for BWBF to use your personal data for a particular purpose.
Legal obligation – where the processing of personal data is required to ensure compliance with a legal obligation.
Contract - where the processing of personal data is required to meet our contractual obligations.
Vital Interest – in rare cases we may process personal data under the basis of vital interests where necessary to protect life.

How we use your information for marketing

Marketing information may include information from BWBF about the goods and services available, fundraising appeals, and information about the work we do.

We may send you communications about our news, activities and appeals by post, email or phone unless you have previously told us that you do not want to be contacted in this way.

You can add, amend, or remove your marketing preferences at any time by:

Clicking the unsubscribe option on all marketing emails
Emailing mydata@blind.org.uk
Calling our head office on 01622 754757

If you ask us to stop sending marketing information, we will update your record and do so as quickly as we can, but please note that occasionally you may receive further mailings that are already in the progress.

Profiling and Research

Data profiling and research allows BWBF to manage our resources more efficiently by providing information which helps us to continually review and improve our fundraising and services.

As a charitable organisation funded by donations, we believe we have a legitimate interest in identifying and researching potential high value donors or advocates to help us focus our communications. This research can also help us identify new potential supporters who may have an interest in helping to further our work.

To create a research profile, we (or one of our trusted third parties) may combine information you provide to us with publicly available data, such as house prices, salaries in your area or your interests.

This research allows us to understand our supporters further so we can:

ensure communications are relevant and timely.
ensure we send information that we believe is of interest to you.
understand how you may be able to help us in the future.
raise funds in the most cost-effective ways, ensuring we spend donor’s money wisely.

If you would prefer us not to use your personal data in this way, please email mydata@blind.org.ukor call us on 01622 754757.

Storing your information

Information is stored by us on computers located in the UK . In addition, we may process your data in other countries both within and outside the European Economic Area but only where tightly controlled by appropriate contractual arrangements. We may also store information in paper files.

We place great importance on the security of all information. We have security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of data under our control.

Unfortunately, the transmission of data across the internet is not completely secure. While we do our best to try to protect the security of your information, we encourage the safe sharing of data across the internet and advise that care is taken when sending personal, or sensitive data over a public connection.

How long we keep your personal information

We will only keep your personal data for as long as we need to fulfil the purposes outlined in this privacy notice.

Some data will have different retention periods, for example invoicing information may be held for up to seven years to comply with Tax purposes, there is an HMRC requirement to retain of Gift Aid declarations for a period of six years, and your contact information may be held for up to two years after we last hear from you.

When we no longer need information, we always dispose of it securely, using specialist companies if required. We have a data retention policy, which we review regularly.

Your rights

The UK General Data Protection Regulation (UKGDPR) gives you certain rights over your data and how we use it. You have the right to:

access to the personal information we hold about you, known as a subject access request.
object to our processing (automated or otherwise) of your personal information.
be informed of what data we hold and why we have it (as in this privacy notice).
restrict the processing of your personal information.
obtain a copy of your personal data in a portable format so that you can reuse it.
rectify your personal information if you believe it is incorrect – we want to ensure that all information we hold about you is accurate and up to date so please do let us know if anything changes.
request the erasure of your personal information (please note that in certain circumstances we may need to retain your data for a specified period to comply with our legal obligations).
ask us not to have a decision made solely on automated means including profiling.

You also have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, including the consent to any marketing you have given us.

No administration fee will be charged for complying with such a request unless the request is deemed to be excessive in nature.

Contact us

Please email mydata@blind.org.uk or call us on 01622 754757 if you would like to action any of your rights, or if you would like to talk to us about any other matters relating to this privacy notice.

How to make a complaint

As an addition to the rights listed above, you also have the right to complain if you think we have made an error with your data. Of course, we would like you to contact us first to see if we can help rectify any issues, our address is British Wireless For the Blind Fund (BWBF), 10 Albion Place, Maidstone, Kent, ME14 5DZ or you can email mydata@blind.org.uk or call us on 01622 754757.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) at via the ICO website, or using the details below:

Address: The Information Commissioners Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Phone number: 0303 123 1113

Changes to this policy

We may change our privacy policy from time to time, so please check back periodically.

This policy was last updated on 10 March 2025.