abcd Data Privacy Notice

The Association of British Choral Directors (abcd) is committed to protecting your personal data and will use any personal or sensitive data we collect from you in line with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Whenever we need to collect any of your data, we will let you know at that point why we need to do so and what it will be used for, but this guide provides a useful overview of all of those situations and provides more detail on how we keep your data secure and up to date, how long we might hold it for, and what your rights are in relation to it.

Who is responsible for data we collect?

The Association of British Choral Directors (abcd) is the data controller (contact details below). This means it decides how your personal data is processed and for what purposes.

What data do we collect and what do we use it for?

abcd member data

When you join abcd, we ask you for personal information about yourself. By updating your preferences in your members' account, you can also choose to share other details with members, such as the details of the choirs you conduct. Your membership details can be accessed, viewed and managed by you through the secure membership area. Depending on the method of payment you use to pay for your membership, we may store necessary financial information. If you choose to Gift Aid your subscription or any donations, we will store your declaration.

We use your data for the following purposes:

  • To administer membership records, including sending you renewal information each year
  • To maintain our own accounts and records (including the processing of Gift Aid applications)
  • To provide you with the membership benefits we offer in return for your subscription, including informing you of abcd events, courses and activities via our monthly newsletters, Yearbook, Mastersinger, other occasional mailings and other member benefits described here
  • To communicate with and manage our volunteers, freelance contractors, officers, Trustees and staff
  • If you give us your consent, your contact details and any further information you choose to give will be published in our online membership directory available to other members in our secure online members' area, and our annual Yearbook which is sent to all members. You can change your mind about this at any time by contacting us.
  • If you give us your consent, we will make your data available to selected third parties for occasional mailings. You can change your mind about this at any time by contacting us.

Non-member data

We use your data for the following purposes:

  • Our website. We do not collect or store any personal information regarding non-Members who may visit this website unless you choose to book for one of our courses or events. We may, however, place and track cookies in accordance with the policy detailed below.
  • Vacancy submissions. If you use our vacancy submission service, we will ask you for contact details in case there is a problem with your advert; this will not be published with your advert and will not be used for any other purpose. Any information you give in the body of the advert will be published on our website.
  • Course list subscribers. When you sign-up to our course mailing list we will ask for your name and email and will use this data to send you information about our courses and events. We will not share your data with third parties. Anything we send you will include a clear option to withdraw your consent and you can also do so at any time by contacting us.
  • To communicate with and manage our freelance contractors, employees, officers, Trustees and volunteers.

Course and event bookings - members and non-members

  • Courses and event bookings. If you book for a course or event, we collect information from you to process your order, to send you details of the course or event and to provide you with the best customer service we can for the duration of the event or course. We will only share these details with third parties where necessary for the administration of the course or event, for example with tutors so that they can send you course information, or with accommodation providers.

abcd complies with its obligations under the GDPR by keeping personal data up to date; by storing and destroying it securely; by not collecting or retaining excessive amounts of data; by protecting personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure and by ensuring that appropriate technical measures are in place to protect personal data.

The lawful basis for processing your data

As set out in Article 6 of the GDPR

Contract

Membership administration, volunteer management, course and event bookings, vacancy submissions, financial transactions. We use your information for these things to service your membership of abcd, to administer the events for which you have booked and to administer any vacancy submissions you make to our website.

Consent

abcd Membership Directory, third party mailings, course mailing lists. We will only include members in our membership directory if you give us your consent. We will only make member information available to third parties if you give us your consent. We will only contact non-members about our activities if you sign-up to our mailing list. Consent can be withdrawn at any time.

Sharing your personal data

Your personal data will only be used by abcd staff, voluntary officers and, for courses, our tutors for the administration of the course. We will only share member data with carefully selected third parties for marketing purposes if you have specifically consented to this. If you book a residential course with us (e.g. our Annual Convention), we will only share the relevant data with third parties where necessary, for example accommodation providers or caterers.

Third party service providers

We use third parties (such as our longstanding web/digital developers Lupimedia and payment processing company Paypal) in order to administer & enhance your membership and to provide a secure service for financial transactions. We also use third party services such as Mailchimp to process your data. We only share the necessary information for the third party to provide that service. We do not store your credit card details on our site.

Access to your information

You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. If you would like a copy of some or all of your personal information, please email or write to us at the contact details below.

How can you update your data?

You can contact us at any time to update or correct the data we hold on you. abcd members can also update their own details via their online members' account.

How long do we keep your personal data?

  • Membership data. We retain membership data while it is still current and destroy it one year after the last renewal if the membership isn't renewed, however we may need to keep some financial data for longer to comply with accounting regulations.
  • Gift Aid. We keep gift aid declarations and associated paperwork for 6 years after the calendar year to which they relate.
  • Courses and events bookings. We destroy all non-member data one year after the end of the course or event and any non-relevant member data unless you have consented to receive information about future activity from us.
  • Vacancy submissions. We destroy data one month after the closing date of the advert.

Your rights and your personal data

Under the GDPR, you have the following rights over your data and its use:

  • The right to be informed about what data we are collecting on you and how we will use it
  • The right of access - you can ask to see the data we hold on you
  • The right to rectification - you can ask that we update or correct your data
  • The right to object - you can ask that we stop using your data for a particular purpose
  • The right to erasure - you can ask us to delete the data we hold on you
  • The right to restrict processing - you can ask that we temporarily stop using your data while the reason for its use or its accuracy are investigated
  • Though unlikely to apply to the data we hold and process on you, you also have rights related to portability and automated decision making (including profiling)

All requests related to your rights should be made to Rachel Greaves. We will respond within one month.

You can find out more about your rights on the Information Commissioner's Office website.

Cookies

Cookies are very small data files a website you visit saves on your computer or mobile device for identification purposes for a limited period of time. Cookies do not collect information which personally identifies you, but collect general information such as your activity on a website to help tailor your user experience.

We use cookie technology (Google Analytics) when a person visits our website to collect and analyse anonymised data on how many people have visited, what pages they have looked at and other statistical information. We also use cookies to allow members to log in and out in order to view our members-only section.

We use a pop-up banner to let users know about this on their first visit, and they can at any time disable cookies in their browser if they do not wish their (anonymised) data to be tracked. However in a few cases some of our website features may not function as a result.

You can find out more about cookies by clicking here.

Contact Details

To get in touch with us, you can email us or phone us on 01935 389482 or write to us at 15 Granville Way, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 4AS.

You can contact the Information Commissioners Office on 0303 123 1113 or via email or at the Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire. SK9 5AF.

Other websites

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so when you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies.

Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page. Where the changes are significant, we may also choose to email individuals affected with the new details. Where required by law, will we ask for your consent to continue processing your data after these changes are made. This privacy policy was last updated on 11 May 2018.