This policy sets out what we do with your personal data which you provide to us, for example when you visit our website, sign up to our newsletters, purchase membership and/or event tickets, make a donation or apply for a job.
We are the Royal Institution of Great Britain (Ri) an independent charity (Registered Charity Number: 227938) and our postal address is 21 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BS. We are the data controller for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulations unless otherwise stated, and our Data Protection Officer is Ian Smith.
If you have a question or concern about this policy, or about privacy or data protection at the Ri, you can get in touch with us via our postal address above or by calling +44 (0)20 7409 2992 or by emailing dataprotection@ri.ac.uk
By visiting our website you agree to the terms of this policy and to our terms of use. Please be aware that from time to time we will update both this policy and our terms of use. Please note that this policy and our terms of use do not apply to any third party website which may be linked to our website.
We use Google Analytics, Diginius Insight and from time to time Facebook pixels to collect data about your visits to our website. Please view our cookies policy for further details.
We may collect and process your personal data. Personal data is any information by which a living individual might be identified directly or indirectly. For example, a person may be identified by name, age, geographical location, email address or social media username, or a combination of these.
In the sections below we outline the situations in which we collect and process your personal data. We also let you know why we need your personal data, how it will be processed and stored, and how you can make changes to your details or request that processing of your personal data is stopped.
Our newsletters
We may collect and process personal data that you choose to provide to us by filling in forms on our website. You may provide your name, email address and interestswhen you sign up to our newsletters to keep you up to date about our work, events, membership and fundraising and any topics in which you have expressed specific interest. We will process your personal data based on your consent to receiving our newsletters.
From time to time, we will send you information about our partners, for example regarding related events and activities that are hosted and/or run by them. We will store the information you provide securely in our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system called Salesforce. We will not keep your details for longer than necessary. You can change your details at any time via the ‘Update
details’ button in our emails or by emailing ri@ri.ac.uk
Ticketed events
You may book tickets for our events online. You may provide your or your guest’s name and email address to complete the booking for our public events. Due to the nature of our family events and workshops we require some additional, special categories of personal data such as medical conditions. Please see our events terms and conditions for more details.
For event bookings we use a third party service, Eventbrite. All personal information provided by you and processed by Eventbrite is also governed by Eventbrite's privacy policy, a copy of which is located at eventbrite.com/privacypolicy. The Royal Institution will use your personal data to send you emails relating to the specific event(s) you have booked based on our legitimate interest.
The Royal Institution occasionally runs events in partnership with other organisations. In this instance we may share your personal data with these third parties, solely for the purpose of providing you with information relating to the event. We will inform you of this, including the name and contact details of the partner organisation with whom we may share your details, at the time of making a
booking for such an event.
If you have any queries in relation to the processing of your personal data for our
events please contact the Public Programme team at events@ri.ac.uk
Membership
You may purchase membership for yourself or for someone else as a gift and provide us with your or the gift recipient’s name, age, postal address and email address. We ask you to provide a date of birth so that we can make sure that the most appropriate membership level and benefits are provided to you or the recipient of the gift membership. We will process this information so that we can fulfil our
obligations to you or the recipient of the gift as a member as well as to be able to keep your or the gift recipient’s membership record accurate and up to date.
Membership records are created and stored securely in Salesforce. We will not keep your details for longer than necessary. Your details or the gift recipient’s, such as name and postal address, will only be shared with our suppliers who produce and send our membership cards and welcome packs to our members. We have appropriate agreements in place with them with particular attention to the processing and destroying of personal data.
You can change your details at any time via the ‘update details’ button in our emails or by contacting the Ri Membership team at membership@ri.ac.uk or by calling +44 (0)20 7491 6588 from Monday to Friday between 9.30am and 5.30pm.
Fundraising and development
You may provide us with your name, email address, phone number and postal address for the purpose of joining as an Ri Patron, making a donation, giving a major gift or leaving a legacy. You may provide these details either by completing a form online or by downloading and completing a PDF form. We will process this information so that we can fulfil our obligations to you as a patron as well as to be able to keep your patron record accurate. Your record is created and stored securely in Salesforce. We will not keep your details for longer than necessary.
You may provide us with your name, email address, phone number and postal address for the purpose of making an individual donation via JustGiving. You may provide these details by completing a form on our JustGiving account. You will be redirected from rigb.org to justgiving.com/royalinstitution. All personal information provided by you and processed by Just Giving is also governed by the Just Giving privacy policy which can be found here: justgiving.com/info/privacy-policy-versions/privacy-policy-v20. The Royal Institution will use your personal data to send you emails relating to the specific donation you have made.
If you make a donation or become a member of one of our philanthropic schemes, we may ask if you would like your name to be credited in publicity materials and donor attribution boards displayed in public areas.
We may conduct further research or use profiling or wealth screening techniques to ensure communications are relevant and timely and to provide an improved experience for our supporters. Profiling also allows us to target our resources effectively and to target fundraising. We do this because it allows us to raise more funds, sooner, and more cost-effectively than we otherwise would. We may use a third-party to analyse the personal data that we hold about you to carry out this
work on our behalf.
When building a profile we may analyse geographic, demographic and other information relating to you in order to understand your interests and preferences. In doing this we may use third party sources. We build a profile using the information you have given us and publicly available information. Data gathered from this research is stored as Personal and Special Category Data. You can opt out of your data being used for this purpose by emailing dataprotection@ri.ac.uk
Our corporate member and partnership enquiries are processed by our development team. You may send an enquiry via rigb.org and provide us with your name, telephone number, email address and/or postal address. We will process this information so that we can fulfil our contractual obligations to you as a client. Your enquiry record is created in Salesforce and stored securely. We will not keep your
details for longer than necessary.
You can change your details at any time via the ‘Update details’ button in our emails to you or by contacting the Ri Development team at development@ri.ac.uk or by calling +44 (0)20 7409 2992 from Monday to Friday between 9.30am and 5.00pm.
Activities for schools
Our activities for schools are delivered in schools around the country and/or at the Royal Institution. For us to be able to run the programme we need to collect and process some personal details of the school representative so that we can fulfil our contractual obligations. Where appropriate, parents or legal guardians will be asked for their consent for media and photography via the school’s representative, and for permission for the Ri to give medical assistance if required. This is in line with our obligation to care for young people whilst taking part in our activities for schools.
In addition to the above, and as part of our Masterclass programme, organisers, supporting partners, Masterclass speakers, participating students and their parents or legal guardians may share their personal data with us.
All personal data provided to the Ri is processed in line with the data protection legislation and the Ri data protection policy. We will keep all details securely in Salesforce. We will not keep your data for longer than necessary. You can change your details by emailing schools@ri.ac.uk or by calling +44 (0)20 7409 2992
Heritage and collections
If you would like to make a research appointment to our archives or request copies of documents for personal research you will be required to provide a signed form indicating that you agree to comply with our terms and conditions. These forms can be downloaded from our website and include some details such as your name, email address, phone number and postal address. Completed forms will be kept securely in our archives based on our legitimate interest.
If you would like to book a heritage tour you will need to provide us with your name, phone number and email address. We collect and process these details so that we can deliver the tour(s) for which you have signed up. We will not keep your details for longer than necessary.
For any further enquiries please contact the Heritage and Collections team at archivist@ri.ac.uk
Venue hire
Our venue hire enquiries and events are managed by RiGB Ltd, our subsidiary company (Registered in England No. 04065626). You may send an enquiry via venue.rigb.org and provide us with your name, telephone number, email address and/or postal address. We will process this information so that we can fulfil our contractual obligations to you as a client. Your enquiry record is created in Salesforce and stored securely. We will not keep your details for longer than necessary. You can change your details at any time by emailing the Venue Hire team at venuehire@ri.ac.uk
For more information, please see the RiGB Ltd. privacy policy.
Job applications and employment
Should you apply for a job at the Royal Institution you will be required to provide personal details such as your name, postal address, email address and phone number, so that the HR team can contact you in relation to your application. This information will only be shared with relevant hiring managers.
For the purpose of monitoring equal opportunities, we also request information such as your ethnic background and religion. This information is voluntary and, if submitted, will be separated from your application and only handled by the HR Department.
Should you be unsuccessful in your application, your details will be held for a
maximum of 12 months.
Should you be successful, your Application Form/CV/Personal Statement will form part of your contract with the Ri and be retained on your confidential personnel file for the duration of your employment and for a maximum of six years after your employment has ceased.
If you have any questions about how we process your personal data for recruitment or would like to change any of your details please get in touch with the Ri HR team at recruitment@ri.ac.uk
For event bookings we use a third party service, Eventbrite. Their privacy policy can be found at eventbrite.com/privacypolicy. Please also see the ‘Ticketed events’ section of this policy above.
For donations made online we use a third party service Just Giving. Their privacy policy which can be found here: justgiving.com/info/privacy-policy-versions/privacy-policy-v20. Please also see the ‘Fundraising and development’ section of this policy above.
We occasionally carry out surveys to receive feedback on our programmes and activities using a third party service via Microsoft All personal information provided by you and processed by Microsoft is also governed by their privacy policy which can be found here: privacy.microsoft.com/en-gb/privacystatement
We obtain confirmation from these and other third party suppliers that they comply with all relevant current data protection legislation and regulation in the UK.
We keep your details secure and we will ensure that we only keep your details for as long as necessary. We have processes in place to ensure personal data is kept for the purpose for which it was originally collected and that it is accurate and up to date. Any personal data which is no longer required for its original purpose will be securely removed from our records unless it is required to keep such data for legal purposes or is permissible due to our legitimate interest.
We maintain appropriate administrative, technical and physical safeguards to protect the personal data in our possession from accidental, unauthorised or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, disclosure, access or use, and all other unlawful forms of processing.
We will not share your personal data with a third party except when it is necessary to be able to fulfil our obligations.
Some of the information that we ask you to provide may be submitted directly to a third party service provider which collects and stores information for us and sends out emails on our behalf. By signing up to our newsletters and /or buying a membership a record on our CRM system, Salesforce, will be created for you (and the recipient in the case of a gift membership). Our emails are sent via email marketing software, Marketing Cloud which is an add-on feature of Salesforce.
We may also share your personal data with a third party if we are under duty to disclose or share your details in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce our terms of use.
We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that any of your details which we share with third parties in the above circumstances are treated securely and in accordance with the terms of this policy.
We will not transfer any of your details to destinations outside of the European
Economic Area.
Payments made on our website using a debit or credit card are processed by Opayo, a Tier 1 DSS compliant payment processor. We accept MasterCard, Visa, Visa Delta and Maestro. We cannot accept Solo, Visa Electron, American Express or Diners cards.
You can also set up a direct debit online. This process is managed by a provider called GoCardless.
You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. If you would like to request such a copy, please contact us at our postal address or by email at dataprotection@ri.ac.uk.
You may ask us to correct or remove information you think is inaccurate by contacting us at dataprotection@ri.ac.uk. You may request that further processing of your personal data is stopped and/or your personal details are removed from our records by contacting us at dataprotection@ri.ac.uk
You can unsubscribe from any newsletters we send you. To change email preferences, please contact us at ri@ri.ac.uk. You can also unsubscribe by clicking on the ‘Unsubscribe’ button in our emails to you.
We hope you will be happy with the way we handle your personal details, but if not you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner – please see ico.org.uk.
This page was last updated on 17 June 2024.