Privacy and cookie policy

The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution (“the Charity”) is committed to protecting your personal information. This Privacy Statement outlines the way in which we collect and use personal data that is provided to us.  It was last updated in June 2023.  We collect information about a range of individuals including: individuals who may or do benefit from our financial support, our beneficiaries, our champions, our supporters, our donors, our volunteers, our staff and our trustees.

The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution recognises that your privacy is very important, so it is important to us that you are confident with the way we handle your personal information.  We fully comply with all relevant data protection laws.

Personal Data
Personal data includes any data that relates to a living individual who can be identified from that data.  This may include an individual’s name, address, telephone numbers and/or email address, bank details, other financial, health and background information.

How we collect personal data
The Charity receives and stores personal information supplied to us in writing, via email, via the telephone, in person or online when applying, enquiring, or registering for help, employment, trusteeship, champion or volunteering opportunities or when attending events or donating money to the Charity.

We may also receive your personal information from third parties, for example, a welfare officer, charity, agency or organisation who refers you to our Charity.

Purpose and justifications for using personal data
The Charity principally collects personal information to operate in accordance with its charitable objectives. Where we use your information, it will be only in accordance with one of the lawful justifications provided for by data protection legislation. 

Most commonly, we will use your personal data in reliance on one of the following justifications:

  • where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) in the operation of the Charity and we have made an objective assessment that your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (e.g. internal administration, to manage our relationship with beneficiaries, members, supporters, volunteers and donors);
  • where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation (e.g. in order that we can claim Gift Aid on your donation);
  • where you have given us your specific consent (e.g. where you have agreed to receive our newsletters by email);
  • in anticipation of or in accordance with the contract that we have with you;
  • where we are relying on your specific consent to process your personal information (for example so that we can send you email newsletters) you are free to withdraw that consent at any time.

What are Cookies?
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or to provide information to the owners of a website about how it is being used by visitors to that website.

The only non-essential cookies that we use are Google Analytics, to see if someone has viewed our website previously, to allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.

If you would rather that we did not use Google Analytics to do this, you can adjust the browser settings on your web browser.  More information about how to do this is here: https://allaboutcookies.org/how-to-manage-cookies.

Cookie settings

Disclosure of Information

We may need to share your personal data with the parties set out below in order that we can fulfil the purposes described above.

  • Our IT support and hosting companies, providing us with IT services
  • Trustees of the Charity
  • Google Analytics or similar – for analysis of website use
  • Our professional advisors
  • HMRC, where we are required to do so by law
  • Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of the Charity or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other charities or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.

If we think that you may benefit from our sharing your personal data with another charity or government organisation that we work with as a trusted partner, we may also seek your consent to share information with them or we may share information with them if we think it is in our legitimate interests to do so. 

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International transfers

We do not typically need to transfer your personal data out of the UK. However, some of our third party service providers may have servers or operations based outside the UK.  Where they do, we ask that they have appropriate protections in place so that we know all data will be looked after as though it were subject to the UK’s laws on data protection.  Should you need further details on which third party processors we use that are based outside the UK, please let us know.

How long we keep your personal information

When the personal data is no longer needed it will be destroyed. As a rule, we will hold your information for a period of up to 6 years from the end of your relationship with the Charity in accordance with our data retention policy. 

Storage and security of personal data

To prevent unauthorised access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect.

Your rights

Individuals have the right to request access to and to request rectification or deletion of their personal data or restrict processing in certain circumstances. 

The Charity will comply with all legal obligations including GDPR when we hold your data.  If you have any reason why we should amend, delete or restrict use of your data, please contact us to discuss your concern.

What we do if you choose to tell us about your experience of our grant service

Where grant recipients have provided information about their experience of applying for a grant, by whatever means, we will explain what the information will be used for.  It will always be used anonymously unless you agree otherwise.  For example, we might use the information to write case studies which can be used in our communications including PR and media activity, digital and social media, campaigning, fundraising materials and internal communications, to help us raise awareness of our mission. We would only ever use your story with your explicit consent first, we would always contact you to discuss the use of your story in further detail each time.

Contact us

  • If you have any questions or comments about our privacy practices or this Privacy Statement;
  • If you want to make use of any of the above rights, or other rights that you may have in relation to your personal data;
  • If you have other questions or requests;
  • If you wish to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).  Although you have the right to make a complaint at any time to the ICO, the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk), we would, of course, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns about data protection directly so please contact us in the first instance.

Please contact the Data Protection Manager at DPO@rabi.org.uk or 01865 724931.  You can also reach us at the following address: Shaw House, 27 West Way, Botley, Oxford, OX2 0QH