What information do we collect?
We may collect personal information such as your name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number, bank details and credit/debit card details. We may collect other information too.
Sometimes, we will ask you why you are supporting us as this helps us understand the importance of our services.
If we send you an email, we look at whether you have opened or clicked on any links in the email. This helps us to understand how successful our emails are, improve the content and send them to the people who are most interested.
Some people kindly leave gifts to Dementia UK in their Wills. If you leave a gift to us in your Will, we need to collect personal information for solicitors, executors, next of kin, family members and other named beneficiaries and employees of other organisations. We need to do this to obey the law and make sure that the money is received and spent properly as you intend.
How do we collect your information, and why do we have it?
Information you give to us
You may give us your personal information when you sign up for one of our events; make a donation; register to volunteer; share your story with us; support one of our campaigns; give us feedback or answer a survey; or make a complaint. You may give your personal information to us in person, by post, telephone or online.
If you are aged under 16, you must ask a responsible adult to share your information with Dementia UK on your behalf.
Information shared with us by an organisation with your permission
Your personal information may be shared with us by fundraising or in memory giving sites like JustGiving or MuchLoved, or by organisers of events you have registered interest or taken part in. These organisations will only share your personal information with us with your permission.
We also receive personal information from online services like Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and X (previously known as Twitter) if you give your permission. The personal information we get from these online services depends on your personal account settings on each site. You can change these settings yourself if you do not want your information to be shared.
You may give your personal information in person or by telephone to a trusted fundraising organisation working for us. If you agree to set up a regular donation to Dementia UK, the fundraising organisation will pass your personal information to us so that we can process your donations, thank you and contact you about the difference your donation can make.
If you are involved in administering a Will (for example, if you are a solicitor, executor, or family member of the deceased) we may be given your personal information by solicitors or other professionals, or by organisations like Smee & Ford which advise charities that have been named in a Will.
Public information we use with your personal information
Your personal information may be available from public sources. From time to time, we may keep your records up to date and add information to them by checking against publicly available information. For example, we might work with an organisation that uses an external service to find your new address, or to update the address we have for you to make it more accurate.
We may also research information about you, either from publicly available information or from information that we have already collected from you. We do this to ensure you receive information that is relevant to you.
We work with organisations that help us identify supporters who may be able to make a significant donation. To do this we use personal information we have about you to research your potential to be a significant donor. We may collect more information from public sources like your job title and employment history; the value of your home; and donations to other organisations. We may estimate how likely you are to give to Dementia UK. This helps us to use our time wisely and approach supporters who are most likely to give to Dementia UK.
You can ask us to stop using your personal information in any of these ways at any time by contacting our Data Protection Officer.
When do we use legitimate interests?
We will often ask your permission to use your personal information.
However, here are the reasons we have for using your personal information if we rely on our legitimate interests as a legal basis:
Administration
- Processing your donations
- Claiming Gift Aid on your donations
- Recording your involvement with us
- Actioning your requests
- Updating your record with accurate and up-to-date information, including changes of address, preferences for hearing from us or Gift Aid eligibility. This may involve using information shared with us by an external organisation
- Moving your personal information from one place to another to make it more secure or benefit from technological updates
- Sharing your information with a fundraising event organiser when it is hosting an event you have signed up for, to enable you to take part safely
- Investigating and responding to complaints, legal claims, or other issues
Getting in contact with you
- Providing any information you have requested from us, and directing you to any services that may be relevant
- Thanking you for your support
- Thanking you as the next of kin if we receive a donation in memory of a loved one
- Letting you know about changes to our services or policies
- Contacting you to remind you how to finish registering for a fundraising event if you are part way through the registration
- Contacting you about a fundraising event you have signed up for. We may contact you by email, telephone, post, or text. If we contact you by text, we may use software that uses generative artificial intelligence to help us send replies quickly. Replies are always read and approved by someone who works at Dementia UK to make sure you have a personal and safe experience.
- Contacting you, if you are the administrator of a Trust or grant-giving body, to find out more about your giving criteria and to apply for funds
- Contacting you, if you work for a company that is a potential corporate partner of Dementia UK, to find out if there are any ways that your company can support us
- Sending you communications by post about our work and how you can help us, for example, information about our fundraising activities, volunteering, and campaigns
- Advertising to you on social media
Finding out more about you
- Detecting and reducing fraud
- If we send you an email, looking at whether you have opened or clicked on any links in the email. This helps us to understand how successful our emails are, improve the content and send them to the people who are most interested
- Identifying supporters who may be able to give a significant donation
- Analysing your personal information to understand our supporters better and target our communications to you so that you have the most relevant information. For example, we may wish to send you invitations to attend special events or discuss specific fundraising projects. To do this, we may share your information with trusted organisations who help us to build profiles or assign scores to your record of personal information. This helps us to cost-effectively and efficiently raise funds to support our work
- If you are a running event participant, we will work with partnered digital coaching apps (like Coopah Running) to provide us with information about how your training is going. We will use this information to provide personalised support and communications.
One of the tools that we use to target communications to you online is provided by Facebook (owned by Meta) and is called a ‘custom audience’. We upload your name and email address to Facebook in an encrypted format. Facebook then searches its own data for a match. Where a match is found, our marketing will start to appear in your news feed.
We may also use the Facebook ‘lookalike’ tool to help us find profiles of people who are like you and who may be interested in supporting our charity. Once identified by Facebook they may also start to see our marketing in their news feed.
We may also share the email address you use on a Meta-owned social media site (Facebook or Instagram) with Twitter/X to help us identify potential fundraisers and donors on Twitter/X. This helps us target adverts on social media sites and spend money wisely to find people interested in fundraising for Dementia UK.
We will only share your details with Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter/X in this way if you have consented to us sending you marketing via email. You can contact us at any time to let us know that you would prefer us not to use your information in this way. You can also update your preferences within the social media site to stop receiving marketing.
You can ask us to stop using your personal information in any of these ways at any time by contacting our Data Protection Officer.
How do we store your information? How long for?
Your personal information is stored in a database which can only be accessed by relevant staff at Dementia UK who help to deliver our fundraising and marketing services. Your personal information may also be stored in secure online tools we use to provide a service to you.
We will only keep your personal information for as long as we need it, and for as long as the law tells us we must keep it.
At Dementia UK we have documents that tell us how long we need to keep personal information. The information in these documents is based on legal and operational needs. For example, if you give us a donation or leave a gift in your Will, we are required to keep a record of this for up to seven years because of legal obligations. We make sure that we fully delete or anonymise personal information that we do not need to keep anymore.
Do we share your information?
Usually, Dementia UK will not share any of your personal information without your permission. We never sell your personal information.
We will sometimes share your information with trusted organisations working for us to send you some information you have asked for, or to help us improve our services.
For example, when you indicate that you would like to receive information from us by post or email, we may provide your name and address or email address to an organisation working for us that will put together and send out the mailings on our behalf. You will only receive information that you have agreed to receive from us, and the organisation working for us will not contact you for any other purpose.
We may also share your information with a trusted organisation that will use it to understand the types of people supporting us, and how and why they choose to support us. This helps us reach more supporters in the most effective way in the future. These organisations will not use or process the information for any purpose other than what we have asked them to do.
In some special circumstances we may need to share your personal information, without your permission. This is often to protect or support you or someone else.
When we need to share your personal information in these circumstances, we will, if we can, let you know who we are sharing it with and why. We will share as little information as is needed, and we will share it in a way that keeps it safe. We will also check that the person or organisation who will be given your information will look after your personal information properly.
Here are the reasons we may need to share your personal information:
- We are told to by law. We may need to give personal information to the police, legal advisors, professional regulators, or safeguarding agencies
- You are at risk of serious harm, neglect, death or threat to personal safety and wellbeing
- You tell us that a child may be being hurt or is in danger
- We believe a crime is happening or may happen if nothing is done to stop it. This includes financial fraud
Do we send your information outside the UK?
We try to keep your personal information within the UK. Sometimes, we may need to move your personal information outside the UK if one of the organisations that works for us is based outside the UK.
When this happens, we make sure that your personal information is safe and that the organisation that works for us is obeying UK data protection law, even if it is based outside the UK.