1. About us

We are “Sycamore Roman Catholic Charity”, a UK Registered Charity (Number 1182843), referred to as “Sycamore” throughout this text.

We respect your privacy and we want you to feel confident and comfortable with how your personal information will be looked after or used by us when you visit our Sycamore website, contact us, or otherwise interact with us. We have prepared this Privacy Policy to explain to you how we collect, use, store, and disclose your personal information.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our use of your personal information, please contact us via email at admin@sycamore.fm and we will be glad to answer them.

You can also contact us to inform us of any changes to the personal information we hold about you. This will help us to make sure that our records are accurate and up to date.

2. How we collect information about you

We collect information about you in the following ways:

When you visit our website: This includes when you register for a Sycamore account, leave any reviews or comments, or fill any forms on our website, such as when you subscribe to our newsletters or other mailing lists.

When you interact with us directly: This could be if you contact us to ask a question about the Sycamore programme and our activities, register for and attend a Sycamore event, apply for a job or a volunteering opportunity with us, make a donation to us, or otherwise provide us with your personal information by, for example, visiting our website, calling us, interacting with us via social media, getting in touch through the post, or in person.

If you give us information on behalf of someone else, you confirm that the other person has appointed you to do so on his/her behalf and that: (a) they have given their consent for their details to be passed on by you; and (b) you will show this Privacy Policy to them.

From other sources: We may also receive information about you from third party sources. This could be if you make a payment or provide a donation through a third party, or indicate to a friend or another third party that you would like your personal information to be shared with us and be contacted by us.

3. Information we collect about you and why we use it

We collect personal information such as your name, email address; optional details about your language, religious affiliation, community context, interests; credit/debit card details and other financial information (if you are making a payment or a donation); username and password (if you register for an account with us); details of your parish, school, or other Sycamore group (if you are a leader or member of a Sycamore group); as well as information you provide in any communications between us and in any reviews and comments you post on our website.

We may also collect visual, audio, and sound information about you during our events and activities, and as part of developing the Sycamore programme films and other materials.

When you visit our website, we may also collect certain information about your visits and your use of our website. This may include your IP address or which pages you have viewed on our website. This information may be collected by a third-party website analytics service provider on our behalf and/or may be collected using cookies. For more information on cookies please refer to section 11 below.

We use this information:

• to enable you to use services on our website;
• to provide the services or goods you have requested from us (for example, to send to you the Sycamore programme resources);
• to allow us to respond to any comments on the website or feedback you may give us;
• to send you important administrative information about, for example, your payments and donations, our events and activities, as well as services or goods you have requested from us;
• to send you our newsletters and to contact you about our work and how you can support Sycamore (see section headed ‘Marketing’ below for further information);
• to register you and/or your group and to keep a record of your relationship with us;
• to manage our relationship with you which may include letting you know about changes to this Privacy Policy or inviting you to take part in a survey or research;
• to raise awareness about, and otherwise advertise, our Sycamore programme materials and activities;
• where you work or volunteer with us, to administer the arrangement (including the recruitment process);
• to process your donations or other payments, to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions;
• to administer and protect our organisation, our staff and this website;
• to comply with our legal, contractual, ad regulatory obligations; and
• to comply with court orders and to exercise or defend our legal rights, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Sycamore members.

Marketing

We may ask for your consent to use your personal information to send you our newsletter or to contact you by phone, email or text message about our work and activities, the activities of others that are connected, associated or similar to our work, as well as about how you can support Sycamore.

We operate an ‘opt-in’ policy, so that you will only receive information from us in this manner if you have asked to receive it. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us, or unsubscribing from our mailing lists. If you opt out of receiving our updates, we may still use your personal data for our other legitimate interests.

We may also send you the above information by mail unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us in that way.

4. Legal basis for using your information

We will use your personal information in the following ways:

• when you have given us your consent;
• when it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract;
• when it is necessary for our legitimate interests (and they do not override your interests); or
• when we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

5. A special note about Sensitive Personal Information

Data protection laws recognise that certain categories of personal information are more sensitive than others. Such ‘special categories’ of personal data include, for example, information your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, political opinions, health, sex life or sexual orientation.

If and when we collect any such sensitive information about you, or you choose to provide personal experiences or other details of a sensitive nature to us, we will treat that information with extra care and confidentiality and always in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We need to have further justification for collecting and using this type of information. We have in place appropriate safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such information. We will only use such information in the following circumstances:

• where you have given us your express consent or otherwise clearly indicated to us that you are happy for us to collect and use this information;
• where it is needed in relation to legal claims or to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent;
• where you have already made this information public; and
• in very limited circumstances in the course of our legitimate activities where you are a member or former member of our organisation.

6. Who we share your information with

We do not sell your personal information. However, we may disclose it to certain third parties in order to allow us to conduct our activities, provide our services to you, or to comply with legal or regulatory obligations. Such third parties include:

• other users of the Sycamore programme and visitors to our website;
• other charities or organisations we work with;
• suppliers who we engage to process data on our behalf (such as, for example, Google, our email and cloud storage provider; SiteGround, our web hosting services provider; or Stripe, our online payment services provider);
• regulators, government bodies, law enforcement agencies, and our legal and other professional advisors; and
• any charity we merge with.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

7. Transferring your personal information abroad

We are located in the UK. However, because the Sycamore programme materials are used by parishes, chaplaincies, schools, private groups, and individuals located around the world, the Sycamore films and other materials containing your personal information may be transferred outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). Similarly, as some of the third parties we work with are based outside the EEA, their use of your personal information will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.

In such circumstances, we will take steps to ensure that adequate safeguards are in place to protect your personal information and to make sure that it is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Among others, we rely on approved data transfer mechanisms (such as the EU “Standard Contractual Clauses” and the EU-US “Privacy Shield”) to ensure your information is subject to adequate safeguards in the recipient country.

8. Keeping your information safe and secure

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally destroyed, lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way. Unfortunately the transmission of information using the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site.

We signpost information and resources that we think will be useful to you. As such, our website contains links to other websites owned and operated by third parties. Clicking on those links may allow other people to collect or share data about you. We do not control those other websites, and we are not responsible for the privacy statements or practices employed by third parties. We suggest you read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

9. How long we hold your information for

We take steps to ensure that we retain your personal information for only as long as it is necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, taking into account the amount, nature and sensitivity of the data.

10. Your rights

In some situations, you can ask for access to your personal data, correct your data, delete your data, or object to our use of your data. If you wish to exercise any of those rights, please contact us using the contact details set out at the top of this Privacy Policy.

Subject to certain legal conditions, you have a number of rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you. These include:

• Information: You have the right to be informed of the ways we use your information, as we seek to do in this Privacy Policy;
• Access: You have the right to request, free of charge, access to a copy of the personal information that we hold about you;
• Rectification: You can ask us to change, correct, or complete any inaccurate, incomplete, or out-of-date personal information that we hold about you;
• Consent: If you have given us your consent to use your personal information (for example, for marketing purposes), you can withdraw your consent at any time;
• Objection: 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 can also object to our use of your personal information for direct marketing purposes;
• Portability: In certain circumstances, 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;
• 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; and
• 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.

Exercising your rights

If you wish to exercise your rights, please contact us using the contact details set out at the top of this Privacy Policy. You will not have to pay a fee to exercise the above rights, however, we reserve the right to charge you a reasonable administrative fee for any manifestly unfounded or excessive requests concerning your access to your information.

Please also note that we may ask for proof of your identity (such as a copy of your driving licence – please do not send original documents). This is a security measure to ensure that we do not disclose personal information to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We will try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Sometimes it may take us longer if your request is complex or you have made several requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Please also be aware that not all of those rights are absolute and there may be circumstances in which we will not fully comply with your request because of a specified legal ground or exemption.

Right to lodge a complaint

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk), as well as the relevant authority in your country of work or residence) if you do not believe that we have handled your request in an appropriate manner. We would appreciate the opportunity to deal with your concerns before you complain to the ICO – you can contact us using our contact details set out at the top of this Privacy Policy.

11. Cookies

We use a number of different cookies on our website, including Google Analytics cookies. Cookies are small files, usually of letters and numbers, which are downloaded onto your device, like your computer, mobile phone or tablet, when you visit our website. If you want to learn more about what cookies are, or how to control or delete them, you can visit http://www.aboutcookies.org for detailed guidance.

The information we collect using such cookies includes your IP address, your access times, and the web pages you request. When using cookies we do not try to identify you. We use cookies to help us to improve our website or make our services work better for you. For example, the use of cookies means that, when you are logged in to your Sycamore account, you do not have to login to your account each time you visit a different page on our website.

You can opt out of all our cookies (except the strictly necessary ones). Find out how to control and delete cookies in your browser. However, please note that if you choose to refuse all cookies, our website may not function for you as we would like it to.

12. Changes to this Privacy Policy

Our Sycamore Privacy Policy may change so please remember to check back from time to time. This is version 1.0 and it was last updated on 31 March 2019. Where we have made any changes to this Privacy Policy, we will make this clear on our website or contact you about any important changes.