Privacy Policy

The RS Macdonald Charitable Trust strives to protect the privacy of all personally identifiable information collected during the course of our activities and it is important for you to know how we process your data.  We will process your personal information under the terms of this policy and in accordance with any agreement with you.

We are a “data controller” in terms under data protection law (including the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018) (“Data Protection Laws”).

We need to process personal data relating to our employees, our Trustees, volunteers, suppliers, assessors and grant applicants and recipients in order to function effectively as an organisation, ensure good governance, for audit purposes, to train our staff and volunteers, to perform our business and grant support activities and to enable us to meet our legal obligations as an employer, a Trust and as a registered charity. If you join us as an employee, you will be provided with a further Privacy Notice describing how we collect and use your personal data during and after your working relationship with us.

Personal data is processed for commercial, charitable, administrative, statutory, support, marketing/promotion and health and safety purposes.  All such personal data is collected and held in accordance with all applicable Data Protection Laws.

What personal information will the RS Macdonald Charitable Trust use?

This list includes all the ways we may use your personal information, and which of the reasons we rely on to do so. This is where we tell you what our legitimate interests are. In all cases, and where necessary, we may use your personal information for the recognised legitimate interests under the UK GDPR (these are: detecting, investigating, or preventing crime and apprehending or prosecuting offenders; safeguarding vulnerable individuals; disclosing data to a third party for the purposes of their public interest task set by UK law; and, national security, public security & defence).

Where do we obtain your information?

In most cases we will obtain this information from you directly.  Where you are an employee of a grant applicant or grant recipient, we will obtain your information from the grant applicant in the course of their application to us or from a grant recipient in the course of our dealings with them in relation to our grant support activities.

Processing Conditions

We process the personal data referred to above for the purposes of any contract or potential contract with our employees, our Trustees, volunteers, suppliers, assessors and grant applicants and recipients; or for our legitimate interests in order to function effectively as an organisation, ensure good governance, for audit purposes, to train our staff and volunteers, to perform our business and grant support activities; and to enable us to meet our legal obligations that we may be subject to as an employer, a trust and as a registered charity.

We will process any information about our Trustees or volunteers’ health or whether they have had an accident at work for the purposes of preventive or occupational medicine or for an assessment of their working capacity, subject to appropriate confidentiality protections.  We may also process it to carry out our legal obligations, for equal opportunities monitoring or to establish, exercise or defend any legal claims.

We may process information about grant recipients’ or their employees’ or beneficiaries’ personal circumstances or their photographs for our case studies to promote and perform our business and grant support activities.  Permission will be explicitly requested to process information for this purpose.  Individuals can request that other information relating to them not to be published in this manner and we will deal with such requests in accordance with the law. We may also process any information for the purpose of a recognised legitimate interest.

Who do we share your information with?

The information you provide to us may be accessed by our staff, our Trustees, third party assessors, auditors, our professional advisors and carefully selected third parties in the course of providing services to us (such as payroll services) under suitable obligations of confidentiality.  We may also share your personal information with the police and any other body with official authority to detect, investigate or prevent crime, or, to apprehend or prosecute offenders.

We may also publish some names and personal details relating to grant recipients for our case studies and for marketing and promotional purposes.  Permission will be explicitly requested to process information for this purpose.  Individuals can request that other information relating to them not to be published in this manner and we will deal with such requests in accordance with the law.

We may also use information in aggregate, where personally identifiable information is removed, for marketing and strategic development to improve and support our activities.

Security

We employ administrative, electronic and physical security measures to ensure that the information that we collect about you is protected from access by unauthorised persons and protected against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage. 

Please be aware that unfortunately the transmission of information via the internet or by email is not completely secure.  Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of the data transmitted to us and any transmission is at your own risk.

The period for which the personal data will be processed

We will retain personal data securely and only in line with how long it is necessary to keep for the purposes or for a legitimate and lawful reason.

Our typical retention periods are as follows:

Some personal data may be retained for longer where it is in our legitimate interest to do so, such as to protect and defend our legal rights; for research, archiving or statistical purposes, or for any other allowable compatible purpose(s) under Data Protection Law.  Individuals can request that other information relating to them be erased and we will deal with such requests in accordance with the law.

Transfers outside the UK and the European Economic Area

We, or carefully selected third parties that we contract with, may send personal data to countries outside the UK.  If and when this occurs, there will be appropriate safeguards in place to ensure your data and rights are protected to a standard not materially lower than in the UK. The safeguards include:

• where data is transferred to a country in the European Economic Area (EEA), this is done on the basis that transfers to the EEA have been approved by regulation.
• a limited number of our third-party service providers may use technical solutions that involve transferring data to the USA. This will be done on the basis of the transfers being approved by regulation where such third parties are active participants to the UK Extension to the EU-U.S Data Privacy Framework, or under relevant standard contractual terms in accordance with the UK GDPR. A copy of these may be obtained by contacting the Compliance Officer by post to our registered office or by email to office@rsmacdondald.com

Data subject’s rights

As an individual, you have the following rights, subject to some limitations, as a data subject under applicable Data Protection Laws in relation to the processing of your personal data:

• The right to request from us access to information held about you
• The right to request that inaccurate data held about you is rectified
• The right to request the erasure of personal data
• The right to restriction of processing
• The right to object to processing, and
• The right to data portability.

For more information and guidance about any of these rights, please go to the website of the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact our Compliance Officer in writing.

Complaints

If you consider that we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the UK GDPR you may make a complaint to us by contacting the Compliance Officer by post to our registered office or by email to office@rsmacdondald.com. Please provide information which will allow us to identify you, as well as full details as possible about your concerns. If you have any supporting documentation, please provide us with a copy.

We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint as soon as possible and in any event within 30 days, and we will without undue delay take appropriate steps to respond to the complaint and inform you of the outcome. You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Commissioner at the Information Commission, the UK supervisory authority for data protection matters. You will find details of how to make a complaint at www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

The Commissioner recommends you raise your concerns with us in the first instance.

Changes to this Privacy & Fair Processing Notice

We keep our Privacy & Fair Processing Notice under regular review and reserve the right to update and amend it.  This notice was last updated on 16 May 2026.

Further information

For further information about the proposed data sharing set out in this notice, or about any aspect of The RS Macdonald Charitable Trust’s processing of your personal data, please contact us at office@rsmacdonald.com