The purpose of this Privacy Policy is for you to feel confident about the privacy and security of your personal data. We take the protection of privacy very seriously and will always take all reasonable steps to make sure your personal information is safe. This policy sets out the conditions under which we may process any personal data that we collect from you, or that you provide to us.  In the context of the law and this policy, “process” means collect, store, transfer, use or otherwise act on information.  We will only process your personal data if we either have your consent, have a contractual obligation to do so, there is a legitimate interest in doing so, or we have a legal obligation to do so.

In this Privacy Policy, references to “we” and “us” are to the Galapagos Conservation Trust (GCT).

Why we collect personal data

GCT supports, develops, and promotes projects that achieve measurable conservation, sustainable living, and protection of the environment of Galapagos. To deliver our mission, we need to communicate our work to existing and new supporters and to raise funds. We need to collect your personal data and process it in order to communicate appropriate messages to you which in turn will help us raise funds to meet our goals. We may use some of your personal data for our legitimate interests to help us advertise products and services to people with similar interests to you.

What personal data we collect and how we collect it

We collect and use personal data only as disclosed in this Privacy Policy. We collect your personal data every time you interact with us – through our website, by telephone, email, or post. The type and quantity of personal data we collect and how we use it depends on why you are providing it.

For example, we may collect personal data when you:

• Become a member of GCT
• Come to an event
• Purchase something from our shop or adopt a Galapagos animal
• Make a donation
• Subscribe to our eNewsletters
• Respond to our mailings
• Apply for a job or become a volunteer
• Contact us online, via email, by post or by telephone
• Use our educational resources

The personal data we collect and store includes but may not be limited to:

• Your name, address, telephone number, mobile number and/or email address, along with your preferences as to how we should or shouldn’t contact you in the future
• Financial information submitted to us such as credit card details, direct debit details and your gift aid status
• Records of your donation history and correspondence
• Records of any contact you have with us
• Images, photographs, or video if you take part in, or attend an event with us
• Login details (not passwords) that are typed in and submitted, such as username. This is used to improve the content of our site and to ensure relevance of information
• Your IP address (this is your computer’s individual identification number), and other technical information, which is automatically logged by our website server. This is used to note your interest in our website and to ensure any changes that are made to the site are for your benefit
• Website session information stored in cookies. These do not include any personal data and are used to ensure that the correct data is extracted from the database (such as language preference) and the correct level of access is given when accessing restricted pages

If you are adopting an animal or buying membership as a gift for someone else, we will need their name, email, and address in order to send them their welcome pack and any updates. We will not contact them about anything else unless they opt into our communications. We collect date of births for children under 18 so we only contact them with age-appropriate content and no fundraising messages. We will only contact children under 18 where we have had permission to do so.

We use a Facebook pixel for tracking conversions, retargeting and campaign optimization in our social media. This allows us to measure the effectiveness of our paid advertising. Find out more: https://www.facebook.com/policy.php

How long do we store your personal data and how do we keep it safe?

We will hold your personal data on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, for example we will keep a record of donations for at least seven years as this is a legal requirement. In general, if it has been over five years since your last donation or any other engagement with us then your personal data will be archived and no longer processed unless you get back in contact with us. In general, we will delete or anonymise archived data from our database after two years. All retention of data is detailed in our Data Retention Guidance (updated April 2023).

You have the right to ask us to erase your personal data in certain circumstances. Please note however that there may be circumstances where you ask us to erase your personal data, but we are legally required or entitled to retain it, for example, we may need to keep details of gift aided donations made to GCT for tax purposes.

Our database is stored on our computer network which is password protected and routinely monitored by anti-virus software. We have a Data Protection Policy which ensures all data is stored and handled in line with data protection regulation and staff are trained annually to ensure data security and are spot checked to ensure compliance. Only staff and volunteers who have been trained in handling data securely will have access to information, in particular to our database. Careful consideration is made before giving anyone access.

What we do with your personal data

Any personal data we collect from you will be processed in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and other applicable laws.

The details we collect will be used:

• To comply with legal requirements
• To ensure accessibility onto our site
• To send you products that you have bought
• To send you information on our work, our fundraising products and services, and to sign you up to certain bulletins like our bi-annual Galapagos Matters magazine, fundraising communications or our eNewsletter (only where you have signed up to receive these from us or where we have legitimate interest in sending these to you)

We do not sell or swap your data with any other organisation. We only share your personal data with carefully selected third party partners and suppliers to allow them to perform services on our behalf (e.g., payment processing including Direct Debits; sending magazines, appeals, updates and eNewsletters; looking for prospective supporters of a similar background via social media platforms; and market analysis). In these circumstances we will not give these organisations any rights to use your personal data except to provide services to us and in accordance with our instructions. We also utilise a third party, Google, to track the usage and volume of users on our site, but this does not include any of your personal details.

Profiling

GCT’s work to conserve and protect the wildlife of Galapagos is only made possible thanks to the generosity of our supporters, so it is vital that our fundraising efforts are as effective and respectful as possible.

GCT will, from time to time, use the donation and giving history of our supporters to consider their propensity to donate and to ensure that any fundraising requests we send are appropriate to our donors both in terms of timing as well as the amount of money that we might request.

We might also obtain personal data about individuals to research their potential to be a significant donor to GCT. In these limited cases only, we may collect other personal data, such as your employment, philanthropic activities, and interests. We may use this information to estimate your gift capacity to ensure that any request we make for support is appropriate. We only collect information from publicly available sources such as charity websites and annual reviews, corporate websites, public social media accounts and Companies House. We only use reputable sources, where someone might expect their data to be accessed and read by the public.

Profiling research helps us to fundraise cost-efficiently, reducing waste and increasing the relevance of our communications to you and other supporters. You may however opt out of profiling at any time by contacting us using the contact details in this policy.

Your rights

We want to make it easy for you to tell us how you want us to communicate, in a way that suits you. Our communications have clear marketing preference questions, and we include information on how to opt out when we send you any marketing materials.

If you don’t want to hear from us, please inform us when you supply your data or alternatively contact us on 020 7399 7440 or at [email protected], or write to us at Galapagos Conservation Trust, 7-14 Great Dover Street, London, SE1 4YR, UK. You can also ask us to update or remove your personal data and you have the right to request a copy of any personal data we hold about you.

If you wish to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you, please send a description of the information you want to see and proof of your identity by post to:  Galapagos Conservation Trust, 7-14 Great Dover Street, London, SE1 4YR, UK. We do not accept these requests by email.

You can also send us your comments or lodge a complaint by contacting us at the afore-mentioned address. An inquiry will be held into each complaint, and the appropriate action will be taken. If the problem raised by your complaint requires a change in our policies and procedures, we will act accordingly.

Despite all our precautions, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Whilst we strive to protect your personal data in accordance with the relevant data protection laws, we cannot guarantee the security of any information which you disclose to us and therefore you do so at your own risk.

Other websites

This Privacy Policy only covers personal data you have provided directly to GCT, including through GCT’s website, the Discovering Galapagos website (including the Teacher Zone) and Descubriendo Galapagos website. Any other websites which have direct links from these three websites are subject to their own privacy policies, which may differ from ours. This includes service providers such as Eventbrite, PayPal and Enthuse who collect payments securely on our behalf. Before submitting information, please make sure you carefully read and understand their own privacy policies and the way in which they use your personal data.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

This policy was first published in December 2018 in line with recommendations published by the Information Commissioner and the Fundraising Regulator and was re-worded to make it easier to understand and to clarify how we collect and process your data. We may amend or update this policy at any time to make things clearer, or to take account of changes to legal requirements. If we make any significant changes in the way in which we treat your personal data we will make this clear on the GCT website, or by contacting you directly.

This policy was last updated on 6 December 2023.

Contact us

If you have any questions or comments on this policy, please contact:  

Galapagos Conservation Trust, 7-14 Great Dover Street, London, SE1 4YR, UK  

Telephone:  020 7399 7440:  Email: [email protected]