Privacy Stuff
Quick version - time to read, about the same as eating a biscuit
We are all about comms. Internal comms and external comms. What does that mean?
It means building TRUST and engagement around a truthful story that resonates all the way from the people who rely on your services (kids, parents, people with additional needs, whoever it is you love and exist for), your funders, your supporters, your volunteers and your employees. That means you can't afford to do ANYTHING that might damage that trust.
And nor can we.
So that means we collect and store (for as long as necessary, but no longer) data and info that helps us to serve you better. That means helping you to find out what we are doing, buy products from us, or even secure some of our time to help you to do the amazing work you do.
We also track some data from our website (analytics) and our advertising on Facebook. That's so we can see whether we are reaching the right people. We are a tiny business and we have 2.5 kids each (that's an average... we haven't split any of them in half... we're not bananas), so we are doing our very best to charge a fair price for our services and support as many customers as we can as well as we possibly can. That's it.
We leave the scary stuff to those spiders that sometimes hide in banana crates...
Capturing stuff with cookies - please note that these cookies are not biscuits
A cookie is a thing that a website uses to save a little bit of data about the person that visits the site. As far as we can tell it's stuff like your IP address. Which is a string of numbers that tracks to your gadgets. That's why, when you are quietly surfing Twitter and your partner is sat on the loo looking at new cars, you start getting car deals in your Twitter stream. Because their tablet and your phone are on the same IP address.
Anyway, you can block cookies on your browser. Some things on some sites might not work properly without cookies, but we don't know exactly what.
We have cookies on our site. You should know about that because we are very good and have put in a Cookie Alert App to alert you about the fact we have cookies. Our cookies are part of the standard package provided by our host, wix.com.
Here is what they have to say about cookies: https://support.wix.com/en/article/cookies-and-your-wix-site
Breadcrumbs, cookie crumbs and other tracking. Call us Hansel & Gretel!
Kate's a scientist and Emma's an engineer. So you won't be surprised to find that we get excited about maths. Sums. Stats. Even trigonometry (SOHCHATOA)!
So, you can imagine that our inner geeks get VERY excited by a tool like Google Analytics (ours is called Visitor Analytics and it is provided by Wix.com as an app). It means that we can stay up WAY passed our bedtimes looking at cute graphs that tell us where in the world our readers are, and what time they come onto our site, and that kind of funky statsy stuff.
Of course, it's not just because we are geeky. Another useful thing is that it tells us what pages people visit and how "sticky" or "bouncy" our site is. Or, in other words, whether what we are putting on the site is interesting and useful for you. And, if it isn't, we try to make it better.
We also use Facebook Pixel. Which sounds magical, doesn't it? Like a fairy? Well, it sort of IS magical in a way. We use it to find out if the pennies we spend on boosting Facebook posts are worth it.
For example, with the Great Cause #pauseforapplause we advertise great causes for FREE. They pay nothing. In fact, we sub them by paying to boost our posts about the great work that they do. We then use the magic Facebook Pixel fairies to find out whether our Facebook posts have brought people to the blog to find out more about the great cause in question - and us. As a result of this data we improve our Facebook posts, our site, and the quality of service we provide to you, and to the causes we love and support. Makes sense, doesn't it.
So, what if you don't want great big pebbles dropping around the internet whenever you go for a virtual walk in cyberspace? Is there some kind of Great Google Gobbler that can scoop up these breadcrumbs and cut those links? Well, yes. There are apps that do that apparently. One of them is called "Freedom app". We haven't used it ourselves, but it apparently blocks social media from popping up and also blocks the Facebook pixel. So, if you want to not leave breadcrumbs like Hansel and Gretel, use that.
That said, we are not going to pop you in a cage to fatten you up. Nope. Our goal is to support charities so that they are both FAT and LEAN.
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Fat with funds, so that they can keep doing their important work and encourage generous people to support it
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Lean with efficiency and uber-engaged volunteers and employees so they can do lots of it and feel great too
Yup - we want to fill their pots with funds. And if your breadcrumb from Facebook to here helps us to do that more efficiently, then that seems pretty fair and useful. We hope it does to you too. Else, find those blocking apps, but we are pretty sure that nobody who interacts with the internet (and maybe many people who don't connect with the internet) can ever fully hide from the Wix Wizard, the Facebook Pixel and the Google Fairy.
It's all about the base... the uncrumbly non-biscuit database.
Russ Ackoff wrote some cool stuff about the hiearchy of data, information, knowledge and wisdom. We won't go so far as to say that we are wise, but we do try at least to be a bit knowledgeable. Data is at the bottom of that hierarchy. And it is basically USELESS unless you do something useful with it.
So here are the ways we collect data and how we try to do something useful with it.
On Wix (this website): when you fill in a form on here, this site will store your name and email address. If you book onto our events or buy things from us we will store the information that you give us. This is things like what organisation you work for, what you do, and how we can help you. Only the two directors (Kate and Emma) have access to the back-end of this site and that information and we understand from Wix.com that it is held securely.
Read more at https://www.wix.com/about/privacy, especially section 5.1.
We use your data to do the types of things that you might think, like using your purchase history to send you information about other services and procucts that might interest you. If you sign up for our newsletter we will send you our newsletter. That sort of thing. And, of course you can opt out at any time.
Important thing - we do not hold any payment details for you on the site.
Wix Stores: This is the App on Wix that we use to run our on-line store. Here you can buy things as we launch them. The payment goes through separately (see below). You are now a customer and we will send you things that might be useful (such as information about new stuff you can buy in the store), unless you say "please stop sending me things". If you say "please stop sending me things" we will stop sending you things. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
Wix Bookings: This is the App on Wix that we use to let you book things like strategy courses. We capture sensible things like your name, email, telephone number. This is part of our "sales funnel". After a strategy call, if we think we can help you, we will make you an offer to buy one of our services. You can say Yes. You can say Not Now. You can say Not Never Ever. If you say Yes or Not Now then we will keep your details (securely) for as long as you are our customer or potential customer. If you say Not Never Ever, we will delete your info.
Wix Events: This is the App on Wix that we use to help you book onto our events. When you do, we ask you some questions up front (like who you work for, what your organisation does etc). We then also email you before the programme (for most of our programmes) and ask you some more questions. This is because we TAILOR our content to suit the people who are coming. Which is incredibly cool. We even check your website and some other bits and pieces about you so that we can give you the best support possible. Data has its price - but by adding to our information - it means we can give you better knowledge (see what we did there? We think that's even nearly wise. Ackoff would be proud).
Payment details: There are 3 ways that you can pay us for things:
1. Using PayPal
2. Using Stripe
3. "Manually"
More details about payment details and what we do (and don't do) with them can be found in the next section. Are you still reading? You must like bananas a LOT if this is a-peeling to you...
All about dough. How you can pay for stuff, and what we do with that info...
Payment details: There are 3 ways that you can pay us for things:
1. Using PayPal
2. Using Stripe
3. "Manually"
If you use PayPal or Stripe then we don't see anything other than your name, email and a weird strand of numbers that represents your payment. Your card details and all that malarkey stay with PayPal and Stripe. We don't see them. Never Ever.
However, if you pay for things "manually" then that really means that we either accept cash on the day (which we then declare to the taxman) or we issue you with an invoice.
On that invoice you will have OUR payment details. Because we trust you. When you make your payment then we will have whatever information your bank tells our bank about that payment (so we know who has paid it) and whatever else you put on your remittance advice (the nice thing that you send us that tells us that you've made the payment).
We keep information that the taxwo/man will want, like your organisation's name, when you paid us, and how much you paid us. We keep these in QuickBooks. The following people have access:
Kate Dobb (director)
Emma Langman (director)
Our accountant (they're an accountant, they'd better be trustworthy)
The taxwo/man if he/she asks.
If we pay you: The taxwo/man needs us to keep suitable records of the people that we pay. We keep all the things that make us feel organised and professional, like your name, email, address. We also record things like payment terms (so that we pay on time) and your bank details (so that we can get the money into your account). Makes sense really. We do this in QuickBooks.
The following people have access:
Kate Dobb (director)
Emma Langman (director)
Our accountant (they're an accountant, they'd better be trustworthy)
The taxwo/man if he/she asks.
Quickbooks: This is our accounting software and we use it to help us to balance our bananas. We feel confident about storing money-related stuff in there because millions of businesses use this package. To find out more, check out https://security.intuit.com/index.php/data-stewardship-principles.
Emails, letters, love notes and other correspondence...
If you sign up to "join the conversation" or for any of our events, or shop in our store, we will send you an occasional newsletter and/or other offers.
To be honest, we need to get better at this whole bit and if we were the information commissioner, we would recommend to ourselves that we should:
1. Be clear about what we mean by "join the conversation" when people first sign up. That means we need to review and improve our autoresponders in Wix.com.
2. Specifically state in our Booking forms that we will send you our newsletter and/or other offers unless you opt out.
3. Specifically state in our Online Shop autoresponders (emails you get when you shop with us) that we will send you our newsletter and/or other offers unless you opt out.
Actually, we need to revamp all our autoresponders and tweak our "sales funnel", because it is all still very start-up-like and needs work. You know how it is when you have 2.5 children (again, we wish to remind you that this is a mean, and we have not cut any children in half. Indeed, no children have been harmed, except perhaps mildly, psychologically, due to us being very busy setting up the business, as a result of Great Cause Comms)...and meaning to get round to things like ironing, cleaning out the veg drawer on the fridge, and sorting out autoresponders. And don't even get us started on the weeds in the garden...
Anyway, we've definitely got some work to do on that bit. And we haven't actually set up the shop yet properly....so you won't get any emails from us about that.
What we will probably do at some point soon is write to the people who have given us their email address EITHER through booking courses or directly through the website and ask them what they want in our newsletter, so that we can write something that's actually useful. In the meantime, if you've give us your email address, we might drop you a note to let you know about events and things that are coming up.
If at any time you don't want us to write to you, just say. Even without changes to the law (because we are good people) if you ask us to remove your details from our systems we will. Except for the ones that the taxwo/man says we need to keep.
We haven't fully explored the functionality of the emailing system inside Wix.com. We can probably track emails and see if they are opened or not. We've never done that, but once we get a bit more organised about writing to our Great Cause Comms fans (e.g. people who have given us their email to "join the conversation" or who have booked an event or bought something or booked a strategy call) we might look at that data to see if our content is landing and useful. Because we don't want to write stuff that you don't want to read, any more than you want to read what we've written to discover that you don't want to read it. Because that would be bananas!
Hope that makes sense. We've definitely got work to do to get better at this bit - and we are doing our best to do it as quickly and professionally as we can.
If we banana split up...
We hope that the work we do with and for great causes is of interest. And we do our very best to create quality content. But, sometimes love doesn't last.
If at any time you'd like to end your relationship with us, that is ok. Simply email either of us - emma@greatcausecomms.com or kate@greatcausecomms.com - and ask us to delete our records about you. As long as it's not something that the taxwo/man needs, we will delete all the details we have about you. And then we will put the kettle on and toast your good health with a cuppa and a biscuit.
Except... Unfortunately we cannot delete your records from PayPal or Stripe and we can't delete the record of you purchasing something from us (if you have paid for an event, service or product wiht us) because the taxwo/man needs that stuff. If you want to delete your PayPal or Stripe records you wil need to do that directly with them... but we will still keep the stuff that the taxwo/man wants us to keep - because, you know, the Law and all that.
We really hope you'll stay and be part of the work we are doing to support great causes. But if it's not working out, we understand. And we can just all move on with our lives with a nice warm feeling for the relationship that we had while it lasted.
The crazy fruit salad that is social media...
We specialise in external and internal comms.
Because it is the 21st century and we are up with the kids, or down with the kids, and sick and wicked and fleek or whatever.... anyway, because of that, we use social media. A lot.
Social media helps us to help our great causes through:
- free promotions of great causes (such as #pauseforapplause, retweeting, commenting on posts, sharing their promotions etc)
- get some money in to help us do some of the cool stuff (including the free stuff) that we do. Because we have to pay for childcare, and shopping, and council tax bills and things. So we do advertise our events, services and products on social media.
If you "like" one of our posts we will invite you to "like and follow" our Facebook page. You can if you want. You don't have to.
If we are connected with you on Facebook we will probably also connect with you on Twitter. This means we will "follow" you. You can follow us back if you want to. You don't have to.
At some point, once the gardens are under control and we've sorted out the niggly bits that we want to sort out about autoresponders and stuff (which we mentioned above about newsletters, love letters etc) - at that point we will probably get organised on Instagram too. And when we do that, we will probably come and follow you if we also know you on Facebook and/or Twitter. And you can follow us back if you want to. You don't have to.
We believe in freedom of speech (unless somebody is doing something really vile or illegal) and so our team can say what they hold to be true on social media (they can even be agent provocateurs if they wish). Their personal accounts do not reflect the views of the organisation... but we do, of course, attract team members who care about great causes as much as we do. So don't be surprised to spot our personal accounts and our @greatcausecomms accounts sharing lots of content about great causes that we care about (whether they are clients or not). It's just how social media works. And it's one of the reasons why we love it so!
