Legitimate interest policy

Consent vs legitimate interest

Consent and legitimate interest are two different legal bases for processing your personal data. 

Consent requires explicit permission from you (the data subject). It is specific, informed and freely given by you. 

Legitimate interest allows for processing when it is necessary and the benefit outweighs any risk to you. 

Our vision

The vision of the Woodland Trust is for 'a UK rich in native woods and trees, for people and wildlife.'

And our objective is to:

• protect woods and trees, preventing the loss of irreplaceable habitat, nature and carbon stores for a heathier future for everyone
• restore damaged ancient woodland and bring irreplaceable ecosystems back to life, improving landscape resilience so that nature and people can thrive
• create wildlife-rich woods and plant native trees to benefit nature, climate and people now and in the future.

There are various ways in which the Woodland Trust will achieve our mission and support our objectives. We believe that people who share our values would love to know how to support us, unless they tell us otherwise. We will process the personal information you have supplied to us to conduct and manage our business, enabling us to give you the most appropriate marketing, information, service and products, and to provide the best and most secure experience. These are what we consider to be our legitimate interests.

Our interests

The following are some examples of when and why we would use legitimate interest in our work protecting woods and trees.

Direct marketing

We will contact you by post and telephone with marketing and fundraising asks which further the aims and objectives of the Trust. We will make sure our communications are relevant to you and tailored to your interests based on your relationship with us.

Your best interests

Processing your information to protect you against fraud when transacting on our website and to ensure our websites and systems are secure.

Personalisation

Where the processing enables us to enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our services/communications for the benefit of our supporters.

Analytics

To process your personal information for the purposes of customer analysis, assessment, profiling and direct marketing, on a personalised or aggregated basis. This helps us with our activities and to provide you with the most relevant information, as long as this does not harm any of your rights and interests. Please see our privacy policy.

Research

To determine the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and advertising and to develop our products, services, systems and relationships with you. We may also carry out research on donors and prospective donors using information that is publicly available (e.g. company websites, news articles, LinkedIn, Twitter, Companies House or from third-party subscription information services such as Factary).

Due diligence

We may need to conduct investigations on supporters, volunteers, potential customers and business partners to determine if those companies and individuals have been involved in or convicted of offences such as fraud, bribery and corruption.

We will also hold information about you so that we can respect your preferences for being contacted by us.

Your interests

When we process your personal information for our legitimate interests, we will consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights under data protection and any other relevant law. Our legitimate charitable interests do not automatically override your interests – we will 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 do so by law).

For more information, please see 'What are your rights' in our privacy policy.

Remember, you can change the way you hear from us or withdraw your permission for us to process your personal details at any time by contacting us using the details below, or by visiting our online permission portal.