Privacy Policy

At The Anchor Society, we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people, including those who visit our website, and how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.

We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to admin@anchorsociety.co.uk or by writing to The Anchor Society, 29 Alma Vale Road, Bristol, BS8 2HL. Alternatively, you can telephone 0117 973 4161.

Who are we?

The Anchor Society has been supporting older people in Bristol for over 250 years.

The registered address is Bennetts Solicitors, Barley Wood Stables, Long Lane, Wrington, Bristol, BS40 5SA.

The Anchor Society comprises of two registered charities:

1167933 The Anchor Society CIO whose objects are:

THE OBJECTS OF THE CIO ARE THE RELIEF OF PERSONS OVER THE AGE OF 55 IN NEED OF FINANCIAL PROVISION AND OTHER PROVISION WITHIN THE POSTCODE AREAS OF BS, BA AND GL IN SUCH WAYS AS THE CIO SHALL FROM TIME TO TIME DETERMINE.

1116392 The Anchor Society Ltd Whose objects are:

THE RELIEF OF ELDERLY PERSONS IN NEED RESIDENT IN BRISTOL AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD THEREOF (WHICH SHALL MEAN ALL AREAS WHICH AT THE DATE OF THIS MEMORANDUM HAVE A POSTCODE WITH A “BS”, “BA” OR “GL” PREFIX) IN SUCH WAYS (BEING CHARITABLE ACCORDING TO THE LAW OF ENGLAND AND WALES) AS THE CHARITY SHALL FROM TIME TO TIME DETERMINE

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you contact us about our services, make a donation, use our website or if you register to receive periodic updates on our activities.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, IP address, and information regarding what pages are accessed and when. If you make a donation online, your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions, as explained below.

How is your information used?

We may use your information to:

process a donation that you have made;
to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
notify you of changes to our services;
send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about campaigns, appeals, other fundraising activities, promotions of our associated organisations
process a grant or job application.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations (for example the collection of Gift Aid). We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

Who has access to your information?

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf: We may pass your information to our third party service providers, agents subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services on our behalf (for example printing relating to our Annual Appeal). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties beyond The Anchor Society for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.

When you are using our secure online donation pages, your donation is processed by a third party payment processor, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us.

Your choices

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about the vital work we do for older people and our services, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form on which we collect your information.

Legitimate Interests

The law allows personal data to be legally collected and used by an organisation if it is necessary for a legitimate business interest of the organisation – as long as its use is fair and balanced and does not unduly impact the rights of the individual concerned.

There are times when it is just not practical to ask a person for consent. In many situations, the best approach for The Anchor Society and our supporters, beneficiaries, and volunteers is to process personal data because of our legitimate interests, rather than consent.

The Anchor Society’s legitimate interests

Delivery of our charitable purposes as set out in our charitable objects (see above)
Compliance with legal and statutory obligations.
Audit for financial or regulatory compliance purpose.
Statutory reporting.
Conventional direct marketing by direct mail and other forms or marketing, publicity or advertisement.
Unsolicited messages, including campaigns, income generation or charitable fundraising.
Personalisation to enhance our supporter experience through digital and postal communications.
Analysis and segmentation as part of our fundraising strategy and improve communication efficiency.
Employee and volunteer recording and monitoring for recruitment, safety, performance management or workforce planning purposes.
Physical security, IT and network security.
Processing for historical, research or statistical purposes.
Processing of financial transactions and maintaining financial controls.
Prevention of fraud, misuse of services, or money laundering.
Enforcement of legal claims.
Responding to any solicited enquiry from any of our stakeholders.
Administration of direct debits and other existing financial transactions.
Administration of Gift Aid.
Provision of thank you responses and receipts.
Maintaining archived lists

You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us by email: admin@anchorsociety.co.uk or telephone on 0117 973 4161.

How you can access and update your information

The accuracy of your information is important to us. If you change email address, or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please email us at: admin@anchorsociety.co.uk, or write to us at The Anchor Society, 29 Alma Vale Road, Bristol, BS8 2HL. Alternatively, you can telephone 0117 973 4161.

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100 percent secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Use of ‘cookies’

Like many other websites, The Anchor Society website uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual. This helps us to improve our website and deliver a better more personalised service.

It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences.

Turning cookies of may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site.

16 or Under

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Review of this Policy

We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated in July 2023