Vtues is an online platform for volunteers, people who work with volunteers, and their employers. People use it to make arrangements for volunteering opportunities and to connect with others, and for information about volunteering and potential volunteer workers. This Privacy Policy applies to anyone creating an account on Vtues. It tells you who we are, how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information. It also tells you your rights in relation to your personal information and on how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.
Summary:
We use your data to provide the Vtues service to you, to promote the service, and for the purposes of running our volunteer matching and management business.
Your Vtues profile will be visible publicly.
Except for a publicly visible summary which will appear on your profile page, details of your volunteering activity will only be shared with your employer (if you decide to link to them), and the organisation you volunteer for.
If you use Vtues to link to your employer so that they can sponsor your volunteering time off, they will receive information about your volunteering activity, including any rating given to you by the organisation you volunteer for.
We are happy to answer your questions about any of this – email us at support@vtues.com.
Who we are
Vtues Ltd collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.
When we refer in this policy to ‘Employers’, we are referring to the employer of an individual user which the user has confirmed that it wishes to sponsor his/her time off for volunteering. An ‘Organisation’ is a charity, social enterprise or non-profit organisation which uses Vtues to connect with volunteers.
The personal information we collect from you
We collect the following personal information when you provide it to us.
• Registration Information: If you register as an individual user, you will be asked to provide certain details on registration: your name, email address.
• Profile Information: to complete your individual Vtues profile, you may also provide personal images and social networks you wish to link to your Vtues profile. Your profile will also contain Volunteering Information. If you use LinkedIn or Twitter to create your Vtues account, we use your profile from the relevant service to establish name, email address, profile summary, and the web address of your LinkedIn/Twitter profile and any personal website address you list. You may also add your nearest town, or we may derive it from your LinkedIn profile and add it accordingly to your profile. You may also add your postcode, but this will not be visible in your public-facing profile.
• Volunteering Information: If you register as an individual user, we will also collect details you provide as to the volunteering you have applied for, volunteering completed, campaigns you engage in, skills you list that you possess, volunteering preferences, your Employer (should you link to an Employer who sponsors your volunteering time) and sponsored volunteering hours. Additionally, the Organisation you agree to volunteer with may provide a rating of your work with the Organisation.
• Messaging Information: any personal information shared over the messaging system when communicating with Organisations or other volunteers.
• Organisation Information: If you work for an Organisation, you may have an individual Vtues account, in which case we will collect the Profile and Messaging Information listed above. In addition, we may also collect from you your name, email address and the Organisation you work for.
• Employer Information: If you work for an Employer, you may have an individual Vtues account, in which case we will collect the Profile and Messaging Information listed above. In addition, we may also collect from you your name, email address and the Employer you work for.
How we use your information
We are required to tell you what uses we make of your information, and the legal basis for our doing so. References in this section to the basis of processing (e.g. "Basis: Legitimate Interest”) are a reference to basis specified in General Data Protection Regulation under which we undertake the processing in question, as follows:
Legitimate Interest: means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service and the best and most secure Vtues experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.
Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract between us and you (for example, to provide you with a connection to another Vtues user you have requested under our terms of service) or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.
Legal Obligation: means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.
We use your information in the following ways:
• Registration Information: We use this to set up your Vtues account. We use your email address to communicate with you about your use of Vtues, or to let you know more about Vtues Basis: Legitimate Interests; Consent; Performance of Contract.
• Profile Information: We use this to display your profile to other users, including Employers and Organisations, other volunteers and any visitor to the Vtues site. We also use it for the purposes of matching you with potentially interesting volunteering activities. Basis: Legitimate Interest; Performance of Contract.
• Volunteering Information: We use this to match you with potentially interesting volunteering activities. The ratings you may have received from Organisations you’ve previously arranged to volunteer with are presented by us to help us assist Organisations to choose suitable volunteers. Basis: Legitimate interest; Performance of Contract.
• Messaging Information: We use this to facilitate communication between users. Basis: Performance of Contract
• Organisation Information: We use this to authenticate an Organisation’s admin user with the Organisation. We will use the personal contact details listed on an Organisation’s Order Form for Vtues, for the purposes of communication and account management. Basis: Performance of Contract.
• Employer Information: We use this to authenticate an Employer’s admin user with the Organisation. We will use the personal contact details listed on an Employer’s Order Form for Vtues, for the purposes of communication and account management. Basis: Performance of Contract.
• If you get in touch with us, we will record the fact that you have contacted us and may retain the content of your communication, together with your contact details and our responses. We use this to help us to deliver the Vtues service to you and answer your questions. Basis: Legitimate Interest.
We may also process your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation or to enforce or apply our Vtues terms of use, or any other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Vtues Ltd, its customers, users or other third parties. This processing is necessary for the protection and enforcement of our rights and the rights of third parties and the proper administration of our business. Basis: Legitimate Interests, Legal Obligation.
Use of cookies
A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your computer (or other electronic device) when you use our website. For further details of the cookies we use, please see our [Cookies Policy].
You can set your browser not to accept cookies and the websites below tell you how to remove cookies from your browser. However, some of our website features may not function as a result.
For further information on cookies generally visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org
Who we share your personal information with
We will share details of you as follows:
Your Profile Information will be viewable publicly by any visitor to the site. Your email address will not be accessible by any other individual user – except that, if you use Vtues to connect with an Employer or an Organisation you want to volunteer with, we will pass them your email address.
Regarding your Volunteering Information, other users and visitors to the Vtues site will be able to see a summary of your volunteering (hours worked, role and Organisation), and the fact that you have applied for a volunteering role at a certain Organisation. The rating given by Organisations that you agree to volunteer for will be visible by the Organisation and your Employer.
Your Volunteering Information will all be visible by Organisations you agree to volunteer for, and (following completing of the relevant period of volunteering) your Employer.
We use Amazon Web Services to provide hosting services.
We use Google Analytics to gather web usage and aggregate data, on an anonymised basis that does not involve the processing of any data which personally identifies you.
How long your personal information will be kept
Your Profile Information will be deleted from public view if you request it – which you can do [using the settings in Vtues]. In any event, we will remove your Profile Information from the public-facing Vtues site 12 months from the date of your last visit, but your information will still be shared with Employers and Organisations as set out in the “Who we share your personal information with” section above, for a period of 6 months from the date of your Profile Information being deleted.
We retain your personal data even after you have closed your Vtues account if we need to in order to comply with our legal obligations (including law enforcement requests), meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, and keep Vtues secure and free from free fraud and misuse.
Information you have shared with others by means of Vtues will remain visible to them after you closed your account or deleted the information from your own profile or mailbox, and we do not control data that other Members copied out of our Services. Groups content and ratings or review content associated with closed accounts will show an unknown user as the source. Your profile may continue to be displayed in the services of others (e.g., search engine results) until they refresh their cache.
We will delete from any Organisation’s view any data generated by means of Vtues about you by the Organisation associated with your Profile, after 6 months from the removal of your Profile Information from the service.
Your rights
Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights free of charge. In summary, those include rights to:
• access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this Privacy Notice is already designed to address
• require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold
• require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations
• receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations
• object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing
• object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you
• object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information
• otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.
If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:
• email us at support@vtues.com
• let us have enough information to identify you,
• let us know the information to which your request relates, including any account or reference numbers, if you have them.
If you would like to unsubscribe from any promotional material we send you, you can also click on the ‘unsubscribe’ button at the bottom of the email.
Keeping your personal information secure
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.
If you want detailed information from Get Safe Online on how to protect your information and your computers and devices against fraud, identity theft, viruses and many other online problems, please visit www.getsafeonline.org. Get Safe Online is supported by HM Government and leading businesses.
How to complain
We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.
The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or telephone: 0303 123 1113.
Changes to this privacy notice
This privacy notice was last updated on 31st July 2018
How to contact us
Please contact us if you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you.
If you wish to contact us please send an email to support@vtues.com.