Privacy Policy

May 2021

Here at Secret World Wildlife Rescue, we do everything we can to protect British wildlife, treating injured animals, rearing orphans, alleviating suffering and releasing these precious animals back into the wild where they belong. But we know that we can only help these animals through the generosity of supporters like you, who give both their time and money to save wild animals in need.

Caring for these animals is vital. We need to look after our supporters in the best way we can too as your trust is deeply important to us.

We want you to know that we appreciate your support, and you want to be sure that we are using your gift wisely to rescue, rehabilitate and release the injured, sick and orphaned animals that are brought to Secret World for care.

In the light of the UK’s exit from the EU on January 1st , we have made some changes to our Privacy Policy. We are dedicated to ensuring your data remains secure and how we use our supporters’ information is clear and transparent. 

Who we are

Secret World Wildlife Rescue exists to prevent British wildlife suffering needlessly and inspire in everyone an understanding and love of wildlife and the countryside. Our objectives are to rescue, rehabilitate and release wildlife and animal welfare is at the heart of what we do. Secret World is a place of safety and we care for British wildlife – injured, sick or orphaned – no matter what the species.

We service the South West, rescuing wildlife as far as South Gloucestershire, Bath and North Devon. We have a charity shop in Burnham-on-Sea.

Secret World Wildlife Rescue (SWWR) comprises both the charity and its linked charities, Bluebell Sett and the Bluebell Sett Charitable Trust (registered charity number 1097119, Company number 04672215), and our trading company, Secret World Limited (SWL) (company number 03658761), a wholly owned subsidiary, which runs our commercial engagements.

Our privacy notice explains how SWWR and SWL use personal information. All references to ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ in this notice refer to both the incorporated charity and trading company.

SWWR and SWL will be registered as a Data Controller  and Data Processor under the new UK General Data Protection Regulation.

Using your information

We do NOT rent, swap or sell your personal information to other organisations.

Depending on the circumstances in which your data are collected and used, the legal basis that we rely on for processing your data will generally fall into one of the following categories:

  • Where you have given your consent to allow us to use your data in a certain way
  • Where you have provided your consent to allow us to use your data in our marketing or PR material
  • Where the processing is necessary in order to deliver a contract with you
  • Where the processing is necessary to comply with a legal obligation
  • Where it is in our legitimate interests to perform our functions, such as:
    • processing donations or gifts in kind
    • conducting and preparing scientific papers / research which is based on the information gathered from our animal records (which may contain your data)
    • sending you communications (via email or mail) where our legitimate interest is to raise funds and to deliver our charitable objectives
    • our obligation to keep you informed if you have an animal adoption with us

Service providers

We use service providers (such as direct mailing companies, marketing campaign providers and software platform providers) to help us deliver our services to you. We safeguard the sharing of your personal information by using formalised information sharing systems where appropriate. We currently do not use third party fundraising agencies. When we share your personal data with any such  relevant service providers, it is only to allow them to perform their services for us. Any data transferred is carried out in compliance with relevant data protection legislation and the processing of your data is subject to appropriate security measures. Personal data will not be stored by those service providers after they have performed their service for us.

If you volunteer with us as a rescue response driver your details will be entered into a custom map that is managed by us and hosted by Google. This is not publicly available, and your details will be removed upon cessation of your volunteer agreement. Please see Google’s privacy policy for more information about how this information is stored and used.  https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-US 

Legal requirements

We may disclose your personal/sensitive information when required to by law, for example, to HMRC for tax purposes or to the police for the prevention or detection of crime.

Data accuracy

We strive to improve the quality and accuracy of the information you have provided to us, such as your contact details, through a data cleanse process. We do this by checking against external data lists such as the Post Office’s National Change of Address database and the National Deceased Register.  This helps us to avoid mis-directing communications, but our limited resources only allow us to do this annually. You can help us keep our records up to date by informing us when your contact details and other personal information changes.

Data retention

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting or other legal requirements). How long the information will be stored for depends on the nature of the information and the reason why it was collected. 

Fundraising communications

If you have an animal adoption with Secret World you will automatically be sent a copy of our bi-annual newsletter as part of the adoption package because it contains the adoption updates.

Where you give us your consent, we will use your data to send you fundraising and marketing communications in connection with the following activities and services:

  • Volunteering – information about how you can support our work by volunteering your time and expertise, whether on-site or in the community, along with updates on the volunteer roles, recruitment and induction days, and volunteer group work days.
  • Appeals and fundraising activities – these may include requests for donations, how you can adopt an animal, how you can raise money on our behalf, how you can take part in or attend a fundraising event or challenge, information about how you can leave a gift in your Will, sending you our annual raffle tickets, and sending information about how our fundraising helps wildlife casualties.
  • Our ‘Wildlives’ Newsletter – this is our bi-annual newsletter which informs our supporters about our work and any changes in the organisation, provides updates on the wildlife that we care for, along with updates on the impact that your fundraising activities and support have had on the lives of the wild animals that come into SWWR.
  • Learning and engagement and wildlife training courses – sharing knowledge and educating the public is one of our key objectives; as well as specialist wildlife courses, we run Wild Academy sessions during the school holidays.
  • Shop products and other services – including information about products offered by our online shop and catalogue and other services that may be of benefit to you, such as hiring our Bluebell Barn for an event venue.

How we contact you

You decide how you want us to contact you, whether by mail, email or by phone, and you decide what communications you want to receive from us. You can update your communication preferences at any time by telling us when things change:

  • Call us on 01278 783250 and speak to our Fundraising team
  • Email fundraising@secretworld.org or complete the contact form on our website
  • Write to Secret World Wildlife Rescue, External Relations, New Road, Highbridge, Somerset TA9 3PZ

From time to time we will send you a communication to review your communication preferences. You can also change your mind about how we contact you at any time or request that we stop contacting you altogether. If you tell us that you no longer want to receive contact from us and you are on our database, it may take a short while before our communications stop altogether because some of our communications, like our appeals, are done a few weeks in advance of mailing. If you request to receive no further contact from us, we will keep the information we hold on you and mark your record as ‘no mail’ to ensure that you do not receive unwanted materials in the future.        

Website privacy and our online community

Our online community is moderated. The posting of personal information on a discussion / comment board means your information is publicly accessible. Such information can be viewed online and collected by third parties. We are not responsible for the use of information by such third parties. We recommend you avoid sharing any personal information that can be used to identify you (such as your name, age, address, name of employer). We are not responsible for the privacy of any identifiable information that you post in our online community.

Personal information gathered via our contact form on the website will be collected, used and stored for processing as per the above ‘Using your Information’. We collect and process personal information when you ask us about our activities, register for events, subscribe to a service (such as our WildLives Newsletter), order products or services, seek assistance or advice (e.g. by emailing a wildlife care question), make a donation to us, or otherwise give us personal information. We seek your consent to collect and process your personal information at the point of submission and you can change your consent or identify specific activities or marketing/ fundraising updates that you are interested in at any time.

Cookies and similar technologies

Most Web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove cookies and to reject cookies. If you choose to remove cookies or reject cookies, this could affect certain features or services of our Website. Any information collected by cookies is used purely for statistical purposes and will contain no information by which we can personally identify you. 

Under 16

If you are 16 or under, you must get your parent/guardian’s permission before you provide any personal information on the website. If you do not have permission, you are not allowed to give us your personal information.

Links

The SWWR website may include links to other sites, not owned or managed by us. We cannot be held responsible for the privacy of information collected by websites not managed by us.

Changes to this policy

We may change our Privacy Policy from time to time so please check back periodically.

You can download our latest Privacy Policy as a PDF document here.