Volunteer Privacy Policy
Updated January 2023
1. What is the purpose of this document?
Refugees Welcome North Somerset (RWNS) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of our volunteers’ personal information.
This privacy policy describes how we collect and use personal information about you in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (2016/679) (GDPR), the UK Data Protection Act 2018 and other applicable UK and EU laws that regulate the collection, processing and privacy of your personal information (together, ‘Data Protection Law‘). This Privacy Policy applies to all prospective, current and former volunteers.
For the purposes of Data Protection Law, RWNS acts as a “data controller” of the personal information we hold about you. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under Data Protection Law to notify you of the information contained in this Privacy Policy.
A more general website privacy policy and our cookies policy can be found at rwns.org.uk/website-privacy-policy-2022/.
2. Data protection principles
We comply with Data Protection Law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
- Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
- Collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes.
- Adequate, relevant and limited to the purposes we have told you about.
- Accurate and kept up-to-date.
- Kept only for as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
- Processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal information.
3. The type of information we hold about you
Personal information or personal data means any information about an individual from which that individual can be directly or indirectly identified. It does not include anonymous data where identifying elements have been removed. We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:
Category | Data collected | What we use it for |
All volunteers | Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses | To contact you about your volunteering and involvement with RWNS |
All volunteers | Recruitment information (references and other information collected as part of the application process) | Making a decision about your recruitment as a volunteer. |
All volunteers | Information about any criminal convictions and offences as part of the recruitment process | Making a decision about your recruitment as a volunteer for the role you have applied for. |
All volunteers | Emergency contact information. | To contact someone in case of emergency. |
All volunteers | Information about your health, including medical conditions, any access needs or additional requirements for volunteering. | To comply with our health & safety obligations and enable any reasonable adjustments to be made |
Trustees | Name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth | Registers of Directors and Members. To contact the trustee in relation to their role at RWNS. |
Some volunteers | Photos and case studies. | If you consent, we will use your image and story to promote our work in different places such as our website, with local press or on social media posts. |
4. How is your personal information collected?
We collect personal information about volunteers through the application and recruitment process, directly from you as candidates. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties such as your references.
We may collect additional personal information in the course of volunteering activities throughout the period of you volunteering for us. For example, you may have your photo taken and used in a marketing campaign.
5. The lawful grounds on which we use information about you
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. We process your personal information for the above purposes relying on one or more of the following lawful grounds:
- Where it is necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation;
- Where you have freely provided your specific, informed and unambiguous consent for particular purposes;
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. Our legitimate interest is fulfilling the charitable purpose of RWNS
We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:
- Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests), such as in a safeguarding issue or medical emergency;
- Where it is needed in the public interest.
6. How we use particularly sensitive personal information
We may process ‘special category’ or ‘sensitive’ personal information, such as information about your physical or mental health, or disability status, to ensure your health and safety while volunteering and to provide appropriate volunteering adjustments.
We will only collect information about criminal convictions where it is appropriate given the nature of a volunteering role and we are legally permitted to do so. See our Volunteer Recruitment of Ex-Offenders Policy for more information.
8. If you fail to provide personal information
If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our volunteers) and we may not be able to offer you certain opportunities.
9. Change of purpose
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it. If we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another purpose we will get in touch with you directly.
10. Data sharing
We do not sell or rent your information to third parties for marketing purposes. We may disclose your information in the following circumstances:
- Where we are legally obliged to, such as providing the Charity Commission and Companies House with basic contact details of our Trustees.
11. Data retention
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary, such as to contact you during the length of your time volunteering with us.
Personal information that we no longer need will be removed from our systems.
14. Your rights
You have the following legal rights in relation to our collection and processing of your personal information:
- Right to be informed – you have the right to be told how your personal information will be used. This Policy and other RWNS policies are intended to give you a clear description of how your personal information may be used.
- Right of access – you have a right to access all of your information under the Data Protection Act 2018. We will provide all information within 30 days.
- Right of erasure – at your request we will delete your personal information from our records, as long as there is no valid reason for holding on to it (e.g. a legal obligation).
For all of the above, please contact info@rwns.org.uk. We will provide all information within 30 days.
15. Changes to this policy
We reserve the right to update this privacy policy at any time. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please contact info@rwns.org.uk