Privacy policy

We will keep you up to date on how your support is changing the lives of young people with cancer across the UK. We will always keep your personal information safe, secure and confidential within Teenage Cancer Trust. We feel it is important that we are completely transparent about why we need the personal information we request and how we will use it. This privacy policy explains how Teenage Cancer Trust collects and uses your personal information.  

Teenage Cancer Trust is a company registered in England and Wales (3350311) and a charity registered in England and Wales (1062559) and Scotland (SC039757) and The Teenage Trust (Trading) Limited, is a company registered in England and Wales (2691170), whose registered office is at The Place, 175 High Holborn, London. WC1V 7AA

Our website is https://www.teenagecancertrust.org/ is owned and operated by Teenage Cancer Trust

Personal Data

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (‘GDPR’) and Data Protection Act 2018 (‘the Act’), personal data is defined as ‘any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’), by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person’.

Our basis for processing your personal information

We will only collect and use your personal information where we have a legal basis to do so and will always respect your rights. 

Where we use your information, it may be because you have consented to us doing so or because we consider we have a legitimate interest to do so.  Where we do rely on a legitimate interest to use your information, we promise never to do it in an intrusive way or to cause distress, and to always respect your rights.  Other reasons may include using information because we have a legal obligation to do so or because we have to fulfil contractual obligations, for example if you order merchandise or tickets from us.  

Examples of why we use your personal information include: 

• You have given us your explicit consent to use the information for a specified purpose, for example to receive our e-newsletter, information about our events, volunteering, fundraising opportunities etc. 
• You have expressed interest in the charity by a positive action, for example by completing a registration form to take part in an event and to hear updates about our events programme. 
• We have a legal obligation to use your information, for example to maintain Gift Aid records.
• We regard people who chose to volunteer with Teenage Cancer Trust as entering in to a contract with us – therefore we may use contract as the legal basis for communicating with you.
• We also reserve the right to apply our legitimate interest wherever we believe it is appropriate, but we promise that we will never do this in an intrusive way and will always respect your rights and freedoms when doing so. Some examples of when we would rely on our legitimate interest include: 

1. To pursue our organisational aims and objectives. 
2. To fundraise (both now and in the future) to fund our work.
3. To ensure we meet our regulatory requirements as a charity. 
4. To manage our ongoing relationship with our supporters and anyone we work with. 
5. To manage our financial transactions and prevent fraud.

If you are a corporate supporter, we are permitted to contact you unless you tell us that you would like no further contact from us. We may also mail you unless you tell us that you don’t want us to do so. However, we will not make contact by calling you if you have subscribed to the Telephone or Corporate Telephone Preference Service. Further information on this (what is generally called a ‘business to business’ approach)can be obtained at the ICO website and on the Telephone Preference Service website

What personal information we collect 

The personal information we collect about you will depend on how and why you are engaging with us.  It could include (but is not limited to): 

• Your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, date of birth, motivation for supporting the charity and your contact preferences. 
• Debit or credit card information (we won’t store your debit or credit card details; this information will be deleted as soon as we process your donation or payment). 
• Your bank account number, sort code and other banking information, and information required to validate your identity and prevent fraud. 
• Other information you provide to us from time to time which is relevant and necessary for us to collect and process.  For example, the events you have participated in. 
• We may also collect information about your activity online when you visit our website and when we send you an email. Please see the section below on our Cookies Policy for further details. 
• When you give them your consent, we collect information from third parties such as event organisers or sites like Just Giving. You can check their privacy policies to see how they handle your data. 

If you shared with us any sensitive information, including your medical history, the information you have provided will be kept by Teenage Cancer Trust and will be treated with the strictest of confidence. It will not be shared with a third party without your consent unless we have a statutory obligation to do so, or there are concerns for your safety which Teenage Cancer Trust has a duty to report to the relevant authority in order for appropriate action to be taken.  We will only keep your information where it is relevant to your interaction with us and only for as long as it is necessary.

If you give us personal information about another person, we expect you to be responsible for ensuring that they know we are using their personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy and we will make every effort to obtain the necessary conditions for processing that data, for example if it is in our legitimate interest. 

How we use your personal information 

We use your personal information for the following purposes: 

• To respond to or fulfil any requests, complaints or queries we receive from you. 
• To keep you up to date with news about our work
• To confirm that your gift or purchase has been processed correctly, to validate your Gift Aid claim and maintain records of your past and future donations.  
• To provide you with information and support for any events, fundraising activities or volunteering opportunities you sign up to. 
• To raise funds and to promote the aims and objectives of the charity
• To pursue our organisational goals, including offering every young person with cancer the support they need, when they need it – before, during and after diagnosis.  
• To carry out market research
• To manage your contact preferences.  If you ever want to change the way we keep in touch, just let us know by emailing [email protected] or calling our Supporter Care team on 0207 612 0370. 
• To keep records of your relationship with us for example questions you have asked us
• To manage our recruitment. 
• To make better decisions, communicate more efficiently and develop a better understanding of our supporters and potential supporters. This might involve non-intrusive profiling and data segmentation and may encompass using information found in the public domain to understand your likes and preferences better so that our communications with you are as relevant as possible.  
• Where a supporter is identified as being potentially able and willing to give more than they already do, we may try to build a better understanding of how they might want to support us. To do this we may conduct inhouse research and from time to time engage specialist agencies to gather information from publicly available sources.  We may also carry out research using publicly available information to identify individuals who might have affinity to our cause but with whom we are not already in touch.  If this research is conducted by a third party, we will ensure that all personal information is processed in accordance with data protection law. 
• We research and profile your information in this way but we also uphold your privacy by not sharing the information or the outcome with any third parties. External data sources we use might include publicly available information such as Companies House, Charity Commission and other charity registers, Who’s Who and Debrett’s guides, Electoral Roll Register, reputable newspaper articles, publications, company websites and biographies on professional networking sites as well as geographic and demographic information based on your postcode. If you would prefer us not to use your data in this way please let us know by emailing our Data Protection Officer on [email protected] or calling our Supporter Care team on 0207 612 0370. 
• To create anonymous and aggregated reports about our supporters and the young people we support, to ensure our organisation is communicating with and delivering the best possible information and services. 
• To inform our digital and social media marketing.  For example, we may use your information to enable us to display adverts to you, or to potential supporters who have similar characteristics to you. 
• For our internal purposes such as management, research, analytics, organisational reporting, and ways that will improve efficiencies. 
• To prevent and detect criminal activity and fraud. 
• To comply with applicable laws, regulations, court orders, government and law enforcement agencies’ requests, to operate our systems properly and to protect ourselves, young people we support, our supporters, our employed and funded staff and to solve any customer disputes. 
• To help the emergency services if required. 

Who we share your personal information with 

We never give or sell any personal information to other charities or organisations. However, there are some circumstances where we would share your data with third parties. For instance: 

• If we are legally required to do so, e.g. court order, law enforcement agency pursuing an investigation. 
• If we believe it necessary to protect or defend our rights or the personal safety of our personnel or a young person we support. This includes young people we support through our units and those who choose to fundraise or support us in other ways.
• When we work with carefully selected partners, e.g. our fulfilment warehouse or banks to ensure we can provide services to you. These partners (called ‘data processors’) will only have access to your information when the necessary contractual arrangements have been agreed and signed and they will always be obliged to follow the strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulations. 
• Where you work for one of our corporate partners, we may share information with them about your fundraising efforts.
• When information has to be sent to HMRC as part of the declaration process for Gift Aid so that we can reclaim the Gift Aid on your donation(s). 

International transfers of your personal information 

The data that we collect from you will be processed at our servers in the UK. It may also be processed by organisations operating in the EEA that Teenage Cancer Trust has instructed.

If personal data is transferred outside the UK or EEA to a country without a designated adequacy rating, Teenage Cancer Trust will request the data subject’s consent before processing the data. Consent will not be sought where the processor’s Binding Corporate Rules, Standard Contractual Clauses or adhoc contractual clauses stipulate that the data will be processed in accordance with the GDPR.

Keeping your personal information up to date 

We will use publicly available sources to ensure that the information we hold is accurate and up to date. For example, where you have signed up for a redirection service, we will use the Post Office’s National Change of Address database to keep in touch. We may use other services to cross-check the accuracy of the contact details we hold for you.  

How long we keep your personal information  

We store your personal data in accordance with our data retention policy. This policy is reviewed and updated internally to ensure we do not store your data for longer than is necessary. We also review how and where we store any data to ensure that we meet our obligation to store data securely.

In addition, some of the data we hold may be subject to certain legal and regulatory obligations, which provide a minimum retention period for different types of data. The retention period varies depending on the data we hold.

If you would like to know how long we will hold any specific information, then please contact our Data Protection Officer at [email protected] and they will provide you with further details. 

Access and control over your personal information 

• You have a right to know what personal information we hold about you. If you’d like a copy of this information, please contact our Data Protection Officer at [email protected]. We will not charge you for processing your request and supplying your information to you and we are legally bound to deliver this information in a format of your choice within ONE month. We may need to ask you to send us evidence of your identity and the one-month response period starts from the date we confirm your identity. 
• You have the right to request that we correct inaccurate and/or incomplete personal information we hold about you. If our records are incorrect or incomplete, please let us know by emailing [email protected] or calling our Supporter Care team on 0207 612 0370.  
• If you have given us your consent to process your information, you can withdraw or restrict it whenever you wish by emailing [email protected] or calling our Supporter Care team on 0207 612 0370. You will be offered the right to withdraw your consent (opt out) to every type of communication we send you. 
• In certain circumstances you may request that we erase your personal information we hold about you (‘the right to be forgotten’). This will mean we may not recognise you should you decide to support us in the future. For further information and to understand your options please contact our Data Protection Officer at [email protected]. 

How we protect your personal Information  

We maintain the highest standards of data privacy and security to protect your personal details and other information about you because we want you to feel completely confident about engaging with us. We regularly review our processes and procedures to protect your information from unauthorised access and use, accidental loss and/or destruction. 

Sometimes we use other organisations (known as ‘data processors’) to process your personal information on our behalf. We don’t allow them to use this information for their own purposes and they have to follow our strict instructions whilst complying with appropriate security measures. We constantly assess their security measures when we bring them on board and we continue to monitor their compliance throughout the time we use their services.  

Third Party Websites

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites. There are a few external companies we work with, who set cookies on our website. These cookies are mainly used for reporting and advertising so we can improve the way we communicate. We use websites like YouTube and Vimeo to embed videos, and they may send you cookies too. We don’t control the setting of these cookies, so check those websites for more information. 

We use a digital service provider called Enthuse to manage registrations for our challenge events. When you visit the Enthuse website or visit a Teenage Cancer Trust page sign up page on Enthuse or other third-party pages, we may set tracking tags on the pages being visited. These may be used for different purposes, including but not limited to, tracking completion rates of sign-up forms, and using our Google Analytics Tags. Please see – See the Cookies we collect for more information about these. 

Changes to our privacy policy 

We may update this policy to reflect changes in how we use your information.  Any changes to our privacy policy will be posted on our websites for you to review.  Where appropriate, we will provide you with notice of any significant changes to how we use your information.

Contacting us 

If you have any questions about this privacy policy and how we use your personal information, please get in touch with our Data Protection Officer by emailing [email protected] or calling our Supporter Care team on 0207 612 0370.  We’d love to hear from you! 

Making a complaint 

If you have any feedback or would like to make a complaint about how we handle your personal information, please contact us so we can investigate and address your concerns. For how to make a complaint, please see our Complaints Policy. You also have the right to complain about how we collect and use your personal information to the UK data protection regulator, The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).  For further information please visit https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ or contact the ICO by telephone on 0303 123 1113 or by post to Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF.