Privacy Policy

We want everyone who supports us, or who comes to us for support, to feel confident and comfortable with how any personal information you share with us will be looked after. This privacy policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal information (this means any information that identifies or could identify you).

The Privacy Policy may change so please remember to check back from time to time, this was updated on 10th February 2023.

Who we are

The McPin Foundation is committed to protecting your personal information/data (i.e., where an individual can be identified from that data). We make every effort to ensure that your information is processed in a fair, open and transparent manner.

We are a “data controller” for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 and (from 25 May 2018) the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (“Data Protection Law”).  This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, any personal information that you provide while visiting our website.

For further information about our privacy practices, please contact our Data Protection Officer by:

  • Writing to us at: McPin Foundation, 7-14 Great Dover Street, London, SE1 4YR
  • Calling us on 020 7922 7877
  • Emailing [email protected]

How we collect information about you

McPin collects information from you in the following ways:

When you interact with us directly: This could be if you ask us about our activities, register with us for training or an event, make a donation to us, ask a question, complete a survey, apply for a job or register with our involvement bulletin. This includes when you phone us, visit our website, email us, contact us through the post, or in person.

When you visit our website: We gather general information which might include which pages you visit most often and which services, events or information is of most interest to you. We may also track which pages you visit when you click on links in emails from us. We also use “cookies” to help our site run effectively. More information on how we use cookies is given below. We may analyse website data to improve the value of the materials available online. Wherever possible we use anonymous information which does not identify individual visitors to our website.

From other information that is available to the public: In order to tailor our communications with you to your background and interests we may collect information about you from publicly available sources or through third party subscription services or service providers (we have provided further details about this below – see ‘Profiling: Making our work unique to you’).

How and why we use the information we collect

There are different reasons why we might need personal information from you. We’d like to keep you up to date about the work we’re doing and ways you can get involved in mental health research. We will only do this if you tell us that you are happy for us to contact you for a specific reason.

The personal information we collect may include your name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number and bank details (if we are paying you for your services), as well as information you provide in any communications between us. We will use this information:

  • To process your donations or other payments, to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions.
  • To provide the services that you have requested.
  • To update you with administrative messages about any events or services you have requested.
  • To keep a record of your relationship with us.

We may also use your personal information:

  • To contact you about our work
  • To invite you to participate in surveys, events or research.

Sensitive Personal Information

If you share your personal experience or the experiences of a friend or relative, we may also collect this health information. If you provide us with any Sensitive Personal Information, we will treat that information with extra care and confidentiality and always in accordance with this Privacy Policy and the GDPR.

GDPR recognises that some categories of personal information are sensitive. Sensitive Personal Information can include information about a person’s health, race, ethnic origin, political opinions, sex life, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.

You may provide details of a sensitive nature when you contact us, including in emails, surveys or blogs.

We will only use this information for the purposes of dealing with your enquiry. We will not pass on your details to anyone else without your explicit consent except in exceptional circumstances. Examples of this might include anyone reporting serious self-harm or posing a threat to others or children contacting us and sharing serious issues such as physical abuse or exploitation.

Profiling

We may contact you for targeted mailouts using profiling techniques based on the information that we hold about you. For example, if you have told us that you are interested in projects relating to a particular topic (e.g., psychosis), we may use this information to contact you about that topic.

You can opt out of this activity at any time. Please email [email protected] with the subject line ‘Opt out of data profiling’, or by writing to us at McPin Foundation, 7-14 Great Dover Street, London, SE1 4YR or by phone on 020 7922 7877.

Legal basis for using your information

In some cases, we will only use your personal information where we have your consent, e.g., because you have signed up to our newsletter or involvement bulletin.

We may also process your personal information using the ‘legitimate interests’ basis from the GDPR. This means that the reason that we are processing information is because there is a legitimate interest for McPin to process your information to help us to achieve our charitable objectives. Processing your information under ‘legitimate interests’ means that we account for your rights and interests and will not process your personal information if we feel that your rights and interests outweigh our own.

How we keep your information safe

We will take precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or unauthorised alteration of details you provide us. Our website does not store your personal information when you enter it by signing up to the newsletter or the Involvement Bulletin – this information links directly to our secure database only.

We may send communications to you by email. Email is not a fully secure means of communication, and whilst we do our best to keep our systems and communications protected we cannot guarantee this.

We make no representations about any other websites, and when you access other websites through a link on our website (including social media sites). Please note that these sites are independent from McPin and we are unable to know how that website uses or collects your personal information. We encourage you to read the relevant privacy policies on those websites to find out more about how your personal information is collected and used.

We do not sell your details to third parties

We will never sell your details to any third party. In addition, if we ever need to send data to a third party we will make sure the company we use has signed a data processing agreement with us, so that they are bound to take care of your data in the same way we do.

If you have made a Gift Aid declaration, we will disclose the information you have provided as part of the declaration to HMRC for the purpose of reclaiming gift aid on your donation(s). We may also share or disclose your personal information if we are required to do so by any law or court order.

How long we hold information for

We only keep information for as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, the collection of Gift Aid).

Your rights relating to your personal information

Under the GDPR, you have rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you. These are shown below. If you wish to exercise these rights, please contact us at [email protected], or by writing to us at McPin Foundation, 7-14 Great Dover Street, London, SE1 4YR, or by phone on 020 7922 7877. You can also make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office, https://ico.org.uk/

  • Access to your personal information: You have the right to request access to a copy of the personal information that we hold about you, along with information on what personal information we use, why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it for and whether it has been used for any automated decision making. You can make a request for access free of charge. Please make all requests for access in writing, and provide us with evidence of your identity.
  • Right to object: You can object to our processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground.
  • Consent: If you have given us your consent to use personal information (for example, for marketing), you can withdraw your consent at any time.
  • Rectification: You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information held about you.
  • Erasure: You can ask us to delete your personal information where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, or you have withdrawn consent, or where we have no lawful basis for keeping it.
  • Portability: You can ask us to provide you or a third party with some of the personal information that we hold about you in a structured, commonly used, electronic form, so it can be easily transferred.
  • Restriction: You can ask us to restrict the personal information we use about you where you have asked for it to be erased or where you have objected to our use of it.
  • No automated-decision making: Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. You have the right not to be subject to automated decisions that will create legal effects or have a similar significant impact on you, unless you have given us your consent, it is necessary for a contract between you and us or is otherwise permitted by law. You also have certain rights to challenge decisions made about you. We do not currently carry out any automated decision-making.

In certain circumstances (for example where required or permitted by law) we might not be able to provide you with access to some of your personal information, if so we will explain the reasons for this.

Use of cookies

A cookie is a small data file that websites can write to your hard drive when you visit them.  A cookie can contain information, such as a unique user identifier, that the site uses to track your visit.  This website uses cookies to uniquely identify all users visiting the site.

Many people worry that cookies threaten individuals’ privacy and might affect their own computers’ functioning. While they can be used in all kinds of ways by server-based applications, they pose no risk to you as a user.  Cookies used by McPin cannot be used to obtain information about your system or to add you to any mailing lists. They are used to make browsing more efficient.  If you have disabled cookies on your computer, access to areas of our website may be restricted.

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to see how many people we are accessing our information and resources, helping us to plan further work. It also allows us to provide you with a good experience when you come to our website and also allows us to improve the user experience.

Opting out of cookies

We hope that you will allow us to operate the website using cookies.  If you have disabled all cookies, our website may not function as best it could, and some areas of the site may be restricted. But it is your choice, and you can opt in or out at any time.