We cannot carry out our mission to improve the lives of renal patients at St George’s hospital without your help.
Whenever you get in touch with St George’s Kidney Patient Association, or register as a member of the charity, you share information about yourself. This information tells us about you as an individual and why you help us and enables us to let you know about the difference you are making. We collect information about our patients and supporters in order to make sure we are as effective as we can be in our ambitions to improve the lives of kidney patients at St George’s Hospital.

It is important for you and for us that we protect your privacy. Please take the time to read our Privacy Policy to understand what we do with your personal information that you share with us .

How you can contact us

If you have any queries about our privacy or cookies policies, please contact our chairman at St George’s Kidney Patient Association, c/o Renal Transplant Clinic, St. George's Hospital, Blackshaw Road, Tooting London SW17 0QT or via email: info@sgkpa.org.uk or by calling one of our committee members.

Who we are

We are St George’s Kidney Patient Association, a UK registered charity (charity number: 1021655 in England and Wales).
Our registered, and only office is:

c/o Renal Transplant Clinic,
St. George's Hospital,
Blackshaw Road,
Tooting
London SW17 0QT

If you have any queries about our privacy or cookies policies, please contact our Compliance Officer (Chairman) via post or email: info@sgkpa.org.uk.

If you have concerns about how we are handling your information, that you do not wish to discuss with us, you can raise these with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

How we collect your personal information

Every time you get in touch with us by post, email, telephone, through our website, face to face and occasionally via social media, we collect or update basic information about who you are, for example, your name. If you have been in contact with us previously, we may have already collected this information.

We hope you will be happy to tell us your first name, surname and your title if you use one. We like to be polite and friendly when we are in touch with you, and this information helps.

In addition, we like to ask for:

• your address
• your telephone numbers
• your email address
• whether you are a patient, donor or other supporter

With your consent, we may collect some sensitive personal information such as health information, your children’s information, or, for certain purposes, information about any criminal convictions (eg job or volunteer applications) if you apply for a role with the charity that requires it.

When your personal information is given to us indirectly

Occasionally, other organisations such as event organisers, fundraising platforms or recruitment agencies may send us information about you. When we receive this information we will make you aware of who gave us your information, why we’re getting in touch, how to access our privacy policy for more detail and you can let us know whether you wish for us to continue.

Sometimes an existing supporter or contact of ours may pass your information to us if they think you would like to be involved or support our work. If this happens we will always check that they have your permission before we get in touch. When we first get in touch, we will also check with you that you would be happy for your personal details to be stored onto our database and that you wish to be considered a supporter. We will also make sure that you have access to our privacy policy and understand how we collect, process and store your personal information. We will pass your information to third party suppliers who we partner with to deliver our business and charitable activities. If we need your consent to do this then we will always ask you first. For instance if you are a patient and we think you may like to be involved in the development of one of the hospital’s research projects, or to feature in one of our patient or fundraising stories.

What we use your information for

There are various reasons for which we may collect your information. These include:

• If you ask us for information;
• If you register an interest or take part in an event or fundraising;
• If you give us a financial gift;
• If you apply for a job or volunteer role;
• If you apply for a grant;
• If you are a patient at the hospital;
• If you register as a voting member of the charity;
• If you would like to make a suggestion or complaint.

Children and young adults’ information

When we know you are under 18, we will ask your parent or guardian if we can keep and use information about you. This is so that we can help you raise money for us, include you in stories about our work or to thank you for your support. We will only send you things relevant to how you are helping us by post. If we need to call or email you, we will ask your parent or guardian first.

How we keep your personal information safe

We are committed to ensuring that your personal information is kept safe. To prevent your personal information from being lost, misused, accessed by unauthorised individuals, modified or disclosed, we invest in the appropriate means. We manage all information that we hold in accordance with legal requirements.

How we use and process information

We may process your personal information for our legitimate charitable interests. This enables us to deliver on our ambitions to improve the lives of kidney patients at St George’s. These interests include some or all of the following:

Processing information internally

• Maintaining our membership register and associated voting rights;
• Updating our records to make sure we have the correct information, or if we require additional information about you;
• Processing sales transactions, financial gifts, or other payments and verifying financial transactions;
• Responding to any enquiries or issues;
• Fixing problems with the website to improve your user experience.

Creating great relationships with our supporters

• We will use your information to tailor our communications with you;
• Tell you about the latest changes and developments at the hospital;
• Acting as an intermediary to provide news and information from renal unit staff;
• Contacting you with information and support for any fundraising events and activities you have registered for;
• Contacting you with information about any research that you have agreed to participate in;
• Asking you to financially support our life-changing work;
• To send you raffle tickets, catalogues or any other materials that you request;
• Keeping you up-to-date about our work and events;
• Inviting you to participate in surveys, campaigns or research to find out more about the demographics, interests and behaviours of our supporters.

Reviewing our organisational activities

• Enhancing or reviewing our activities to improve our supporters’ experience with us;
• Conducting analysis using, where possible, anonymised information.

Other

• When we consider your job or volunteer application;
• To process funding applications submitted to St George’s Kidney Patient Association;
• To engage with parliamentarians, policy-makers and public bodies;
• Using information for auditing purposes 
• Troubleshooting and fixing.

Whenever we process your personal information for these purposes we will uphold your Personal Data rights. You have the right to object to this processing if you wish, and can do so by contacting us via email info@sgkpa.org.uk.

We will ask for your explicit consent to collect, process and store your information, for the following purposes:

• Direct marketing via email
• Direct marketing via SMS
• Contacting you via telephone if you are registered on the Telephone Preference Service (TPS)
• Patient engagement activities
• Developing case studies
• Involvement in clinical trials.

Legal requirments

There are occasions when there are statutory, legal or regulatory reasons which guide the collection and storage of your information. For example, we are required to keep and use some of the information we have collected, processed and stored about you to supply information to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) or other relevant statutory or regulatory bodies. We may also have to supply information in the event that we are requested to do so, in order to assist police enquiries or respond to court orders.

Processing your sensitive personal information
On occasion, we may process some of the sensitive personal information you provide, (eg information about your health, your children or your religion) where you have given us your consent to do so. We use this his information to help us :

• Answer a query you may have sent us
• Send you information about Patient Surveys, Patient Education Grants, volunteering opportunities, and opportunities to respond to consultations
• Send you information about research project participation opportunities, patient expertise or specific hospital or medical information relevant to you.
• Support your fundraising activity and provide you with an excellent experience
• Make you aware of opportunities to participate in or provide support to a research project
• Create patient experience case studies
• Consider which volunteer roles may be most suitable to you.

Who has access to your personal information?

We will never sell your personal information. Unless required for statutory obligations, we will never share your personal information with third parties for their own purposes. However, we know that sometimes it is better and more cost effective to employ trusted suppliers to help us deliver the best service in certain areas of our work. Where possible, information is anonymised before being shared with the suppliers to ensure that you are not identifiable from the information.

These third parties include:

• National Kidney Federation - this is our "parent organisation". They are a national advocacy charity that campaigns on all issues of importance to kidney patients in the UK. They also email or post out a quarterly newsletter to patients who subscribe. We will explicitly ask you for your permission to share your data with them.
• Suppliers that meet the highest professional standards and help us deliver the best service in certain areas of our work. Our trusted suppliers only use your information to carry out the work requested by St George’s Kidney Patient Association. They cannot give, sell or rent your personal information to anyone else for any reason. Examples of our suppliers include events’ organisers, designers, print and fulfilment partners.
• Any organisations who acquire any rights in us through merging with or acquiring St George’s Kidney Patient Association;
• Any professional or legal advisers that assist us in developing our organisation and complying with legal obligations;
• Law enforcement bodies and/or regulatory entities, in order to comply with any legal obligation or court order.

Where trusted suppliers operate outside of the European Economic Area, we only share personal information if we are entirely satisfied that they have sufficient protections in place to keep your personal information safe and that they are complying with the applicable privacy laws in their countries.

How we will communicate with you

We like to be able to keep you updated with news about the work we are undertaking, invite you to events, opportunities to get involved in patient activities and to let you know about how you can support our work. We also want to tell you about important changes at the hospital or information from staff at the hospital. We do this through a tailored approach based on how you have previously interacted with us, offered your support to us and your motivation for supporting us.

We may do this by post, email, telephone and SMS. We rely solely upon your consent to send you this information by email or SMS.

Changing the communications you receive from us
You can let us know at any time if you wish to change your preferences or stop the communications you receive from us by emailing us at info@sgkpa.org.uk.

How long we will store your personal information

We keep your personal information in accordance with applicable regulations. We destroy or anonymise personal information that we hold when it is no longer needed for the purposes outlined above.

For individuals who have made a financial gift, we will keep your personal information for eight years. For individuals about whom we hold sensitive data (such as health information or children’s information) we will keep information for the period necessary to support your request. If you are registered with us as a member of the charity we will keep your information permanently or until you ask us to delete it.

You can request a copy of all personal information that we hold about you at any time (see ‘Your Rights’ section  below).

Following links to third party websites

Use of Cookies

'Cookies' are small data files stored by the browser on your computer or a mobile device. Websites are able to read and write to these files, storing data such as personalisation details or user preferences. You cannot be personally identified from information captured in cookies and our aim is purely to improve your user experience. If you would like more information about our use of cookies, please read our Cookies Policy.

Third party websites

Our website contains links to other websites that we think may interest you. We cannot be responsible for the content and data protection practices of third party websites, even if you access those using links from our website, or they provide a link to our site. We recommend that you check the Privacy Policy of each website that you visit and contact its owner or operator if you have any concerns or questions, before sharing any personal or financial data.

Your Rights

You are in control of how we, and any other organisation, use and keep your personal information. You can request a copy of all personal information that we hold about you at any time. If you know that any of your personal information is inaccurate, you can ask us to correct it or erase it. You may also ask for your personal information to be erased if you have changed your mind about us holding it.

You can request that we send an electronic copy of all your personal information to yourself or another organisation. You can ask us to stop processing your personal information and/or withdraw your agreement to us processing it if you had previously provided consent, unless we are required to process it for legal reasons.

Updates to this privacy policy

We will check this policy at least once a year to make sure it is up-to-date and accurate. As a result, we may need to make some changes to our Privacy Policy from time to time, which will be made clear on our website or by contacting you directly.

This version of the Privacy Policy was published on 25 May 2018.