Privacy Policy

Dogs for Good is a registered charity in England and Wales (charity number 1092960) and Scotland (SC039828). We make life changing differences for people with disabilities. We work to support people and communities through the help of a trained dog, improving and enriching the lives of both.

Our assistance dogs support adults and children in their homes and in the community. We work with people with a range of disabilities and also autistic children. In our Community Dog service, our activity and therapy dogs work with specialist handlers in communities and schools. Together they help adults and children to overcome specific challenges and develop life skills. Our Family Dog team gives specialist advice and support to help people get the most out of their relationship with their pet dog, most notably families with a child with autism.

Within this policy, “we” refers to Dogs for Good. For the purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2017/679, Dogs for Good is the data controller.

You can contact Dogs for Good by writing to us at Dogs for Good, The Frances Hay Centre, Blacklocks Hill, Banbury, OX17 2BS,  emailing [email protected] or calling 01295 252600 (phone lines manned between 9-5 Monday to Friday.)

Our Data Protection Officer is Donna Cook, who can be contacted directly on [email protected]

We collect personal data as defined by the General Data Protection Regulation

We collect information about you directly; when you make a donation to us, sponsor a puppy, enquire about our services, apply for a job vacancy, sign up to our e-newsletter, enquire about rehoming a dog or otherwise provide us with personal information. We collect information indirectly when you use our website or engage with us on social media.

The information we collect directly may include name and address details, other contact details including email address and phone number, and other information relevant to the purpose for which you provided it. We also record any requests for information from you and any feedback we receive from you, for example around how you want to be contacted.

Like many organisations, we also gather information about the use of our website, such as which pages people visit most frequently and how long people spend on our site, in order to better understand what our supporters are interested in and likely to respond to. We may use this information to personalise the way our website appears to visitors, in order to give you more of the things you are interested in.

What information do you collect?
For each visitor to our Web pages, our Web server automatically records the page requests when users visit our Website. These ‘Server Logs’ typically include your web request, internet protocol (IP) address, browser type, browser language, date and time of your request and one or more cookies.

The Cookies we store are necessary to use third party applications on our site such as Google Analytics. The information we gather from these applications does not identify specific individuals and is used by us for statistical purposes only. Disabling cookies will disable this functionality on the site.

We use the following Cookies:

Marketing (targeting or advertising) cookies
These cookies collect information about your browsing habits in order to make advertising relevant to you and your interests. They remember websites you have visited and that information is shared with other parties such as advertisers.
You can change your settings on your browser to prevent cookies from being stored on your computer or mobile device without explicit consent. Your browser ‘help’ section will normally provide details on how to manage the cookie settings.
For more information about opting out of marketing cookies click here.

How to disable cookies
By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of cookies as described above. However you can still disable cookies at a browser level if you wish. You may experience reduced functionality if you choose to do so. Your browser ‘help’ section will normally provide details on how to manage the cookie settings.

What happens when you link to another site?
Our websites contain links to other websites. This privacy policy applies only to our site, so you should always be aware when you are moving to another site and read the privacy statement of any site which collects personal information.

Do you sell my information to anyone?
We do not sell your personal information on to any third party under any circumstances.

Who can I talk to if I have a question about my privacy?
If you feel that this site is not following its stated information policy, you may contact us at the number provided above, emailing us at the above address or visiting our Contact us page.

We will use your data for a number of purposes, always in line with our supporter promise. These purposes include:

• To promote the aims of the charity
• To provide you with the services, information and support you have requested
• To process donations kindly received from you
• Process gift aid declarations
• To fulfil products purchased e.g Sponsor a Puppy
• Support your fundraising
• Keep you informed of our news and appeals
• Record your wishes of how you prefer to be contacted
• Ensure all internal administrative functions are carried out
• Support you as you volunteer with us
• Support our clients
• Provide potential clients with relevant information and assess their suitability for our services
• Contact you regarding rehoming one of our dogs
• For internal record keeping, including the management of complaints and feedback

We currently send out three fundraising appeals each year, and an annual newsletter to our supporters. For those who have subscribed to receive our e-newsletter, these are sent out monthly.

We will only contact you with marketing materials via email or telephone if we have your consent to do so. If you agree to us providing you with marketing materials, you can always change your preferences at a later date.

If you have provided us with your postal address we may write to you with news of our work and appeals, unless you tell us you would prefer not to hear from us in this way. This contact will be on the grounds of legitimate interest, as outlined in the General Data Protection Regulations. Sometimes it is also necessary to process your data for us to comply with our legal obligations, for example when we send gift aid information to HMRC.

You are not required to provide personal data to us, but note that failure to do so may affect the ability to provide the services you request. For example,  we are unable to send you updates on your sponsor puppy if we don’t receive your address.

You can ask us to change how we contact you at any time by emailing [email protected], writing to us or phoning us. If you have told us you do not wish to be contacted for marketing purposes, we will retain your details marked as ‘do not contact’, so we can be sure to exclude you from any future marketing.

We may analyse personal information we collect on your to create a profile of your areas of interest, so that we can contact you with the most relevant information. This may be, for example, around an area of our work you have expressed a specific interest in, or how you may be able to support us. Dogs for Good does not undertake any automatic profiling.

We may share your personal information with our trusted partners in order to fulfil our charitable purposes. Currently, the only time we would do this is in order to send out a mailing, where we would share the recipient’s personal information with our print supplier and postal supplier, in order for them to print and fulfil the mailing. We work with a small number of trusted suppliers, and require them to comply strictly with data protection laws and our instructions, and ensure the appropriate contracts and controls are in place.

If you make a payment or donation to us, we need to share your information with our payment processor in order to process the donation. By paying via our payment processor you agree to accept their terms and conditions for the use of their services.

Under the General Data Protection Regulations you have a number of rights:

• You have the right to ask us if we have your data, and access a copy of all the information we hold about you. This is called a Subject Access Request
• You have the right to correct any data we hold that you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to delete your data entirely
• You have the right to ask us to stop processing your data
• You have the right to ask us to give you your data in a common, machine readable format
• You have the right to ask us to stop using your data for specific purposes, for example sending marketing mailings, and processing based on legitimate interest
• You have the right not to be profiled
• You have the right to withdraw consent for us to contact you
• You have the right to lodge complaints to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO.)

If you would like to exercise any of your rights please contact [email protected], write to us or phone us. We will act in accordance with your instructions as soon as reasonably possible, and within a maximum period of 21 days.

If you wish to lodge a complaint with the ICO, you can contact them here.

We sometimes use external companies to process donations or payments on our behalf. Currently, this is when we accept card payments online, sell Christmas cards or when we sign up new Payroll Giving supporters. We undertake strict checks on these companies, and have contracts in place which ensure our expectations and requirements are met, particularly around the management and security of personal data.

If you use your credit or debit card to donate to us online, over the phone or via the post, we ensure this is done safely and securely, and in line with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. Once your donation has been processed, we securely destroy your card details.