Privacy notice

Your privacy is important to the Environmental Funders Network (charity registered in England and Wales no. 1181318 and Scotland no. SC050579) . When we mention “EFN”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy Notice, we are referring to the Environmental Funders Network.

EFN is committed to protecting your personal information, being transparent about what data we hold and giving you control over how we use it. This notice explains how we collect, use, share and store your personal information when you sign up to attend one of our events or to receive one of our newsletters, visit our websites, or interact with our publications, consultations or other activities and to inform you about how we will look after that information.

If you do not agree with any term in this Notice, please do not use our websites or submit any personal information to or through them. If in doubt or have any questions, please feel free to check by contacting us using the contact details detailed at the end of this notice.

What information we collect

Below we detail what different types of personal information we may collect, use, and store. We have grouped the information together as follows:

Types of personal information	Description
Personal identifying information	Your first name and last name, preferred salutation.
Contact and address details	Contact details such as, address, telephone number, email address social media identity. Further details that you may provide for events, donations or any other purpose.
Technical	Information sent to us because of connecting to our websites, including internet protocol (IP) address, cookie tracking, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
Financial	Your payment or banking details; your donation history and tax payer details (for gift aid purposes); further financial/screening details as required by law.
Transaction	Details about payments to and from you.
Contractual	Details about the services (or other arrangements we have with you) we provide to you on a contractual basis.
Social demographic	Details about your work or profession, nationality, education, your interests and where you fit into various social or income groupings.
Usage	Information about how you use our websites and services, including (for example) which events you have attended or programmes you have been involved with.
Analytical and tracking	Insights derived from how you engage with our websites, communications and digital services, such as google analytics.
Marketing and Communications	Information about your preferences in receiving email communications and other interests; information to help us better accommodate you at events, such as dietary requirements or accessibility needs; communications (and related metadata) carried out within our technological environment during relationship management; information to help us manage queries, complaints or claims.
Recruitment	Details related to job applications, including employment experiences and history, education history, right to work status, and further details you may share for recruitment purposes.

Where we get your personal information from

• Directly from you – for example when using one of our online forms to sign up for membership or contacting us to make a donation.
• Indirectly – from third party sources, such as charities or voluntary sector organisations, Councils and other public sector organisations, research providers and search information providers. 
• Publicly available sources – for example information available on Companies House, Charity Commission, reputable media articles, social media and publications. 
• Visiting our website – technical information sent to us because of connecting to our websites, including internet protocol (IP) address and cookies.
  

How we use your information

In general terms, we collect and use personal information to:

• Deliver all the services, experiences and information that you have requested
• Provide updates about our work, services, activities, publications or resources (where necessary, and with consent to receive such information)
• Invite you to EFN events which we feel that you may be interested in
• Verify your identity and age where this is required
• Contact you by post, email, or telephone, as you permit us to
• Better understand your unique needs and preferences
• Maintain our business and service use records
• Share our newsletters and resources with you
• Process financial transactions 
• Process your application for a job or volunteer role when you apply by contacting us via our website
• Audit and/or administer our accounts
• Meet our legal and regulatory responsibilities
• Further our charitable aims in general, including fundraising activities 
• Respond to queries, requests, complaints and general communications
• Analyse and improve EFN’s websites 
• Continuously improve our activities
• Prevent fraud or misuse of services
• Establish defence of enforcement of legal claims

The lawful basis for processing your personal data

Under UK data protection law, we must have a “lawful basis” for collecting and using your personal information. There is a list of possible lawful bases in the UK GDPR. You can find out more about lawful bases on the ICO’s website. We are registered with ICO (C1580267).

What we use your information for	Our Lawful Basis
To provide services and goods, including delivery and third party referrals	Consent – we have permission from you after we gave you all the relevant information. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to object. To be clear, you do have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
To receive donations or funding and organise fundraising activities	Consent – we have permission from you after we gave you all the relevant information. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to object. To be clear, you do have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
To collect or use personal information for service updates or marketing purposes	Consent – we have permission from you after we gave you all the relevant information. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to object. To be clear, you do have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Legitimate interests – we’re collecting or using your information because it benefits you, our organisation or someone else, without causing an undue risk of harm to anyone. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to portability.
To collect or use personal information for research or archiving purposes	Consent – we have permission from you after we gave you all the relevant information. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to object. To be clear, you do have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
To comply with legal, financial and regulatory requirements	Consent – we have permission from you after we gave you all the relevant information. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to object. To be clear, you do have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Contract – we have to collect or use the information so we can enter into or carry out a contract with you. All of your data protection rights may apply except the right to object. Legal obligation – we have to collect or use your information so we can comply with the law. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to erasure, the right to object and the right to data portability.
To deal with queries, complaints or claims	Consent – we have permission from you after we gave you all the relevant information. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to object. To be clear, you do have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
To comply with recruitment purposes	Consent – we have permission from you after we gave you all the relevant information. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to object. To be clear, you do have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Contract – we have to collect or use the information so we can enter into or carry out a contract with you. All of your data protection rights may apply except the right to object.Legal obligation – we have to collect or use your information so we can comply with the law. All of your data protection rights may apply, except the right to erasure, the right to object and the right to data portability.

Marketing (email)

If you have signed up to one of our newsletters from EFN and its projects, or have opted-in to hear about our work, we will send you information which may be of interest to you. You have a right to stop us from contacting you for marketing purposes at any time. You can do this in several different ways:

• All our newsletters/emails contain unsubscribe links
• Contact us via the contact details below to request a change to your marketing preferences.

What are your data protection rights

You can find out more about your data protection rights and the exemptions which may apply on the ICO’s website:

• Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. You can request other information such as details about where we get personal information from and who we share personal information with. There are some exemptions which means you may not receive all the information you ask for. Read more.
• Your right to rectification – You have the right to ask us to correct or delete personal information you think is inaccurate or incomplete. Read more.
• Your right to erasure – You have the right to ask us to delete your personal information. Read more.
• Your right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to limit how we can use your personal information. Read more.
• Your right to object to processing – You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data. Read more.
• Your right to data portability – You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you. Read more.
• Your right to withdraw consent – When we use consent as our lawful basis you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Read more.

If you make a request, we must respond to you without undue delay and in any event within one month. To make a data protection rights request, please contact us using the contact details at the top of this privacy notice.

How long we keep information

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. 

We keep financial information for 8 years from the end of the tax year to which records relate.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. We outline the retention period for personal data in our Data Protection Policy (available on request). 

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. 

Who we share information with

EFN will not sell your information to any third party. We may share your information with third parties where we have legal duty to do so or to provide you with a service you have asked for. These may include:

• Payment processors and providers
• Agencies or third parties that we are partnering with to deliver events and services
• Third parties for the purpose of marketing, in line with this privacy notice
• Security providers
• Health & Safety providers
• Professional consultants
• External auditors/inspectors

Articles and pages on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Security

EFN have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered, or disclosed. We store all the personal information you provide on secure servers. We limit access to your personal information to those employees, contractors or other third parties who have a business need to know. Internally, EFN uses two factor authentication to help keep data secure.

In the case of a suspected personal data breach, we will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so. Please note that transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure.

Sharing information outside the UK

Where necessary, we may transfer personal information outside of the UK. When doing so, we comply with the UK GDPR, making sure appropriate safeguards are in place. For further information or to obtain a copy of the appropriate safeguard for any of the transfers below, please contact us using the contact information provided below.

Cookies (website)

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file held on your computer and most browsers provide the facility to view and delete them. You can also elect to be warned when a cookie is being created and even decline to accept cookies. 

We would recommend that you leave cookies enabled, which is the default setting, and many websites will fail to work correctly without them. Most websites use cookies because cookies can help the visitor to navigate through the site and they can be used to store useful information. It is also helpful for the website provider to track how you arrived at the site, for example by clicking on a link found with a search engine like Google. Cookies can also be retained on your computer and the information read by the website provider when you return to the site at a later date.

When you request a page on our websites you send certain information in accordance with the HTTP protocol to our web server so that it knows where to send the data requested. This data includes the IP Address allotted to your computer. This data is saved and analysed to provide useful information on the amount of traffic to the website and the efficiency with which it is handled by our server. We do not routinely use the IP Address for any purpose but we retain the right to do so to track down any malicious traffic designed to interfere with our servers (e.g. viruses).

Third-party cookies

When you visit our websites, we allow Google Analytics to set cookies on your device to help us better understand who our users are and how they use our websites. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect anonymous usage and visitor behaviour information – this includes:

• IP address
• operating system
• browser type
• pages visited
• links you click on
• services you purchase

For further information about cookies, including how to manage your cookie settings, you can visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org. You can delete the cookies stored on your computer at any time.

Contact details

Registered and postal address: Environmental Funders Network, 124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX

Email: info@greenfunders.org

How to complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal data, you can make a complaint to us using the contact details at the top of this privacy notice.

If you remain unhappy with how we’ve used your data after raising a complaint with us, you can also complain to the ICO.

The ICO’s address:           

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

Website: https://www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint

Last updated

February 2026