Fundraising Preference Service (FPS) - Information for users

The FPS is a service run by Syrenis Ltd (www.syrenis.com) on behalf of the Fundraising Regulator, a company limited by guarantee (no. 10016446) in England and Wales, registered office address: Eagle House, 167 City Road, London, EC1V 1AW. The Fundraising Regulator is the independent regulator of charitable fundraising in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

FPS users must read and accept our Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy below on how we process your personal data. Please also see our Cookies Policy for information about how this website uses cookies.

For Frequently Asked Questions, please click here.

Background

These Terms of Use set out how users ('you') agree to use the Fundraising Preference Service ('we/us/the FPS').

This Privacy Policy sets out how the FPS uses your personal data to provide the service in line with your instructions. This policy only concerns personal data collected through the FPS website for the purposes of reducing direct marketing communications and FPS service administration. It does not apply to personal data provided to the FPS or Fundraising Regulator by any other means, including other forms of direct contact (such as email) or through any other website.

See the Fundraising Regulator's Privacy Policy for more information about how your personal data will be used in these circumstances.


Terms of Use

Disclaimer

Please note that the FPS only applies to charities registered in England, Wales or Northern Ireland (‘fundraising organisations’) with the relevant Charity Commission. Some fundraising organisations will be registered with the Fundraising Regulator and may already be signed up to use the FPS, and others will not.

The Fundraising Regulator and the FPS do not have control over any personal data that you have previously provided, or may provide, to a fundraising organisation outside of the FPS. The FPS and Fundraising Regulator Privacy Policies will not apply to this data.

FPS provides your personal data to the fundraising organisations you nominate on terms expressly requiring that (i) it is used only for the specified purposes and (ii) all personal data is to be handled securely. The FPS or Fundraising Regulator are not responsible (under these Terms of Use or otherwise) for how such organisations may use your personal data.

Definition of the service

The FPS is a website and phone service which allows people to request that specific fundraising organisation(s) stop sending direct marketing communications to them or someone they specify, either living or deceased. The FPS can be used to stop direct marketing via the following methods: phone, email, post and text message.

Using the service

You may submit a request through the FPS at any time online or during our helpline opening hours by phone. You must provide with the names or registered charity numbers of fundraising organisations that you no longer wish to hear from. You must give correct contact details so that organisation(s) can 'suppress' your personal data (i.e. mark as 'do not contact' on their databases).

You may select up to 10 organisations per request (you can make multiple separate requests if you wish). You can choose to stop direct marketing through phone, email, post or text message (your 'contact preferences').

When you have submitted your contact preferences and personal details, each fundraising organisation that you select will receive a notification from the FPS. This written notice will let them know that a suppression request has been made and include instructions on how to access your details safely and securely through the FPS charity portal.

Fundraising organisations are expected to suppress your details within 21 days of your initial FPS request.

Follow up requests and complaints

Whenever you use the FPS to ask that a fundraising organisation stops contacting you, we will send an email notifying to notify it to sign up and/or log in to the secure FPS website. Details of your request will be here (alternatively, organisations can opt to receive a direct update 'feed' of all such requests).

If you still receive direct marketing communications 21 days after your initial request, you can make a follow up request by logging into the FPS using the reference code provided to you. The FPS will then send a second formal notice to the fundraising organisation(s) about your request.

If you continue to receive direct marketing communications from the fundraising organisation and you wish to make a formal complaint, you can contact the Fundraising Regulator using the Fundraising Regulator's Complaints Form. Clearly indicate on the form when you previously requested the fundraising organisation to stop sending you direct marketing.

Providing accurate information

The FPS is only as accurate as the information you provide. The quality of the service we provide will be affected if you:

  1. provide inaccurate or incomplete personal data;
  2. incorrectly select a fundraising organisation; or
  3. tell a fundraising organisation, after making an FPS request, that it can contact you for direct marketing purposes.

Please note:

  1. By using the FPS, you agree that the Fundraising Regulator will act as your agent in sending notices to fundraising organisations to stop contacting you, as described above.
  2. The Fundraising Regulator can only pursue complaints directly with registered charities, although it can make an adjudication about compliance with the Code of Fundraising Practice (the ‘code’) at any time. Failure to comply with a 'stop processing' notice made using the FPS will be treated as a complaint under the code by the Fundraising Regulator.
  3. There may be circumstances when fundraising organisations continue to communicate with you for a limited time after 21 days or for legitimate reasons. Please see our Frequently Asked Questions for further information.

Privacy Policy

Use of personal data

Personal data provided to the FPS through this website or the FPS phone service will be used only for the purposes of suppression (notifying organisations not to contact you with direct marketing communications) and basic administration of the service (which might include sending you a confirmation email or notifying you if our Terms of Use or Privacy Policy change).

We would normally not expect to keep such personal data for longer than four years, as this is the maximum time limit in which you can make a complaint about a fundraising organisation’s non-compliance with the FPS. We may only use data anonymously for research, reporting and statistical analysis.

Access to your data

Personal data you provide to us may be accessed by staff at the Fundraising Regulator, who manage the FPS, and by Syrenis Ltd, our system contractor.

The personal data you provide through the website is stored on servers managed by our contractor, who is bound under a legal agreement with the Fundraising Regulator to protect your data. This requires it to comply with legislation on the secure, lawful and fair processing of personal data, including keeping adequate technical and other measures in place to protect personal data from loss or unauthorised access, and only to use it in accordance with the terms of its agreement with the Fundraising Regulator.

The data provided will be further disclosed to named third parties where you have identified specific fundraising organisations that you no longer wish to receive direct marketing communications from, with your consent and instructions. This data will be solely used for suppression purposes or to be incorporated onto suppression software. Your data will not be disclosed to these third parties for any other purpose, except when requested by you or required by law.

By the terms of accessing the FPS service and/ or notices provided from time to time by the FPS, such third parties are expressly forbidden from using this personal data for any purpose other than suppression of direct marketing communications to those details. They will need to retain sufficient records of this data to do so and are also required to comply with all applicable laws regarding all personal data they receive.

Holding your data

The data that you provide to the FPS is stored on servers managed by our contractor, which are within the European Economic Area (EEA). Where a third party receives your data from us (for example, a fundraising organisation that needs your details for the purposes of suppressing further direct marketing contact), they are restricted under the terms of their contract with us from storing this data outside of the EEA, except where they have ensured adequate protections for your data privacy rights.

Accessing and amending your data

If you wish to change or delete your personal data or want to know what personal data is stored on your behalf by the Fundraising Regulator, contact us at fps@fundraisingregulator.org.uk.

Alternatively, you can write to: The Fundraising Preference Service, Eagle House, 167 City Road, London, EC1V 1AW. Please see the Fundraising Regulator's privacy policy for further information.

Data security

The FPS and our contractors have implemented a variety of industry standard security measures to prevent third parties from accessing personal data, including firewalling, intrusion prevention and IP suppression. Please also see the Fundraising Regulator's Privacy Policy.

Data retention

All personal data provided to the FPS is stored, either by the Fundraising Regulator or our contractors, only for as long as necessary for your use of the FPS. This is necessary to ensure that the relevant fundraising organisations are complying with the relevant FPS notices.

Where your data is provided through the FPS, that data will necessarily be stored by any fundraising organisations you select for the purpose of suppressing personal details until you instruct them to do otherwise. For example, by contacting the organisation directly to change your communication preferences.

Third-party websites

This privacy policy does not apply to third-party websites that users may access from the FPS website. We recommend that you read the applicable privacy policy before entering any personal data on a third-party website.

Changes to this policy

We may be required to change this Privacy Policy from time to as the service evolves and will ensure that the information on this website is updated. However, we do not anticipate any significant changes to the way we hold and process your personal data under the FPS system.

Cookies Policy

What is a cookie?

Cookies are small text files that are transferred to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. Cookies are widely used so that websites work in the way they should and to make sure your preferred settings are remembered.

How does the FPS website use cookies?

The FPS website uses cookies to:

  1. Make our website run effectively; for example, to load faster, show videos and display images
  2. To help us understand how people use our website, so we can improve our services
  3. Track our external marketing activity so that we can optimise its performance

The cookies used on this site are not used for the collection of any personal data. Our cookies will not be used to analyse your visits to other websites or track any internet searches you may do while on the website, other than for statistical analysis. The data collected through cookies will be used to track user behaviour on this website for statistical analysis. Information provided by cookies can help us to understand the profile of our web visitors. This can help us to improve our services.

This website uses both essential and non-essential cookies. You can choose to disable non-essential cookies. More details can be found below.

How do you give consent for cookies?

The first time you access our website, you will be asked if you consent to receiving cookies. If you agree, cookies will be retained on your browser for that visit and for each time you subsequently access the website. You can change your cookies settings by navigating to the footer of the website and clicking "open cookie settings".

You have an option not to allow non-essential cookies, in which case any cookies you choose to disable will not be retained on your browser. If you choose to disable cookies, our website functionality may be affected.

First and third-party cookies

This website uses both first and third-party cookies. First-party cookies are set by the Fundraising Preference Service’s website and only this website can read them. Third-party cookies are set by external websites, such as YouTube. You can turn these off by using the cookie bar, which is available on every webpage. More details are below about the first and third-party cookies we collect.

Session and persistent cookies

Cookies exist on your computer for varying lengths of time. Some cookies will only last as long as your online session, which are called ‘session’ cookies. Others will remain on your computer after you have left our website and closed your browser, which are called ‘persistent’ cookies.

We use persistent cookies to remember your settings for future visits to our website, whereas session cookies are deleted when you close your browser. You can find further details about the expiry of each cookie in the list below.

Essential cookies

Essential cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions, such as displaying a video or collecting basic usage information. This site collects the following essential cookies:

Cookie name(s): ASPSESSION

Purpose: Tracks user progress through the system.

Can I disable these cookies? No. The website will not run properly if this cookie is not used.

Expiry: Session (20 minutes)

Non-essential cookies

These cookies can be disabled. They provide us with important information about how people use the website, so that we can enhance their experience and improve our services.

This site collects the following non-essential cookies:

Cookie name(s): CONSENT

First or third party? Third

Purpose: These cookies are automatically applied from YouTube when adding a video to the website. They allow video to display.

Can I disable these cookies? Yes. Please click the cookies banner to disable non-essential cookies. You can change your cookies preferences anytime by navigating to the footer and clicking on "open cookie settings".

Expiry: 2 years

Cookie name(s): _gid, _ga, _gat_gtag

Purpose: These cookies collect basic statistical usage data of our website on Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.

Can I disable these cookies? No. You cannot disable these cookies on the FPS website, however, Google Analytics offers an opt-out browser add-on. This provides visitors with more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. For more information, visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Expiry:

  1. _gat_gtag – immediately

  2. _gid – 1 day

  3. _ga – 2 days

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to third-party websites (websites run by other organisations).

This policy applies only to the FPS website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy and cookies policies on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the practices of other websites, even if you access them using links from our website.

If you linked to our website from a third-party website, we cannot be responsible for the cookies and privacy policies of the operators of that third-party website and recommend that you read their policies.

Changes to this policy

Any changes we may make to this policy will be updated on this website. Please check this page occasionally to ensure that you are happy with any changes. If we make any significant changes, we’ll make this clear on this website. We keep this policy under regular review. This policy was last updated in April 2022.