Policy Date and Version Control: This policy was reviewed July 2023.

Who are we?

Future First is the UK charity working with state schools and colleges to build sustainable alumni communities. We are a registered charity in England, number 1135638. Future First Alumni Limited (“Future First”) will be what’s known as the ‘controller’ of the personal data you provide to us. Your former school(s)/college(s) are also ‘controller’ of the data, and together we are joint data controllers. Future First is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) as a data controller under the Data Protection Act 2018 and UKGDPR, with Registration Number Z3104680.

We take the protection of your privacy and confidentiality seriously. 

School/College Supporter:

This privacy policy applies to anyone signed up as a leaving student, former student or friend of a school or college.

How do we collect information from you?:

We initially obtain your personal information as a result of you completing the sign up form for your school or college. We will subsequently collect updated information if you update your profile, and/or if you give Future First staff members or staff at your old school additional details in person, over the phone or by email, and give us permission to store this information.

What type of information is collected from you?:

We collect the information provided by you on your sign up form and when you update your profile. Future First staff may also update your profile if you provide updated information to them in person, by phone or on email.

When you visit our website or your profile area, we may collect your IP address so we can learn more about how our platforms are used and use this information to improve the user experience. The data collected is anonymised.

How long will we keep your personal information?:

If you sign up to a member school or college network, your data will be retained as long as the school is a Future First member. If their latest membership ends, your data will be held for seven years after the membership end date.

If you opt in to become a member of our National Network, your data will be retained as long as you are an active member (despite if your school’s membership has ended). Your data will be deleted after seven years of inactivity.

To delete your account , please request this by emailing support@futurefirst.org.uk.

How is your information used?:

We will use your personal information in the following ways:

• in order for us to provide the Future First programme to your school/college, including through the operation of our website;
• if your school is part of a wider network of schools your data may be accessed by the schools using this network, as well as related organisations such as, but not necessarily limited to, Careers Hubs.
• to send requests to you for updated contact details, so we can stay in touch with you;
• to give you access to our online alumni platform, through which you can interact with your old school(s)/college(s) as well as other former students;
• to send you information relating to our services, your school/college (including its services and any events or programmes which it may be running), and/or any career opportunities which we or your school/college may think are relevant to you; and
• to anonymise your personal information and combine it with other personal information that we hold, so we can create and distribute statistics (including to partner organisations, which include organisations that contribute funds to Future First) and other information relating to your school/college year, your school/college, your local area or otherwise. When we do this, we will take the utmost care to ensure that you cannot be identified through these statistics and information.

We will also share your personal information with your school/college if they have signed up to our service, to enable it to contact you to request your support in various ways. This may include, but is not limited to, giving a careers or university talk to current students, mentoring a current student, acting as a governor or offering to fundraise. Your school/college will therefore be a ‘controller’ of your data, alongside Future First.

If your school or college is a member of a trust or other umbrella body, or their network is coordinated by a third organisation, this organisation may request access to your data and contact you in a similar way to your school or college. You will be given an opportunity to opt in to this additional network at the point of sign up and within your profile area. If your school/college joins such an organisation after you have signed up, we’ll notify you by email and you’ll be reminded that you’re able to opt in to this network. A full privacy notice on this can be found in your profile area.

Personal data will be retained and managed in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018. Some third parties have access to your information in order to carry out work for us, for example to send you mailings. They are contracted to keep your data secure and confidential. We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes. We have a Data Protection process in place to oversee the effective and secure processing of your personal data.

Use of cookies and related features/technology:

Cookie Consent: We use cookies- and by using our website, our social media pages (such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram) or subscribing to our services you agree that, unless you have set your computer’s browser to reject them, we can place the types of cookies set out below on your device and use that data in accordance with this policy.

In order to remember that you have accepted our use of cookies, we will place a temporary cookie to remember your consent for 3 months.  For more information about how we use cookies on this site, please review our Cookie Policy below.

You can find more information about cookies All About Cookies and Your Online Choices

Types of cookie consent:

There are two broad types of cookies – ‘first party cookies’ and ‘third party cookies’:

First party cookies are cookies that are served directly by the website operator to your computer, and are often used to recognise your computer when it revisits that site and to remember your preferences as you browse the site. Basically, these are our cookies.

Third party cookies are served by a service provider on behalf of the website operator, and can be used by the service provider to recognise your computer when you visit other websites. Third party cookies are most commonly used for web site analytics or advertising purposes such as Google Analytics- you can find out more about how we use Google Analytics below.

In addition, cookies may be either ‘session cookies’ or ‘persistent cookies’. Your computer automatically removes session cookies once you close your browser. Persistent cookies will survive on your computer until an expiry date specified in the cookie itself, is reached. We use both session and persistent cookies.

Categories of cookies that we use:

1. Strictly necessary cookies: These cookies are essential for the user to move around the website and to use its features..
2. Performance cookies: These cookies collect information about how the user makes use of the site, e.g. which pages the user visits most. These cookies do not collect information that identifies the user.
3. Functionality cookies: These cookies remember choices made by or attributes of the user and enhance the features and content you experience during your visit to our website, e.g. language, appeals visited or user’s location. This cookie is also used to remember a user’s preferences for a font size, or customisable parts of a web page.
4. Targeting or advertising cookies: These cookies collect information about the users’ browsing habits. This may also include your use of social media sites, e.g. Facebook, etc. or how you interact with our website which then shows you relevant content elsewhere on the internet. NB. These may also be used to choose the advertisements that are displayed to you on our website and other websites.

We have assessed our cookies based on the ICC Cookie Guide. The majority of our cookies fall into the first two categories. However, we also use cookies on our webpages which are in categories 3 and 4.

What information do we collect using cookies?

We may collect some, or all, of the information available from cookies when you visit our website, depending on how you use it. We monitor how people use our website so we can improve it. We collect this information anonymously. However, you can choose to use our website anonymously without giving us any information by changing your cookie preferences.

If you visit our website, we may use cookies to record information about:

• the areas of the website you visit;
• the amount of time you spend on the site;
• whether you are new to the site, or have visited it before;
• the country, region, city and/or borough associated with your IP address or device;
• how you came to our website – for example, through an email link or a search engine;
• the type of device and browser you use;
• how you use the website and the quality of your experience – for example we may track your bandwidth when viewing videos;
• how you interact with our donation and sign up forms – for example what you select as your communication preferences; and
• any error messages that you receive on the site

We use cookies to track how visitors come to our site. For example, we use marketing or referring tracking codes in internet addresses (URLs) to show us whether a visitor has come to our site via a link on a referring website or in a specific piece of marketing and to give us insight into the effectiveness of our marketing. Some of this information may be used by third party cookies to target you with relevant advertising (see below).

Although not through cookies, we do measure the success of the emails we send – so we know what subject lines and stories people liked the most. We receive this information anonymously; we don’t share this information.

Website statistics, analytics, testing and personalisation:

Our website currently uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which (as discussed above) are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyse how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage.

Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above. For more details, please read Google’s Analytics overview.

You can always opt-out of Google Analytics cookies by going to Google’s opt-out tool.

If your school/college is not currently a member of our service:

If your school/ college is not currently participating in the Future First programme then join our National Alumni Network instead- the link is here

If your school/college chooses to stop participating in our service:

If your school/college chooses to stop being part of the Future First programme, we will send all the personal information that we hold about you to them, so they can continue to keep in touch with you. If you’d rather we excluded your information when sharing your data in this context, please email support@futurefirst.org.uk.

We will continue to store your personal information on our systems so that, should your school/college decide to work with us again in the future, they can pick up where they left off. We will do this in accordance with our retention policy outlined earlier in this policy.

Even if your school/college is not working with Future First, we may be in touch occasionally with news about our campaigns. You can opt out of these emails at any time using the unsubscribe link in the email or in your profile area.

16 or under:

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Stakeholder Privacy Policy

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you in the following ways:

• If you enquire about or engage in any of our services or campaigns;
• If you provide us with funding or other support;
• If you register for any of our communications via our website;
• If you apply for a job with us;
• If you’re employed or contracted by us.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect might include your name and email address.

When you visit our website or your profile area, we may collect your IP address so we can learn more about how our platforms are used and use this information to improve the user experience. The data collected is anonymised.

How is your information used and for how long?

We need to know the basic personal data of a range of people in order to deliver our services, provide on-going organisational updates and share opportunities. We will not collect any personal data from you that we do not need in order to provide and oversee this service to you.

We might use your information to:

• Provide you with information on, or coordinate access to, our services (including those offered via our employer partners);
• Carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
• Seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
• Notify you of changes to our services;
• Send you communications that you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about our services, campaigns and partner opportunities;

We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations (for example, job applications will be kept up to one year after the vacancy closing date). Otherwise, we will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as it is required to fulfil our obligations or contract with you. Personal data will be retained and managed in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018.

Apart from data we are legally required to retain, you can choose to remove your data from our systems at any time. To request this, please email info@futurefirst.org.uk.

Who has access to your information?

In addition to Future First, some third parties have access to your information in order to carry out work for us, for example to send you mailings. They are contracted to keep your data secure and confidential. We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes. We have a Data Protection process in place to oversee the effective and secure processing of your personal data.

• Job Applicants

When you apply to work at Future First we will use the information you provide to process your application, and for fully anonymised recruitment statistics. If we need to disclose your information to someone outside Future First we will obtain your consent to do so, unless we are obliged to do so by law or otherwise allowed to do so without your consent.

If you commence employment with Future First your information will be processed in accordance with your employment contract, our human resource policies, the Data Protection Act 2018/UKGDPR and other applicable legislation.

• Social Media

Future First uses social media to promote its work. We have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. When people engage with our posts or publish or share content relevant to our work we may like these posts, share these posts, follow them, reply or write to them, or use them in our publicity information.

 If you do not wish us to do so please contact us at info@futurefirst.org.uk.

 We might conduct research on what people say on public social media platforms to understand how people feel about our work and to improve what we do. This research might be done by staff or other organisations that we work with.

Teacher/student privacy policy for workshop participants

What is data?

Your personal data might include:

• Your name
• What school or college you go to
• If you have any dietary requirements
• If you have any other needs we need to be aware of (e.g. you use a wheelchair)
• Your email address
• Your phone number

How do we collect information from you?

We collect the information you give us on our feedback forms; we may also ask you for testimonials and photos to share across our platforms.

Your school shares some of your information with us directly.

We may update this information if you give Future First staff members more details in person, over the phone or by email, and give us permission to store this information.

What type of information is collected from you?

We collect the information you write on feedback forms. Future First staff may also update your profile if you provide updated information to them in person, by phone or on email.

How is your information used?

We will use your personal information in the following ways:

• to combine it with other personal information that we hold, so we can create and share statistics about our events with other organisations. When we do this, we make your information anonymous, so no one will know it links to you.

Sometimes we do research to see what effect our sessions have on the people who attend them.

To help with this we might link the data you have given us, to other information about you held by the government. For example, information held by the Department for Education or the Department for Work and Pensions.

By law, they have to keep your data secure and private. We won’t share your information with third parties so they can sell you things. We have a Data Protection process in place to make sure your data is kept secure.

Your choices

By providing us with your personal information and by giving your consent on the sign-up form, you hereby consent to us using and disclosing your personal information as set out above.

You can manage your subscription and data preferences in your profile area, or by sending your request to support@futurefirst.org.uk with subject line ‘Data request’. If you unsubscribe from mails, you may still receive some transactional mail (e.g. if you request a password reset).

You can find out exactly what personal information of yours we hold by making a ‘subject access request’ to us under the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR. If you make such a request and we do hold information about you, we will:

• give you a description of it;
• tell you why we are holding it;
• tell you who it could be disclosed to; and
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

To make a request for any personal information we may hold, you need to contact us using the details provided at the end of this policy. Your request will be responded to within 30 days.

If at any point you believe the information we process on you is incorrect you can write to us to have it corrected or deleted. If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact us to have the matter investigated.

You have a right to request that your personal data is erased from our systems. To do this, login to your profile area or get in touch at the address below.

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. We have put in place technical and organisational measures that are designed to safeguard and secure the information we collect.

When setting a password for your profile area, it is your responsibility to ensure it is sufficiently secure and kept confidential.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We keep our privacy notice under regular review and we will notify you of any updates by replacing the version of this policy which is found on our website.

How to contact us

Requests for information about our privacy notice can be made to: Future First, 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE or @futurefirst.org.uk with subject ‘Data protection request’.

To access your profile area visit your Future First hub here.

This policy was last reviewed in July 2023. We keep this policy under regular review.