Open Door Privacy Policy 

We are committed to treating your personal information well. Here’s how we use it.

Open Door People (also known as Open Door) respects the privacy of visitors to our website. This policy is concerned with how we collect information, what we do with it and what controls you have.

Your Privacy

We take our duty to process your personal information very seriously. This policy explains how we collect, manage, use and protect your personal information.

We may change this document from time to time to reflect the latest view of what we do with your information. Please check back frequently; you will be able to see if changes have been made by the date it was last updated.

Refer to the sections below for more details on how and why we use your personal information:

  1. Who are we?

  2. What personal information we collect and how we use it

  3. Legitimate Interest

  4. Sharing your information

  5. Retaining your information

  6. Our cookies policy

  7. What are your rights?

  8. How to contact us

  9. Appendix

Who are we?

In this policy, references to Open Door, ‘we’ or ‘us’ are to Open Door People, which is registered with the Charity Commission in England and Wales as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) – Registered No. 1182458.

Our principal office is Open Door, Studio 9, 6 Cliff Road, London NW1 9AN.

What personal information we collect and how we use it

What we need

Open Door is what’s known as the ‘Data Controller’ of the personal information you provide to us. We will usually collect basic personal information about you like your name, postal address, telephone number and email address, depending on your relationship with us.

Sometimes we will collect other information about you such as your date of birth, gender and other details. We will be very clear with you that we wish to collect such information and our reason for doing so, and we would only do so with your consent.

Why we need it

We collect your personal information in connection with specific activities, such as:

  • Running our programmes - we collect personal information if you are applying for or become a member of one of our programmes, so we can run them effectively

  • Marketing – we collect personal information from our partners or stakeholders to share information about our activities and raise our profile – including but not limited to: social media, website, video, brochures, email newsletters, listings, posters, fliers and word of mouth

  • Networking – we make and develop relationships with key stakeholders and other arts or charity organisations to further the reach of our charitable activity and collect personal information to make and sustain these relationships

  • Fundraising – we collect personal information in the process of gathering voluntary contributions of money or other resources, by requesting donations

The information collected is either needed to fulfil your request or carry out our charitable objectives. You don’t have to disclose any of this information to browse our website. However, if you choose to withhold requested information, we may not be able to provide you with certain services.

Please see the appendix for a more detailed description of how your information is used if you are a beneficiary or supporter of our work.

Our marketing

Sometimes, with your consent, we will process your personal information to provide you with information about our work or our activities that you have requested or are expecting.

On other occasions, we may process personal information to fulfil a contract or where we are required to do this by law or other regulations.

Open Door also processes your information when it is in our legitimate interest to do this and when these interests do not override your rights. Those legitimate interests include providing you with information on our work, campaigns, services, opportunities, feedback, competitions and other activities. Please see the section on Legitimate Interest for more information.

How we obtain your details

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

We collect your personal information in several ways:

  • When you provide it to us directly

  • When you provide permission to other organisations to share it with us (including Facebook or Twitter)

  • When we collect it as you use our website

  • When you have given it to a third party and you have provided permission to pass your information on to us

  • From publicly available sources (where possible) to keep your information up to date (e.g. the Post Office’s National Change of Address database)

We combine the information from these sources with the information you provide to us directly.

Children

If you are under 18, please ensure you obtain your parent/guardian’s consent before sending any personal information to any website. We do have activities for those under 18, so we may ask your age. Before taking part, please ensure you speak to a parent or guardian.

As a parent or guardian, we encourage you to be aware of the activities in which your children are participating, both offline and online. If your children voluntarily disclose information, this may encourage unsolicited messages. We suggest that you discourage your child from providing any information without your consent.

Where is your information held?

All the personal information we process is processed within the UK and/or EEA. However, for the purposes of IT hosting and maintenance, when you sign up to our mailing list, and when you make a donation, your information may be situated outside of the UK or European Economic Area (EEA). This will be done in accordance with guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

If you would like to change the way you hear from us or no longer wish to receive direct marketing communications then please contact us directly or unsubscribe. We follow a retention policy, and will only keep your details in accordance with this policy.

Legitimate Interest

Along with when you give us consent to use your data, we may also process your personal information under something called 'legitimate interest'. Broadly speaking, legitimate interest means we can process your personal information if:

  • We have a genuine and legitimate reason; and

  • We are not harming any of your rights and interests by doing so

Please read the information we have provided in our ‘Legitimate Interest‘ policy for more detailed information.

Sharing your information

We do not share your information with any other organisations or individuals unless we are obliged to by law, for purposes of national security, taxation and criminal investigations, and in the following instances:

  • If you have agreed that we may do so

  • If we run an event in partnership with other named organisations, your details may need to be shared. We will be very clear what will happen to your data when you register

  • When we use other companies to provide services on our behalf, e.g. our bookkeeper and independent examiner; our mailing list provider, MailChimp; our online payment provider, Stripe

  • If we merge with another organisation to form a new entity, information may be transferred to the new entity

  • We may disclose aggregate statistics about our site visitors, supporters and beneficiaries to describe our services and operations to partners and other reputable third parties and for other lawful purposes, but these statistics won’t include any personally identifying information

We will never sell or rent your personal information to other organisations.

Retaining your information

We hold your information only as long as necessary for each reason that we use it. We have provided some examples of the time we will keep your information in this paragraph but you can contact us for more information.

If you decide not to support Open Door any more, or request that we have no further contact with you, we will keep some basic information to avoid sending you unwanted materials in the future and to ensure that we don’t accidentally duplicate information.

Our cookie policy

This policy explains what cookies are, how Open Door uses them on our website and what you can do to manage how they are used.

What are your rights?

You have a number of rights about how the personal information you provide can be used. These are:

  • Transparency over how we use your personal information (right to be informed)

  • The ability to request a copy of the information we hold about you which, in most circumstances, will be provided to you within one month (right of access)

  • Update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong (right of rectification)

  • Ask us to stop using your information (right to restrict processing)

  • Ask us to remove your personal information from our records (right to be ‘forgotten’)

  • Object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes (right to object)

  • Obtain and reuse your personal information for your own purposes (right to data portability)

  • Not be subject to a decision when it is based on automated processing (automated decision making and profiling)

If you would like to know more about your rights under the data protection law, you can find out more at the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

Remember, you can change the way you hear from us or withdraw your permission for us to process your personal information at any time by contacting us (details at the bottom of this page) or updating your preferences via our e-newsletters.

How to contact us

If you wish to talk through anything in our privacy policy, find out more about your rights or obtain a copy of the information we hold about you, please contact us on the details at the bottom of this page - we’ll be happy to help.

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal information, you can contact the Managing Director, who will investigate the matter. If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal information in accordance with the law you can complain to the Fundraising Regulator or the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Our Managing Director can be contacted by writing to:

Richard Neale, Open Door, Studio 9, 6 Cliff Road, London NW1 9AN

Or by emailing: info@opendoor.org.uk

If you wish to talk to us about anything in the policy or the information we hold about you, please contact us:

By email: info@opendoor.org.uk

By post: Open Door, Studio 9, 6 Cliff Road, London NW1 9AN

This document was last updated: July 2022

Appendix

More detail on information we collect and how this information is used

For beneficiaries

Personal information is collected by Open Door if you apply to take part or enquire about one of our charitable activities.

Primarily, personal information is collected through our Access Group application form, if you’re applying for either our Acting or Behind the Scenes Access Group. Applicants are aged between 17 and 30.

The personal information includes applicant’s name, email address, phone number, age, area they live in, confirmation that they meet our entry criteria (annual family household income of £30,000 or less; not currently holding a degree; intend to apply for a full time BA in Acting/Backstage Arts for the upcoming academic year; are a UK citizen or have lived in the UK long enough to be eligible for student finance), and a short written or video statement about why they’re applying.

Personal information an applicant discloses is used by the Open Door team, to assess if they are eligible for an audition/interview. Any supporting documents regarding eligibility criteria will be requested after auditions/interview.

Our programmes are designed to specifically work with those whose financial circumstances stop them from accessing training opportunities in acting and backstage arts; therefore, we ask applicants to disclose information about their background to ensure they meet our criteria.

We ask applicants to fill in an equal opportunities monitoring form alongside their application so we can better establish if any groups, communities, or regions are underrepresented. Any information provided on this form will be used for statistical purposes only, be treated as strictly confidential and will not be seen by anybody directly involved in the bursary selection process. Some data collected is special category data and we need explicit consent from applicants to process it; it includes gender, age, marital status, national identity, geographical area they are resident in, whether they are a care leaver, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, and religious or similar beliefs.

Information from successful applicants is kept for (6?) years; information from unsuccessful applicants is kept for (2?) years. Keeping application information helps us to review our application process, allowing us to continue improving it for future applications.

All personal information will be subject to our internal Data Protection Policy, is kept strictly confidential and will never be passed to any third parties.

Email, postal, social media and telephone correspondence with Open Door and any information you share is also kept on file. Information of this type is kept to help us ensure we are providing the best service possible. Keeping information on file helps us understand where the need is greatest regarding our work, so we can better meet and address those needs. We keep information according to our retention policy.

If an applicant is successful in gaining a place on our Access Programmes, certain electronic, written, audio or visual data they provide (such as testimonials, photographs and recordings of their involvement, etc.) may be utilised in our fundraising activities and appear on our website and social networking sites.

On occasions where we have to pass on specific information to organisations which is necessary to carry out our activities, the persons in question will be informed. For example, if we’re working with a partner organisation such as one of our partner schools and arranging an open day, the names of participants could be passed on to them.

For Supporters

Personal information is collected by Open Door if we have received a donation from you. Email, telephone and postal correspondence with Open Door and any information you share is also kept on file. Information of this type is kept to help us ensure we are providing the best service possible.

Donations made online are collected via the reputable donation sites, Stripe and Patreon, who have their own security services which Open Door has no control over. Please note that use of third-party payment services may result in your personal information being transferred outside the UK or European Economic Area (EEA). Please refer to the individual website’s terms for confirmation of each Information and Privacy Policy. Open Door cannot be held responsible for any loss or damages when using these sites.