Why do we have a Privacy Policy?
Street Trees for Living collects personal information about you when you sign up to our newsletter, visit our website, email us or express interest in sponsoring a tree. This privacy policy tells you what information we collect, why we collect it, and how you can access it.
What we collect
The information we hold about you comes from information that you consent to give us, and relates to our activities in which you indicate that you wish to be involved.
We also keep information about the trees we plant and we automatically collect non-personal technical information when you visit our website or social media sites (such as your IP address and browser details or pages you have visited).
We collect the minimum personal information from you in order to respond to your engagement with us.
Why we collect it
We collect your personal data in order to:
Maintain regular contact and get in touch with you about our planned activities, and your involvement in them
Invite you to events which we organise or in which we are involved
We also use all the data we collect to understand what we are doing well, where we could improve and to report back to you on all this in an annual report
The non-personal technical information we collect when you visit us online is used to help us improve the website and our social media pages. For example, it helps us to work out what content is popular and why.
And please note that we will never sell your data or use it for purposes that are not related to the services provided by Street Trees for Living. However, we may disclose your information to a third party in very specific circumstances, for example if we are required to do so under legal or regulatory obligation.
How long do we keep your information for?
We have decided to review our data every year in the Autumn in order to check if we still need it, and if not to delete it.
Financial data should be kept for six years and we will delete it in the 7th year
We will keep you on our email subscription lists until you choose to unsubscribe
If you sponsor a tree we will keep your information until the tree guarantee has expired and in the fourth year we will invite you to transfer to our subscription list of people willing to maintain trees, and anonymise your data on the sponsorship list. However we will keep your data for six years where it is linked to a donation
Where do we keep your information?
Use of Third Parties/Third Party software
We use the services of the following third-party software providers to manage our data processing needs:
PayPal– a payment processor used to handle event fees and sales. PayPal is not UK based and therefore not answerable to our Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) oversight. However, it is signed up to the Financial Ombudsman Service’s voluntary scheme (see here). This means that PayPal allows the Financial Ombudsman Service to handle complaints and agrees to be bound by their decisions, as it would do under compulsory oversight. PayPal’s Privacy policy can be found here.
Mail Chimp - a software product used to manage our supporter email database. Mail Chimp is fully up to date with General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and has been active in meeting these conditions. (See here for details.) Emails sent to you via Mailchimp will always include an ‘Unsubscribe’ option (and ‘review preferences’ option) and changes are usually updated immediately.
Eventbrite and Ticketsource– These are ticketing services used by us when we are hosting our own events. They allow us to manage card payments safely and securely in accordance with current best practice/legal guidelines. Both companies are fully GDPR compliant and have published their privacy policies here: Eventbrite Ticketsource
We also always use Smartsheet, Dropbox and Google Drive to keep the data you give us securely whilst being able to work together on them.
Our Website
Our hosting company is Squarespace. This website sets cookies in order to help the website function well, and their information about this is detailed here . Squarespace has also set out its general Privacy Policy here.
Social media
Street Trees for Living has a Twitter, Instagram and Facebook presence. These companies are GDPR compliant and have published extensive statements relating to their use of your data, see:
On occasion, STfL will pay for targeted Facebook adverts to publicise our activities.
Updates to this privacy policy
We will review this privacy policy every year in the Autumn and post any updates on our website. If we make significant changes to this policy we will report this in our Annual Report.
Your rights under this privacy policy
If you would like to request access to the data that we hold on you, or would like your details updated or amended please contact our Chair, Xanthe, using chair@streettreesforliving.org. To protect your privacy and security we will take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access, making corrections or deleting information. We will respond to you as soon as possible and certainly within one month.
If you have concerns that STfL has not handled your personal information in accordance with the new regulation you are entitled to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office
With thanks for their inspiration to: