What data we collect and why
The Garden Museum endeavours to protect your privacy.
The main purposes for which we collect and process the details of customers, visitors, Friends, service users, enquirers, and donors are:
- to provide the service, goods or information that they have requested
- for administration purposes e.g. to administer donations
- to further our charitable aims, including fundraising activities
- to gather feedback
For example, we collect your personal information when you order a ticket for an event on our website, sign up to the newsletter, become a Friend or give a donation to the Garden Museum.
This may include:
- Your name
- Billing/postal address
- Telephone number
- Email address
- Gift Aid declarations
- Your attendance at Museum events
- Tickets you have bought from us
- Any donations you make to the Museum
How we store and use your data
This data will be kept safe and secure. It will only be used for purposes which you have consented to or which are in the legitimate interests of the Garden Museum, as long as they do not impede your rights. We will store your data for as long as legally required (in the case of Gift Aid, for example), or as long as we feel is necessary to the Museum without impeding the rights of you as an individual. We always try to keep any data we hold on you as up to date as we are able to. We always aim to be clear when we collect personal data and not to do anything with it that you would not reasonably expect.
Your personal data is held by the Garden Museum. We will not share personal data with third party organisations for marketing purposes, but may occasionally outsource functions when we do not have the in-house capacity required, or where there is no other way to carry out a service you have agreed to, e.g. with HMRC if you have opted to Gift Aid a donation. We will only share your data in these ways in order to carry out a process or contract which you have requested, e.g. to receive our newsletter, or to pay for your membership by Direct Debit, and if we are confident that these partner organisations are compliant with data protection legislation. We may also store information regarding if you attend an event at the Garden Museum, or if you contact us for any reason.
We will never sell your data to third parties. We may share anonymised data and statistics with other organisations, such as our funders, who use this to understand the impact of their support. We may also hold and analyse your data in order to continue to improve our understanding of our target audiences and of our supporters.
We may also collect your data from third parties where it is in your interest as an individual, e.g. from ResDiary if you have placed a booking for a table in the Garden Café, or from WordPress and WooCommerce if you book a ticket for one of our events through our website.
When you make a transaction with the Garden Museum we may need to contact you in order to fulfil our legal requirements for that contract. For example, if you purchase a ticket online, we will email you about your booking, including ticket confirmation or in the event of cancellation, or if you purchase a Friends and Patron membership, we will contact you in accordance with membership terms with the biannual journal, the newsletter, membership renewal information, direct debit payments etc.
If you are a Friend of the Garden Museum, or have previously supported the Museum, we may contact you about things which we feel are of interest to you or which, based on what we know about you, are in the interests of our charitable objectives to let you know about. This legitimate interest will constitute a lawful ground for contacting you about our services and activities, for example:
- If you have supported a fundraising appeal in the past we may contact you about future ones;
- If you are a frequent ticket buyer we may market a Friends membership to you;
- If you are a Friend of the Museum we may invite you to events or to become a Patron
You can tell us at any stage that you do not wish to receive such information and we will stop contacting you.
The website
With regard to each of your visits to our website we may automatically collect the following information:
- Technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform.
- Information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time), events or exhibitions you viewed or searched for, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.
- We may work closely with third parties (including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, credit reference agencies) and may receive information about you from them.
Job applicants, volunteers, current and former Museum employees
If you apply to work at the Garden Museum, we will use the information you supply to process your application and to monitor recruitment statistics. Where we want to disclose information to a third party, for example where we want to take up a reference or obtain a ‘disclosure’ from the Criminal Records Bureau, we will not do so without informing you beforehand unless the disclosure is required or otherwise permitted by law.
Personal information about unsuccessful candidates will be held for 12 months after the recruitment exercise has been completed. We retain de-personalised statistical information about applicants to help inform our recruitment activities, but no individuals are identifiable from that data.
Once you have taken up employment with the Museum, we will compile a file relating to your employment. The information contained in this will be kept secure and will be used for purposes relevant to your employment. Once your employment with the Museum has ended, we will retain the file in accordance with the requirements of our retention schedule.
Your rights
You have many rights regarding your personal data. These include seeing what data we hold, updating your information, and asking us to remove you from our records. If you do wish to invoke your right to erasure, we will comply with your wishes in a timely manner and to the best of our abilities.
You can choose to opt out of communications from the Garden Museum which you have previously consented to, or which we carry out based on our legitimate interest, at any time. Our newsletters include an opt-out button, and you are welcome to contact the Museum at any time to opt out of any marketing or fundraising email, postal or telephone communications you receive from us.
CCTV and filming/photography by the Museum
CCTV is used extensively throughout the Garden Museum to monitor the activities of individuals. The Museum abides by the CCTV Code of Practice in the management of information recorded and retained by surveillance equipment.
Filming and photography may take place within the Museum during special events and other occasions, and visitors will be notified of this through the use of posters and verbal instructions.
Visitors will be asked to sign a consent form if they are to feature prominently in any recording made, and these consent forms will be retained according to the Museum’s retention schedule in a secure environment.