Privacy Policy

  1. Home
  2. Privacy Policy

Privacy Notice

At Gainsborough’s House, we value your support and we are committed to protecting your privacy. We want to help you understand how we use the information we hold about you and how you can get in touch with us about your preferences.  

Who we are:

Gainsborough’s House Society
Gainsborough’s House, 46 Gainsborough Street, Sudbury, Suffolk, CO10 2EU01787 372958
www.gainsborough.org
mail@gainsborough.org

We are registered as a Charity in England and Wales, and our registration number is: 1170048. We are also registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee, No. 10413978

We are registered as a data controller under the Data Protection Act 1998 and our Data Protection Registration Number is Z8063443

This privacy policy explains how we, Gainsborough’s House Society, may collect and use the information you give us. If you have any queries about this statement please contact us.

What information do we collect about you?

We collect the personal data that you may volunteer as part of ticket bookings, purchases, membership or donation forms, newsletter sign-ups and visitor surveys.

Personal information we collect may include:

  • your name, title, gender and date of birth;
  • postal address, email address and phone number;
  • family and spouse/partner details, relationships to other donors and/or Members;
  • current interests and activities.
  • Bank account details so we can manage your payments.

We will also collect and hold information about any contact you have with us as a visitor, artist, volunteer, lender to the collection, representative of the press, individual, customer or supporter of Gainsborough’s House, which may consist of:

  • ticket purchase and event registration/attendance;
  • retail purchases;
  • contact preferences;
  • gift information, including Direct Debit bank details where applicable;
  • Gift Aid status;
  • details of correspondence sent to you, or received from you;
  • donor status;
  • employment information and professional activities;
  • where relevant, selected media coverage;
  • any other information provided by yourself at the request of Gainsborough’s House.

When we ask you to provide your personal information we will let you know why we are asking, and how we will use your data, by directing you towards this notice.

Why do we collect the information?

We collect personal information from you to enable us to administer your donations correctly, and to help us build a positive relationship by contacting you in a way that is personal and relevant to you.  This also helps Gainsborough’s House to be as efficient as possible in using its resources for marketing and other contact with supporters.

We use data you provide us with, in combination with the contact permissions you agree to at the time we collect your data.  You can change your contact preferences at any time by contacting us. There are some communications that we are required to send regardless of your contact preferences. These are essential communications, deemed necessary to fulfil our administrative obligations to you. This would include Direct Debit confirmations and advanced notices, thank you letters, Gift Aid confirmation letters and querying returned mail, incomplete cheques or bounced Direct Debit payments with you.

Gift Aid

To claim Gift Aid on your donations from the HMRC, we need to hold records of your name and address, your tax status and donation details.  Ensuring this information is accurate ensures that we claim Gift Aid correctly and can increase the value of the donations you give to us.

Financial Audit

We need to hold information about donations that you give to us to meet financial auditing requirements but also to help us understand how you support Gainsborough’s House so that we can talk to you about supporting our work in a way that is relevant to you.

Areas of Interest

We may hold information about your areas of interest so we can send information to you about those aspects of our work. For example, if you tell us you have a link with an area of the collection or part of the programme, we may then contact you in the future about a new exhibition, event or acquisition linked to your interest.

Address Information

We hold your address details so that, if we have your permission, we can post newsletters, appeals and other information to you.  We will also hold your address information on our database so that if you request us to no longer contact you, we can keep a record to ensure we remove you from any mailings in the future.

What do we do with the information?

All the information we keep is stored on a secure database held on a server in our Sudbury office. Depending on your relationship with Gainsborough’s House, and the preferences you have indicated, data we hold may be used by us for the following purposes:

To send you promotional, marketing or fundraising information by post, telephone or electronic means. These types of communications might include:

  • News and updates about Gainsborough’s House, such as our Gazette newsletter, e-newsletters and What’s On, or marketing or supporter newsletters.
  • Information on our fundraising operations, including occasional targeted requests to consider giving financial support to Gainsborough’s House or to ask you to consider supporting us in other ways.
  • Other relevant communications based upon your relationship with Gainsborough’s House
  • Informing you of other activities, or events related to Gainsborough’s House such as volunteering, retail and corporate partnerships
  • occasional promotional material from third parties (eg we have previously sent Suffolk Villages Festival, Suffolk Art Fund, and have agreed to include The Summer Art Fair at St Peter’s (we never release your details to third parties).

Data screening and cleansing, to check if we have accurate contact details for you. We regularly review our records to ensure they are as accurate as possible. We may consult alternative sources to undertake these checks such as:

  • Royal Mail National Change of Address database (NCOA) to ensure that we don’t send mail to old addresses
  • Deceased Records to ensure that we do not cause upset by contacting somebody who has recently deceased
  • Newspaper articles, publications and company websites;
  • Companies House and other company information databases;
  • Charity Commission and Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) registers;
  • Any other publicly available sources.

To send you surveys, and for market research purposes

Tailoring what we tell you about.  We may use existing data about your previous engagement with Gainsborough’s House to find relevant information for particular activities or to tailor communication. An example might be: That you live near to an event we are holding

Research to help us understand our donors and potential donors.

If you do not want Gainsborough’s House to do research or profiling work in relation to your information, you can tell us. Being targeted and appropriate in our fundraising is more cost effective for Gainsborough’s House. We may combine the information you have given us with other publicly available information and create a profile of your interests and preferences, where they are relevant to engaging with Gainsborough’s House.  We do this to help us determine whether and in what ways you might be interested in helping us.  Examples might be:

  • That you are a director of a company with an interest in East Anglia or cultural heritage
  • That you are a trustee of a grant making trust that exists to support development of work in line with our mission, perhaps learning and outreach, heritage or culture
  • That you are a known philanthropist with an interest in and potential to give to our work

Such research would be carried out by Gainsborough’s House, where we have an opportunity to engage at a significant level or depth (so we do not research or profile the majority of our donors or other interested parties).  Examples might be:

  • When you are meeting with our Director or a trustee or engaging with our staff or supporters
  • When you have been referred by an existing Gainsborough’s House donor in your peer group who has introduced you to our work and you would like to meet with us
  • When you have self-identified through a gift or other engagement

We also do this work to try to minimise any negative impact on your relationship with Gainsborough’s House.  Examples might be:

  • Asking for a donation or an inappropriate level of donation
  • Trying to engage you in activities about which you have no interest or no influence

If you have any questions about our supporter research work or if you would like to tell us more about yourself and your interests in relation to Gainsborough’s House please get in touch.

Due diligence research

Gainsborough’s House trustees have a duty to ensure that there is no reputational or other risk to the organisation in accepting a gift or other support. We may therefore need to carry out research, which is necessary to ensure we comply with this duty. For more information on the type of information required and the circumstances when this might apply, you can visit this Charity Commission link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charities-due-diligence-checks-and-monitoring-end-use-of-funds and refer to Chapter 2, Tool 6: Know your donor

When we ask you for your personal information, we will let you know why we are asking and how we will use your data.  We do this in a short information notice on all our printed and online forms and by directing you towards this notice. We will ask you for your consent to use any of the details you have provided. You can change how we use the information you have provided to us at any time by letting us know your preferences. To do this Email: mail@gainsborough.org or call us on 01787 372958. For example, if you provide us with your telephone and email address by completing those details on a form, the information notice will explain how we will use those details to contact you if you provide them.

How we keep your information secure

We have security procedures, rules and technical measures to protect the personal data that we have under our control from:

  • unauthorised access
  • improper use or disclosure
  • unauthorised modification

All our employees and data processors, who have access to, and are associated with the processing of personal data, are legally obliged to respect the confidentiality of our visitors’ and supporters’ personal data.

It is our policy not to sell, trade or rent your personal information to anyone.  We do not disclose personal data other than to data processes carrying out work on our behalf under a Non-Disclosure Agreement.  Any such companies are acting as approved data processors for Gainsborough’s House, and we retain full responsibility for your personal data. Data processors will act only on our instructions. Examples of these data processers might be a mailing house for sending out our newsletter, or an email distribution service.

We will check your preferences with you every 24 months to ensure that you are still happy with the way that we contact you. You can make changes at any time by emailing us at mail@gainsborough.org or call 01787 372958.

If you have asked to be removed from our mailing lists, we will keep information such as your name and address details and donation history on our database for financial auditing purposes and will ensure that we don’t mail you in the future.

We regularly review our privacy practices and this notice, and may make changes from time to time. Any changes made will be posted to this page, and will apply from the time we post them. This privacy notice was last updated on 11th January 2018.

Menu