Our privacy policy

At Hector’s House, we aim to end suicide and stop the stigma around mental health. We could not do this without the incredible kindness, generosity and help from our supporters. We promise to always deal with the information you provide with the utmost care and respect.

This Privacy Policy tells you how we use any information that you share with the charity, or we get from other organisations, and how we protect your privacy.

If you have any questions, or want to check, change or update your details at any time please contact us.

By post: Hector’s House, 236a High Street, Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire HP4 1AG.
By email: hihector@hectorshouse.org.uk
By phone: 07397 155562

This policy was last updated on 11 June 2018.

1. Who we are

• Hector’s House is a signposting and awareness charity for suicide prevention and mental health issues.
• Our registered charity number is 1165588.

2. Your data – what information we collect

Information we obtain about you directly
We ensure our supporters, donors and website visitors who are dealing with mental health issues are treated with support and respect. The following covers information that you have chosen to tell us directly yourself. When you get in touch with us to make a donation, request information or support us in any other way, we may process the following types of personal information about you – to ensure you get the best communication and attention.

This information includes:

• Name.
• Contact details (e.g. address, landline,mobile number, email address).
• Your interactions with Hector’s House. This could include your donation history; your responses to our communications; information you’ve shared with us about why you have supported us; events and fundraising activities you’ve taken part in or shown an interested in; volunteering you’ve done with us and gifts you’ve made in honour of others on our website.
• Financial information.
• The country you are in.
• Date of birth.
• Any preferences about your interests and how you would like to be contacted.

We do not usually ask you for sensitive personal data unless there is a clear reason for us to do so. However, we may need to ask for sensitive information about your health, for example, if you are participating in an event.

You may also wish to share information if you decide to speak out about your experience of suicidal thoughts and mental health history. If you do, we will always treat it sensitively and ask you on every occasion if you are still willing to share it further in the form of case studies or media interviews – which is totally in your control.

Information you give to us indirectly

This covers information that you don’t share with us directly but that is shared with us by other organisations with your permission. This might happen if you have used external fundraising platforms (e.g. JustGiving or Virgin Money Giving) or if you’ve set up an online tribute page in memory of a loved one (e.g. Much Loved). We’ll only receive your information from these companies if you have given permission for them to share it with us.

We may also record and share information that you have shared with us publicly on social media (e.g. Facebook or Twitter). We may on occasion use your email address to communicate with you via social media sites, where you have provided us with that address. For example those supporters who signed up to take part in British 10k team one year ago, may receive notifications on their Facebook timeline explaining that this event is happening again.

We may ask your permission to review third party data about you through social channels, for example, your Twitter or Facebook feeds, to get to know you better and to provide more effective personalisation. Some of our services enable you to sign-in via a third party service, such as Facebook. If you choose to sign-in via a third party app, you will be presented with a dialogue box which will ask your permission to allow Hector’s House to access your personal information (e.g. your full name, date of birth, email address and any other information you have made publicly accessible). Please note that any information that is not required by the particular service you have opted to use will not be retained.

If you have provided consent for another organisation to share your personal information with us, but you no longer wish to hear from us, you can change your mind at any time. Just contact us using the information at the top of the page.

Information about you obtained from third parties

This covers information that has been shared with us about you by someone else, for example from a friend who wants to send you a gift or make a donation in your name.
We may also collect personal information about you from service providers, the press, search engines, social media (e.g. LinkedIn) and reputable public data sources (e.g. Companies House, BoardEx, the Charity Commission, Land Registry). Personal information we may collect via these channels may include your job title, directorships, contact information, demographic data (including estimated income and property value), date and size of previous donations to other charities, details of philanthropic activities you engage in, etc.

We may use this information to build a profile of you (i.e. your interests, preferences, demographics and level of potential donations) to enable us to tailor fundraising efforts and communications based on your circumstances and interests, and how likely you are to support our work. This helps us understand our supporters better and helps us make appropriate requests for support or gifts to supporters who might be able and willing to give more than they already do, and ensures that we are making the best use of our resources.

We may combine information we have obtained about you from these third party sources with other information that we hold about you for this purpose.

3. How do we use this information?

We may use the personal information we collect to:

• Provide you with the information, service or product you have asked for.
• Administer any donation you have given us, support your fundraising and process Gift Aid.
• Build a detailed picture of your interests and preferences so that we can tailor our services, communications and financial asks to suit you.
• Let you know about our latest news and how your support makes a difference, as well as ways you can get involved and help fund our life-saving work.
• Understand how you use and interact with our services (e.g. our website) to enable us to make improvements.
• Comply with legal and regulatory requirements and protect against fraud.
• Help diagnose problems with our website and server, administer our website, compile broad statistical data and update and maintain our website.
• Ensure security and detect and protect against fraud.
• Further our charitable aims.

As outlined above, we may use profiling and screening techniques to build a profile of you, including your interests, preferences, demographic information and potential ability to financially support our work in future. This helps us to tailor our asks for support, and identify and further engage those supporters who may be willing and able to support our work.

Your information is only used if we have legal grounds to do so which might be because you have provided consent; it is necessary to allow us to deal with your request, enquiry or purchase; we have a legal or regulatory obligation to do so; or the information is being used legitimately to further our charitable aims.

4. Who we share your personal information with

The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff (and volunteers) at Hector’s House so that they can support you.

We do not swap, sell or rent your personal information to anyone.

We will never sell or share your personal information with organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities. Nor do we sell any information about your web browsing activity.
Hector’s House may, however, share your information with our trusted partners and suppliers who work with us on or on our behalf to deliver our services, but processing of this information is always carried out under our instruction.

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. Some examples of where we may share your information are with our fulfilment partners who help to create and send information to you to reduce our costs, with our partners who help us to process donations and claim Gift Aid and our partners who help us to manage our social media accounts.

If we are asked to share your details with other organisations that aren’t our service providers, we will only do so if: we have your permission; we have a legal or regulatory obligation to do so; we need to enforce any agreements we have with you or investigate any complaints; we need to protect the rights, property and safety of Hector’s House and its supporters; or we merge or link with another charity.

5. How we keep your personal information safe

We take looking after your information very seriously. We’ve implemented appropriate measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.

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 this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site.

Our websites may contain links to other sites. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites. Please be aware that advertisers or Web sites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites or advertisers.

Any debit or credit card details which we receive on our website are passed securely to our payment processing partner.

6. How long we keep your personal information

Without your support we simply wouldn’t exist and because of this we value every interaction we experience with you. We believe it’s important to remember our history together especially if you get back in touch with us or leave us a gift in your Will.

However, as with all relationships, we know that things can change and we understand that you may choose to have a break from supporting Hector’s House.

We only keep your information for as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, the collection of Gift Aid).

Please also be assured that we never store credit card details under any circumstances.

You have the right to request that we delete your details at any stage using the contact information on the top of this page.

7. Your rights and how to make a complaint

We talk to you on your terms. You have the right to opt-out of marketing and fundraising communications and you can change your contact preferences at any time. You may also opt-out of the profiling and screening described above.

To exercise any of these rights, or to change or update the information we hold about you, please contact our team using the details at the top of the page. You can also click on the ‘unsubscribe’ button on all marketing and fundraising emails to opt-out of receiving future communications from us by email.

You may have the right to request access to, or deletion of, personal information we hold about you. You may also be able to restrict how we use your information. Please contact us if you would like to exercise any of these additional rights and we will assess your request on a case by case basis in line with Data Protection Law.

If you have a complaint about how we use your personal information, please contact us. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

8. Cookies & online privacy

‘Cookies’ are small text files that record information on your computer about the websites you visit and how you use them. Our website uses cookies to help us understand who is visiting our website, how they interact with it and to make sure it’s working effectively. We do not access any information stored in cookies placed on your machine by other websites.

If you would like to stop our cookies from being stored on your computer in future, you can do so by following instructions on your Internet browser. You can do this by clicking on the Help menu. If you do turn off our cookies you may not be able to access certain services or facilities we offer.
Further information about deleting or controlling cookies is available at www.aboutcookies.org.

You may see Hector’s House promoting our work on some of the webpages you visit, and some of these adverts are related to your location and interests or your interactions with our website. We also advertise on sites such as Facebook using similar behavioural and targeted advertising technology. For more information about how cookies and online advertising work or how to control your privacy online, please visit the www.youronlinechoices.com/uk.

If you have any questions about this policy, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at any time on hihector@hectorshouse.org.uk or 07397 155562.