Privacy policy and cookies

At ThinkForward we take your privacy very seriously, and we will only process the personal information given by you, to provide the services or information that you have requested from us. Our privacy policy sets out how ThinkForward uses and protects any personal information that you give us.

Our privacy policy relates to all the information we hold, and all the ways we communicate – the website, email, letter, telephone and in person. It covers how we use the personal information you provide to us, and how we are committed to keeping it safe and managing it in line with data protection laws, including General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

Personal data

This is defined by GDPR and means any information relating to an identified or identifiable person (‘data subject’). An identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that person

Sensitive personal data

This is defined by GDPR and comprises personal data consisting of, for example, racial or ethnic origin, data concerning health or data about a person’s sexual orientation

Why we collect your information

ThinkForward collects personal data from individuals, including programme participants, funders, partners and volunteers for several reasons:

  • It is required contractually for monitoring and evaluation purposes
  • We need it to help a participant in their search for work
  • It is required for funding applications and the pursuit of partnerships that will help young people into work
  • For our own internal monitoring and evaluation purposes
What information we collect

What information ThinkForward holds on you depends if you are one of our programme participants or if you are a ThinkForward supporter. It may include the following:

  • Name, title, gender
  • The name of your school/college
  • Your progress and activities on the programme
  • Contact details including postal address, email and phone numbers
  • Records of communications sent to you
  • If you have donated to us, your donations and gift aid status (as required by HMRC)
  • If you volunteer for us and in which capacities
  • Your contact with us including attendance at our events
  • Your contact preferences
How we collect data

The vast majority of information we hold is obtained directly from you as part of providing services and information to you. This includes:

  • When you sign up to join our programme
  • When you donate to us or fundraise for us
  • If you sign up to attend an event
  • If you sign up to receive a newsletter or update
  • If you volunteer for us
  • If you work for one of our business partners

We may also receive your information through third parties including Just Giving, BT MyDonate and the Charities Aid Foundation.

How we use your data and on what basis

Where you are obtaining services from us or attending our events, including fundraising events, we will use your information to ensure we provide the best service to you. We use personal data for staff and applicants for jobs to fulfil our contractual obligations to them.

Generally, we use personal information for internal administration to support our activities and, aggregated and anonymised data, to provide reporting and analysis to inform our development and strategy.

For fundraising and general communications, we will only use your information if we have your explicit consent to do so.  We will use your information about donations and gift aid declarations to claim gift aid from HMRC.

We may gather information about you from publicly available sources for example Companies House, the Electoral Register and the media to help us to understand more about you as an individual and your ability to support ThinkForward, including financially. We also use publicly available sources to carry out due diligence on donors.

Tools may be used to help us improve the effectiveness of our communications with you, including tracking whether the emails we send are opened and which links are clicked within a message. We may monitor website visits and we may use tools such as Google Analytics to improve our website and services.

We may use your social media profile to help us find more people like you, so that we can grow our supporter base through online channels. We use third party services to do this which you are likely to know, including Google, Facebook and Twitter

Best practice

Where your consent (or opt-in) is needed for us to process your information or send communications to you, we will aim to obtain your consent when you initially give us your personal information.  We are required to refresh your consent every two years and will contact you to do this provided we have your initial consent. If we have consent from you by more than one route, we will work to your most recent consent or opt-ins. You may withdraw your consent at any time.

If you provide us with contact details for a particular method of communication we will assume that you have given us your consent for us to update your record and communicate with you using this information, unless you have told us otherwise. Contact details provided directly by you will update any previous preferences in relation to this channel unless you inform us otherwise.

If you are registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) but provide us with a telephone number and consent for us to phone you we will assume that we have your consent to call you on this number.

Children’s information

We will always seek consent from a parent or guardian before collecting personal information about young people

How we keep your information safe

ThinkForward fully endorses the eight data protection principles of the Data Protection Act. We recognise the importance of the correct and lawful treatment of personal data and aim to ensure that personal data is:

  • Fairly and lawfully processed
  • Processed for limited purposes
  • Adequate, relevant and not excessive
  • Accurate
  • Not kept for longer than is necessary
  • Processed in accordance with the data subject’s rights
  • Not transferred to countries without adequate protection

We do not share your information with other charities and we do not sell your data on.

If you request a copy of the information we hold on you (via a Subject Access Request) we will take reasonable steps to verify your identity before providing it, because we do not want to give your personal information to someone else

Keeping your information

The information you provide will be kept by us in accordance with the applicable law. We set retention periods for all personal information based on how long it is legitimately needed to run the charity, and our legal requirements. We will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify personal information when it is outside the retention period.

Your rights

While we hold information about you, you will always have the right to:

  • Be informed how ThinkForward uses your information (via our privacy statement)
  • Request a copy of the information we hold about you, using a Subject Access Request
  • Update, amend or change the information we hold about you
  • Change your communication preferences
  • Ask us to remove your information from our records (note there are some limitations on this, for example where we must retain data for HMRC or legal purposes)
  • Withdraw consent, wherever it is the basis for our use of your information
  • Object to any automated processing we do of your information
  • Have the right of judicial review if you feel we have refused a legitimate request about the above
What to do if you are not happy

Please talk to us.  We will promptly respond to complaints and correct any information that we hold about you if it is found to be incorrect, especially your contact preferences. You have the right to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) using their helpline 0303 123 1113 or online at ico.org.uk 

How to contact ThinkForward

Please email us at info@thinkforward.org.uk. You can call our London office on 020 3559 8390.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies. These are small files stored by your browser on your computer. You will be asked for permission to store the cookies. They help us analyse how many people are visiting our website, what areas are popular, or not, and help us improve our website to meet your needs. The information collected includes your IP address, location, browser type, how you found us, length of visit, number of pages viewed and how you navigated around our website.

We only use this information for statistical analysis, and do not get any personal data from it. Cookies do not give us access to your computer or any information on it. Third party cookies are used by the services we use in our website, such as YouTube for videos. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. You may need to change the settings of your browser to do this. Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website and we hope you will be happy to have them from our website.