Privacy Policy

Our Privacy Statement

The Donate a Kidney website was developed for the Robert Dangoor Partnership for Living Kidney Donation, which was launched by two of the UK’s kidney charities – Kidney Research UK, the country’s leading kidney research charity, and Give a Kidney, a charity devoted to living kidney donation.

Whilst this privacy policy is owned and administered by Kidney Research UK. The data you share with the Donate a Kidney team will not be shared with or used by other teams within Kidney Research UK or Give A Kidney.

If you would like receive information from Kidney Research UK or Give a Kidney please visit their websites. This statement tells you what to expect us to do with your personal data and information.

For any enquiries you can contact us by:

Post: Stuart House, City Road, Peterborough, PE1 1QF

Phone: 0300 3031100

Email: enquiries@donateakidney.co.uk

Personal data we collect and use

Whenever you interact with us, be it through post, email, telephone, our website, face-to-face interactions, social media or via the UK Living Kidney Donation Buddy Support Service and online platform, we may collect data and information about you. This might include: 

• Your first name, surname, and title.  
• Contact details: Your address, telephone number/s, and email address. 
• Other information depending on the type of interaction such as health data, religious beliefs and ethnic information. 
• Your photograph. 

Why we collect your data

We may collect or update your personal data for various reasons, including: 

• To keep you updated about our work and opportunities to support us further. 
• If you ask us for information or updates. 
• If you register an interest or participate in any of our events 
• If you apply for a volunteer role  
• If you would like to suggest, complain, or provide other types of feedback, we will respond unless you ask us not to. 

Cookies 

Cookies are small data files stored on your computer when you visit our website. They help us understand how you interact with the site and improve your experience. 

We use cookies to gather statistical information, to remember your settings and preferences, and to monitor and improve website security. 

You can choose to disable cookies in your browser settings. 

How we use your personal data

We process your personal data for specific purposes, which may include: 

• Campaigns 
• Event organisation 
• Volunteering 
• We strive to keep all the information accurate and up to date, ensuring that we only collect data relevant to our interactions with you. 
• We might contact you by phone for marketing purposes if we have an existing relationship with you, you can opt-out of this at anytime and we will stop, we will make sure opting out is a clear and easy process to follow. 
• We might email you or send you an SMS in relation to admin or information regarding something you are already involved in with us. 
• We might contact you by email or SMS for marketing purposes if we have consent from you to do so.  

What we won’t do with your data 

We will not communicate any unsolicited marketing material to you by email or SMS without your prior consent. This consent can be withdrawn at any time and will always be an opt-in. 

Lawful basis for processing

• We mainly rely on Legitimate Interest. We conduct a Legitimate Interest Assessment that considers what we want to achieve, whether we need to process and store your data, and ensures that we use your data legally, transparently and fairly. 
• If we can’t rely on Legitimate Interest, such as most incidences of direct marketing we will ask you for your Consent. This includes asking for explicit consent for processing medical and health information, other special category or sensitive data and any information belonging to children. 

There are some instances where we might use another lawful basis, these will be limited to: 

• Legal Obligation: We adhere to legal requirements such as tax and employment regulations. 
• Contractual Obligation: Our contracts include data protection clauses to ensure compliance with regulations. 
• Vital Interest: We may process data when it is crucial for your well-being. 
• Public Interest: very occasionally, data may be processed for tasks carried out in the public interest. 

Your rights

You have specific rights under data protection laws. These include: 

• Right to be informed: We’ll tell you how we plan to use your data when we collect it. 
• Right of access: We are always happy to tell you what information we hold on you. 
• Right to rectification: We want to keep your data accurate, if you believe it isn’t, please let us know and we will correct it. 
• Right to erasure: If there’s no good reason for us to keep your data and you want us to delete it, we will. 
• Right to restrict processing: If you want us to stop using your data in certain ways, you can ask us and unless there is good reason for us not to, we will. 
• Right to data portability: We can provide you with your data in a standard format, we can also send this to a different data controller on your request. 
• Right to object: We only seek to use your data in accordance with your wishes, you can object to us processing or storing your data at any time. 
• Automated decision-making and profiling: We will only make decisions that may affect you using humans. 
• Right to lodge a complaint: You can do this if you are not happy with how we are handling your data. 
• Right to withdraw consent: Where you have previously given us your consent, you can take this back at any time. 

Most requests will be processed within one month. More complex requests may take longer however we will inform you in accordance with ICO guidelines. 

Data security

We keep all personal data in a highly secure physical or IT environment to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your personal data.

Data transfers outside the UK

We do not transfer data outside of the UK without adequate protections in place.

Data retention

Personal data is stored only for as long as we need it, in accordance with our Retention Policy. You can access our data retention schedule here Rentention-schedul-2024.pdf (kidneyresearchuk.org) 

Reviews and updates

This privacy statement is reviewed and updated regularly. The latest version will always be available on our website. 

Legal jurisdiction

Any disputes regarding this privacy statement will be resolved under the laws of the United Kingdom. 

Contact us

Email: enquiries@donateakidney.co.uk
Phone: 0300 303 1100

 

Health Data Privacy

Confidentiality

Our charity has a legal duty to keep your personal health data safe, secure and confidential. We invest in technology, procedure and training to prevent loss, misuse, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We manage all personal health data and information legally and ethically.

We will not collect health data from you without your explicit consent, we will certainly never share your health information with anyone unless we have your explicit written consent to do so. With this consent, we might share information about you with research partners for our projects and will only do so if the partners involved have a genuine need for it and apply appropriate measures in line with legal obligations and our own high standards. When we pass on your information, we do so securely.

If you are unsure or want more information about how we share your personal information, our staff will discuss this with you and/or your relatives.

In exceptional circumstances, we may be required to disclose your information to meet a legal requirement. For example, a court might order us to pass on information without consent to prevent harm or to allow the investigation of a serious crime.

Your personal data

We only collect, process and store personal health data that you have provided to us directly. This includes your contact details, the fact that you are a kidney patient or the parent/guardian of a kidney patient or a living kidney donor or a friend/family member of a donor. Additionally, you may choose to tell us what your kidney condition is and if you have experience of dialysis or transplantation or your experience of living kidney donation if you are a donor.

There may be other times when you choose to share additional information about your health with us. We will always check that you are happy for us to collect and store this information.

We use your data to:

• send you information about engagement opportunities such as Patient/Donor Surveys or volunteering
• enable us to use your story for raising awareness about our charity and its work;
• ensure that we have a diverse range of people involved in our volunteer groups such as our Clinical Advisory Panel and Living Kidney Donation Advisory Panel

We analyse your health information:

• if you participate in the Patient/Donor Survey, your information may be analysed to inform our partnership priorities;
• to keep track of the number of volunteers on our database for the UK Living Kidney Donation Buddy Support Service
• to review the makeup of our volunteer committees to ensure that a range of experiences are represented

We keep your health data:

• For six years from the completion of the purpose we have processed it for unless you have:
  • renewed your consent for us (on our request) to continue to store and process your information for longer
  • given explicit consent that we can store this information for a longer defined period such as when you have been involved in a clinical study or research project
  • asked us to remove your data earlier
  • Withdrawn your consent

Our lawful basis

We will always use the lawful basis of Consent to collect and process your health data, in addition we will always apply the condition of Explicit Consent which means we will ask you to give very specific consent for us to process your data in very specific way. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time and this will also withdraw any specific consents you may have given.