Privacy and cookies policy

Privacy policy

The website www.rmbf.org is owned and operated by the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund, a registered charity no. 207275 (in England) and no. SC046148 (in Scotland) and a company limited by guarantee registered in England no. 139113, whose registered address is at 24 Kings Road, Wimbledon, London SW19 8QN (“we”, “us” or “RMBF”).

RMBF is committed to protecting your privacy and will only use the information that we collect about you lawfully. This policy explains how we collect and use your information.

By using our website or providing us with your personal information you are agreeing to this policy. We may update this policy from time to time without notice to you, so please check it regularly.

1. How do we collect information about you?

Information you give us

1.1 We may collect personal information from you in the following ways:

(a) our use of cookies (please see the Cookies section below);

(b) you make a donation to us, or respond to our mailings, appeals, raffles or competitions;

(d) you contribute content for use on our website;

(e) you subscribe to newsletters or updates or request information about RMBF;

(f) you contact us with enquiries or other correspondence (including via social media) or become involved with us in another way.

1.2 Except where permitted by law, we will never collect sensitive personal data about you without your consent.

1.3 If you interact with us in one of the ways listed above, we may collect and process personal information about you such as:

(a) your name, address, email address and other contact information (such as details of your social media accounts/profiles);

(b) information you enter onto our website or provide us in correspondence;

(d) details of your visit to our website, including your IP address.

1.4 The RMBF has volunteers across the country helping the charity including guilds (https://rmbf.org/get-involved/volunteering/guilds/). If you provide information to our volunteer groups, including to our guilds, some or all of that information may be shared with central RMBF.

1.5 If providing us with information for inclusion on the website, you may provide us with information about others (e.g. in a case study or an article). You must ensure that they have agreed to you providing us with this information. We recommend that you keep a copy of them having agreed to this, and that you give them a copy of this policy.

Information we receive from other sources

1.6 Your information may be shared with us by third parties, for example fundraising sites like Virgin Money Giving and Just Giving. They will do so pursuant to their own policies on data protection and privacy. It’s a good idea to check their privacy policy when you provide your information to them to fully understand how they will process your data and how they may share it with others.

1.7 We may also on occasion obtain information about you (such as your telephone number and email and postal address) from the public domain, either directly or from third parties. We do so in order to keep our records up to date.

2. Why do you need my details and how do you use them?

2.1 We will process your personal information in accordance with our obligations under applicable data protection laws and regulations, particularly for the following reasons:

(a) to provide you with the advice, services or information you have asked for;

(b) to administer your donation or support your fundraising, including processing Gift Aid;

(d) for our own internal administrative purposes and to keep a record of your relationship with us;

(e) to provide you with information about us, our fundraising campaigns, our services, and any other information, products or services that we provide or provide access to (and manage your communication preferences in this regard and more generally);

(f) to ensure that content from our website is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer/mobile device; or

(g) to improve our service by contacting you for feedback.

2.2 When you make a donation through the website, you may be taken to a third party fundraising/payment provider such as Just Giving or Virgin Money Giving. Information you provide when donating is being given primarily to that third party who may then share that information with us. See above under “information we receive from other sources” for more details.

3. Will you pass my information on to other organisations or individuals?

3.1 We will not sell your personal information, and we will not pass your personal information to any third parties except in the circumstances set out in this policy.

3.2 We may allow our staff, volunteers, consultants, or other providers acting on our behalf (for example, our website hosts) to access and use your personal information for the purposes for which you have provided it to us. If we do this, we will not give those individuals/organisations any rights to use your personal information (or to contact you) except in accordance with our instructions and this policy.

3.3 The only times we will pass your details to anyone else would be:

(a) to enable payment providers to complete transactions;

(b) to organisations within the payment card industry in order to prevent online fraud;

(d) where you have given us consent to do so via our application form; or

(e) where RMBF or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us will be one of the transferred assets

4. How long will we keep this information about you?

4.1 We will only keep information about you for as long as we need to. We make sure that any companies which process your data on our behalf do the same.

5. How do you keep my information secure?

5.1 This site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control.

5.2 We may communicate with you by email. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk.

5.3 We make no representations about any other websites, and when you access any other website through a link on our website (including social media sites) you understand that it is independent from us and that we have no control over that website or the way your personal information is collected through those websites. Those websites may have their own privacy policies and we encourage you to look at those policies or contact the website operators directly to understand how your personal information is used.

6. Where is my information stored?

6.1 The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored in, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA. If we send your personal information outside the EEA we will take reasonable steps to ensure that the recipient implements appropriate measures to protect your information. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this use of your data.

7. Cookies

7.1 For information on how cookies are used on this website, please see our Cookie policy below.

8. Your rights and how to contact us

8.1 To request details of the information we hold about you, if you have provided us with your personal information but decide at a later date that you no longer want to receive information from us, or if you wish to update us that your contact details have changed or change your preferences, simply let us know by:

(a) sending an email to [email protected];

(b) writing to Michelle Zal, Administration Manager, Royal Medical Benevolent Fund, 24 Kings Road, London SW19 8QN; or

8.2 Instructions for unsubscribing from emails will also be included in each email communication we send.

8.3 If you are unhappy with the way in which your personal data has been handled you are entitled to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Cookie policy

1. What are cookies?

1.1 Like most websites, we use cookies. Cookies are tiny pieces of data saved on your computer or mobile device. There are several types of cookie and they each have different functions or uses.

2. How do you use cookies?

2.1 We use cookies for a variety of reasons:

(a) Essential cookies – these are required for the operation of our website, for example to enable you to log in to secure areas of the website or make use of a shopping cart and e-payment services.

(b) Analytic/performance cookies – these allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.

(c) Facebook Pixel – this cookie is placed by Facebook. All data collected is anonymous to the RMBF. It allows us to measure, analyse and optimise audiences for RMBF promotional campaigns on Facebook. The data is collected, stored and processed by Facebook. Facebook may use this data in line with its own data usage policies. You can control how Facebook uses your account information by amending your settings at https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads

(d) Functionality cookies – these are used to recognise you when you return to our website so that we can personalise our content for you and remember your preferences, e.g. whether you are signed up to email alerts.

(e) Targeting cookies – these record your visit to our website, pages you have visited and links you have followed. We may use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed to you more relevant to your interests, and may share this information with third parties for this purpose.

2.2 The table below provides more information about the cookies we use and why:

Type of cookie	Function and further information
Google analytics	This is common performance cookie that many websites use. It allows us to collect anonymous information about how you and other users use our website and helps us to improve the website.

3. Third party websites and social networks

3.1 If you click on a hyperlink from our website to any third party websites (e.g. if you ‘share’ content from our website with friends or colleagues on social media), you may be sent cookies from these third party websites. They will do so pursuant to their own policies on privacy and cookies. It’s a good idea to check their privacy policies to fully understand their use of cookies.

3.2 Some of the content on our website is provided by third parties. This includes but is not limited to: Google Maps for interactive mapping, YouTube or Vimeo for hosted video and Flickr for images. When you visit a page containing content from one of these sites a cookie may be set. We do not have any control over these cookies and they will be set pursuant to the third party’s own policies on privacy and cookies.

4. Disabling cookies

4.1 By using our website you consent to our use of cookies as updated from time to time and the cookies we use will be stored on your device (unless rejected or disabled by your browser).

4.2 Internet browsers normally accept cookies by default. However, it is possible to set an internet browser to reject cookies. If you do not accept our use of cookies as set out in this policy, please set your internet browser to reject cookies. This may impair your ability to use our website so that some features may not work.

5. Changes to this policy and further information

5.1 We may update our use of cookies, and this policy, from time to time, so please check this policy regularly.

5.2 You can find out more about cookies generally and how to disable them at allaboutcookies.org.

Policy last updated 10 February 2021