This Privacy Notice is for individuals communicating with us or supporting us in relation to our Fundraising, Public Affairs and Marketing activities. There is a separate notice for our Adoption Support Services; Training and Consultancy; and for those who work for us:

Services Privacy Notice
Training and Consultancy Privacy Notice
Employee, Volunteer and Contractor Privacy Notice

Where we collect personal information from:

When you provide your personal information directly to us.

If you sign up to one of our events, make a donation, purchase a product, complete a survey or communicate directly with our teams for another reason, whether online, on paper, in person, or over the phone, you will be sharing your personal information with us.

When you provide your personal information through a third-party organisation

Adoption UK works with other organisations such as JustGiving, London Marathon, Fundraising Event Partners and Corporate Partners and organisations who have us as their Charity of the Year.  We work with these organisations to make sure that we can provide the best services and opportunities to those we work with, our supporters, staff and volunteers.   If you provide your personal information to these third parties and indicate that you wish to support Adoption UK or wish to hear from us such as by supporting an event, signing up to hear from us, or making a donation, the organisation you have contacted may share your details with us (including personal information). 

For information about the type of information receive through these third parties, see the section below “What type of information do you collect”.  To learn how these organisations use your personal information, please read their Privacy Policy.

Publicly available personal information

In some circumstances, we may combine information you provide us with personal information available from external sources such as on your employer’s website, in newspaper and magazine articles in the press, or in public records such as Companies House.  This might be in order to provide you with a better experience at Adoption UK events or to ensure that we are contacting you with information that we feel is relevant to you, or in order that we can provide you with a better and more personal experience in your interactions with Adoption UK. It also enables us to gain a better understanding of our supporters to improve our fundraising products and services.

If you leave us a legacy and information is required for administration purposes in relation to that legacy, we may refer to publicly available sources in order to obtain the information required for these purposes.

Occasionally we obtain publicly available information such as contact information or we research information to help us perform due diligence checks to ensure we are not being abused by fraudsters or criminals posing as genuine donors or to ensure that there are no conflicts of interest from potential supporters or organisations prior to our engagement.  This might be if, for example, we noticed unusual donation activity.  We do these checks to help protect Adoption UK from abuse. For further information around this please see the marketing section below.

Social media

We may refer to personal information available on and through your LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook profile in order to provide you with a better and more personal interaction with Adoption UK.  Your personal settings within LinkedIn and the privacy policies of its website and messaging services will determine what information you have given us, and others, permission to access.  Please check your settings and the privacy policies of those sites if you’re not sure what permissions you’ve given.

When you use our website or apps

So that we can make our website as good as possible, and provide the best possible experience for those who use it, we collect cookies when you use our website.  This can include the pages you visit and areas that are of most interest.  Cookies can also be used to make using the website faster, such as by automatically filling your name and address.  Further information about cookies is set out below and in our cookies policy.

In addition, the type of device you’re using to access our website or apps and the settings on that device may provide us with information about your device, including the type of device it is, what specific device you have, what operating system you’re using, or why a ‘crash’ has happened.  Your device manufacturer or operating system provider will have more details about what information your device makes available to us.

What personal information do we record?

The type information (including personal information) that we collect and use and what we do with it will depend upon your relationship with us.

If you are kind enough to support us, such as by making a donation, registering to hold an event, do some fundraising, signing up for an event or participate in campaigning with us the data that we need to collect will vary, but may include:

  • Your name
  • Your contact details, including email, telephone number and postal address
  • Your date of birth
  • Your personal story or information about your family and experiences of adoption
  • Your image and/or recordings of your voice and/or that of members of your family (with consent)
  • Your bank or credit/debit card details and
  • (only if we need it, such as if you are taking part in a sporting event), health information.
  • Why you’ve decided to campaign, support us or make a donation
  • Details needed for us to provide you materials such as t-shirt size
  • The name and address of your employer, particularly if we are running an event in conjunction with your employer, or your employer is a Corporate Partner of Adoption UK
  • If an event is being provided by a third party, the name and contact details of that third party supplier
  • Details needed to improve your event experience such as dietary requirements or accessibility needs
  • Invoicing information
  • A declaration from you to enable us to re-claim Gift Aid on your donations

Special Categories of Data

We will rarely collect information classified as “special categories of personal data” or “sensitive personal data”, such as information about your race, religious beliefs, political opinions and health information.  We will only do so if there is a clear reason for doing so, such as if you are attending an event and we need your health information to ensure your safety, or to enable you to participate in an event.

If you choose to share your personal experiences of adoption or kinship care and in doing so share information about your family.

If you provide us with your bank or credit card details to process a payment over the telephone or via a postal mailing, we will always ensure that your information is handled securely.  We do not store your credit or debit card details at all following the completion of your transaction. All card details are securely destroyed once the payment or donation has been processed. Only staff authorised and trained to process payments will able to see your card details.

If you make a payment through our website, the payment will be processed through a secure third party such as Stripe or GoCardless and we will not have access to any of your card details.  Your card will be processed in accordance with the policies of the processor providing that service that you will be notified of at the time of making payment and we would refer you to their terms and conditions for further information.

How we use the personal data we collect

Adoption UK uses your personal data in different ways, depending on the nature of our relationship with you.

If you make a donation, complete an online survey, register to hold an event, sign up for an event or do some fundraising or support us with our public affairs and campaigning work we need to collect this data for numerous reasons, in order to:

  • provide you with the services, products or information you asked for.
  • administer your donation or support your fundraising.
  • process gift aid.
  • keep a record of your relationship with us.
  • Share your comments and/or story.
  • Make sure we know how you prefer to be contacted.
  • Understand how we can improve our services, products or information.

In sharing your story, your image or voice recording, we reserve the right publish the content in any appropriate manner, including but not limited to the following:

  • Digital communications. Publications on websites, digital screens, and other online platforms (including social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; iTunes U, YouTube). These generally include photographs, edited articles, interview transcripts, podcasts, webinars, videos, film and broadcast media.
  • Print publications. Publications such as magazines, reports, postcards, envelopes, leaflets, prospectuses, and outdoor promotional material (including lamp-post banners and posters). These generally include photographs and edited articles, and promotion of digital materials.
  • Other types of communication. Publications on news platforms, such as newspapers, magazines, television and radio shows, and/or any other media or distribution channel now known or to be invented. we may wish to do this in the following ways:

We may also use your data for the following:

Direct Marketing

We will use the details you provide to us to communicate with you about the work we are doing with children and families across the UK, how your support is helping and other ways you can help in the future, such as through volunteering, events or fundraising.  We may also send you appeals asking for a donation to support our work.

We will never send you electronic marketing communications, such as fundraising emails, or contact you by telephone unless we have your express consent that you wish to hear from us in this way.  If you do subscribe to Adoption UK emails or our e-newsletters, we will understand that you are granting us the right to use that email address for email marketing.

If you don’t currently hear from us by email or receive our e-newsletter and would like to do so, or if you would like to update your preferences, please contact us using the details in the “Contact us” section below.  You can also unsubscribe from Adoption UK emails by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of any of our emails.

We may contact you by post if we believe we have a legitimate interest in doing so and that contacting you in this way will not have unduly adverse consequences for you.  This might be if, for example, you have a history of making donations and have not indicated that you no longer wish to receive these appeals by post.   If you hear from us via the post and no longer wish to do so, please contact us using the details in the Contact us section below.

We are committed to communicating with you in the way you wish us to and we will always respect your privacy. You can change your mind at any time and it is quick and easy to let us know that you no longer want to hear from us by using the contact details in the Contact us section below or by posting us an updated consent form that you may receive in the post.  You can be assured that our staff will deal with any request quickly, sensitively, courteously and professionally.

Personalisation and Profiling

To help us to make sure you’re happy to hear from us and happy with what we send you, we may use the personal information that we have gathered in the course of our relationship to tailor our future communications.  This includes helping us to understand the likelihood of you responding to a campaign communication, research communication or fundraising communication from us, potentially donating and in some instances donating or supporting us at a higher level. The greater understanding of you we can obtain from this information, the more personalised and relevant we aim for our communications to be.

We also carry out targeted communication and marketing activity to ensure that we are contacting you with the most appropriate communication, which is relevant and timely and will ultimately provide an improved experience for you. For example, by providing timely news about our work, letting you know the different ways you can get involved or support us and how you can help raise funds.

You can opt out of your personal data being used for profiling. However, this may mean that you stop receiving marketing communications from us or they become more generic and less relevant to you as they are no longer based on your interests in our cause. If you do wish to opt-out please contact us using the details in the “Contact us” section below.

Sharing your Story

To show our funders, partners and supporters the great work that Adoption UK does, we may share anonymised information about the ways in which a successful fundraiser has been able to help Adoption UK support young people and their families and the work we have been doing; or anonymised information about ways in which a family has been supported by Adoption UK.

In some cases, with consent, we would like to use images and sound recordings (including photographs and videos) to accompany a during fundraising, campaigning or marketing.

We will not share any information which makes you identifiable unless you have given us express consent to do so, or, if someone is under 18, without the consent of their parent or guardian.

When does Adoption UK share your personal information with another party?

We will never share your information with a third party who intends to use it for their own marketing purposes and there are very limited instances where we will share your personal data with a third party.   This could include:

  • If a third party provides a service to us, such as running an event on our behalf or providing an element of a contract for us, such as email distribution, or fulfilling a Christmas card order. This would include our trusted partners that work with us in connection with our charitable purposes, entities that act as fundraisers for Adoption UK, sell Adoption UK’s products or provide Adoption UK information and marketing for us.
  • To assist with the administration of fundraising. For example, if you have indicated that your employer may be willing to match fund any donations you make to Adoption UK, we may need to contact your employer.
  • For the administration of events. For example, an event venue may require the provision of the names of attendees in advance, for security purposes.
  • Where there is a legal or regulatory requirement to disclose your personal information such as from HMRC or the courts, we have a genuine and real concern regarding a person’s well-being, or where disclosure is necessary for taxation and criminal investigation purposes.
  • where we have your written consent.
  • In order to prevent fraud and crime, we may perform due diligence checks to ensure we are not being abused, such as by fraudsters or criminals posing as genuine donors for example money laundering proceeds of crime and tax avoidance. We do these checks to help protect Adoption UK from abuse.

How do we keep your personal information safe?

Adoption UK has a number of steps in place to keep your personal information as safe as possible.  We train all of our staff in data protection and data security to increase awareness of its importance.  We keep our data protection and data security policies and practices under constant review and review the personal data that we hold, where we hold it and what we do with it.

Adoption UK requires the third parties it works with to comply with data protection laws and puts controls in place to ensure that your information is handled safely and appropriately.

Wherever possible, we ensure that your personal data is kept in the UK.  We minimise use of servers outside of the EEA and in some limited instances if we need to transfer your personal information to a third party for processing in countries that aren’t listed as ‘adequate’ by the European Commission we’ll only do so where we have appropriate contracts or other appropriate safeguards in place.

By communicating electronically with us you acknowledge and agree that your data may be processed in this way.

How long does Adoption UK keep personal information?

We will only keep information about you for the length of time it is necessary to do so to engage with you in the way that you have requested and in accordance with our legal requirements, the requirements of adoption support regulations and tax and accounting rules. Where the information we hold about you includes images or recordings of your voice we will contact you every five years to reconfirm your consent for us to use these.

In some instances even if we cease using your personal information (processing) for the purposes you agreed, we are required to retain the information in archive for legal or regulatory purposes.

When your personal data is no longer needed, we will ensure that it is disposed of in a secure manner.  If you would like us to delete any information we hold about you, please contact us using the details in the “Contact us” section below.

How do we protect vulnerable supporters?

Adoption UK takes into account the needs of any potential donor who may be in a vulnerable circumstance or require extra care and support to make an informed decision. If in any doubt, if any member of Adoption UK staff knows or has reasonable grounds for believing that an individual lacks capacity to make a decision to donate, a donation will not be taken.

Children and Young Person’s information

Adoption UK is committed to protecting the privacy of the children and young people you provide us with information about, whether this be through our website or at fundraising events.

Adoption UK requires the consent of a parent or guardian before anyone under 16 years of age participates in an event organised by us. Children aged under 13 must obtain the consent of a parent or guardian before providing any personal information.

Other websites linked from Adoption UK website

Adoption UK does not have any control over how any third-party websites handle and use your data. Therefore, if you follow any links to third party sites from Adoption UK websites, you must check the Privacy Policy for that organisation in order to understand how your data could be used. This policy does not cover third party websites.

Use of Cookies

Cookies are small text files which are used by websites to learn about your visit to the site and in some cases to tailor your experience on the website.  We use cookies to improve your experience of using the Adoption UK website.   Find out more about cookies on www.allaboutcookies.org. You can turn cookies off on your computer – please check your computer settings for further information.  Turning cookies off could restrict your use of our website.

Some of these cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. The data collected is not shared with any 3rd party. The information we get through the use of these cookies is anonymous and we make no attempt to identify you or influence your experience of the site while you are visiting it. If you do not allow these cookies we will not be able to include your anonymous visit in our statistics.

We use cookies on our site that provide functionality, improve performance, help with behavioural advertising and embedded content. We will use a cookie that stores your font size preferences, which allows us to make the size standard throughout the site and we will use a cookie to remember you acceptance of the cookie banner statement.

Contact with Corporate Subscribers under PECR

‘Corporate Subscribers’ are people who Adoption UK might contact in a professional context, using their work contact details, including phone, email and post.

These contact details may be obtained from public domain sources (company websites etc.), from our own business records or from other companies and business contacts.

Adoption UK may contact Corporate Subscribers under the legal basis of Legitimate Interests and as permitted under the PECR (2003) legislation.

We may contact corporate subscribers by email or telephone provided that the subscriber has not previously opted out and is not registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) or its corporate equivalent (CTPS).

Direct Mail is not covered by PECR. We may contact subscribers by mail if they have not previously opted out of receiving such communications.

You have a right to object to the processing of your data for direct marketing.
We will provide opt-out notices on our communications to you, or you can advise our team at [email protected].

Adoption UK understands that PECR (2003) legislation will be replaced by the EU e-Privacy Regulation (ePR) in due course and reserves the right to review this privacy notice accordingly.

Your rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you

The right to see what personal information we hold about you.

If you would like to know if we are processing any of your personal information or to see the personal information that we hold about you, you can make a request by sending a description of the personal information you wish to see to our Data Protection Officer at [email protected] or by writing to the Data Protection Officer at Adoption UK, Vantage Business Park, Bloxham Road, Banbury, Oxfordshire, OX16 9UX. It will normally take us one month to get back to you but could take longer (a further two months) if it’s a complex request or we get a lot of requests at once.

In order to confirm identity, we before sharing information we may ask to see two forms of identification, including photographic ID. And to make sure that we only send information to the right person, we may not be able to provide this information via email.

The right to amend, delete, limit and object

You may have the right to request any of the following in relation to the personal information we hold:

  • To request that we amend personal information that we hold incorrectly.
  • deletion of the personal information we hold. We will consider any request on a case by case basis.
  • for restrictions to be imposed upon how we process your personal information.
  • You may also have the right to object to the way in which we process your personal information.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights or have any questions in relation to any of the above, please contact us using the details in the “Contact us” section below.

Please note that it may take 28 days for your request to be implemented from the date of the request.

Further information in relation to how you can access and change the information any organisation holds about you, see guidance provided by the Information Commissioner here

If you would like to complain to Adoption UK about our handling of your personal data, please contact please contact our Data Protection Officer at [email protected] or by post at Adoption UK, Bloxham Mill, Barford Road, Bloxham, Banbury, OX15 4FF.

If you wish to lodge a complaint or seek advice from a supervisory authority please contact:

The Office of the Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF

Tel: +44 (0) 01625 545 745

Website: www.ico.org.uk

Changes to this policy

To make sure that this policy and our practices stay legally compliant and up-to-date, we may make changes from time to time.  If we make any substantial changes, we will make this clear on our website, or by contacting you directly, if appropriate.  To be sure that you don’t miss anything, please check back to this page from time to time.

Contact Us

I would like to speak to someone at Adoption UK about how you collect, use and store my personal data.

If you have any questions, comments, requests or suggestions, please contact our Data Protection Officer at [email protected]  by post at:

Adoption UK
Bloxham Mill
Barford Road
Bloxham
Banbury
OX15 4FF

If you would like to change your contact preferences, please get in touch with us at [email protected] or call our helpline on 0300 666 0006.