How We Use and Protect Your Information
We’re committed to keeping your personal information safe and being transparent about how we use it. Here’s the key information that you need to know which is detailed in the full privacy policy below:
What information we collect
- Basic details like your name, contact information, and (where relevant) photos from events.
- Donation and payment information, including Gift Aid status.
- How you interact with our website, emails and events.
- In some cases, and only when appropriate, health or other sensitive information (e.g., for high‑risk events or family stays).
- If you share your family’s story with us, we may collect information you choose to provide for fundraising or awareness purposes.
How we collect it
- Directly from you when you donate, sign up for events, fundraise, or contact us.
- Through our website (e.g. cookies).
- When you have been recommended or introduced to us.
- From trusted partners such as JustGiving, event organisers, or auction platforms – only when you’ve given permission.
- From publicly available sources to help us understand supporters and fundraise responsibly.
How we use your information
- To process donations, manage events, and keep in touch with you.
- To send you updates about our work and ways you can support us (only if you haven’t opted out).
- To ensure our fundraising is effective and respectful, including conducting research and profiling to tailor communications.
- To support families staying in our Houses, where needed.
- To comply with legal obligations.
When we share your information
- With trusted third parties who help us deliver events, campaigns, or supporter communications or manage our charity.
- With regulatory bodies or authorities if legally required.
- We never sell your personal data.
Keeping your data safe
- We use appropriate technical and organisational safeguards to protect your information.
- Access is limited to people who strictly need it.
- We only keep your data for as long as needed for our work or to meet legal obligations.
Your rights
You can at any time:
- Ask to see, correct, or delete your personal data.
- Opt out of marketing communications.
- Object to certain types of processing, including profiling.
- Ask us to restrict or transfer your data.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at info@ronaldmcdonaldhouse.org.uk or 03000 111 113.
Please review the complete privacy policy below for further details.
Privacy policy
1. Important information and who we are
Purpose of this privacy policy
This detailed privacy policy aims to give you information on how Ronald McDonald House UK collects and processes your personal data.
It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements the other policies and notices and is not intended to override them.
Controller
Ronald McDonald House UK (registered charity in England and Wales (802047) and in Scotland (SC040717), registered company in England and Wales (02252337)) is the controller and responsible for your personal data.
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact us using the details set out below.
Contact details
Our full details are:
Full name of legal entity: Ronald McDonald House UK
Email address: info@ronaldmcdonaldhouse.org.uk
Postal address: 11-59 High Road, East Finchley, London, N2 8AW
Telephone number: 03000 111 113
Changes to the privacy policy
This version was last updated July 2026
We regularly review this document and may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal data we will make this clear on the Ronald McDonald House UK’s Website.
Third-party links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.
2. The data we collect about you
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
Supporters
If you support us (for example make a donation, volunteer, register to fundraise, bid on an auction prize or sign up for an event) we may collect, use, store or transfer different kinds of personal data about you or your child (where you have provided your child’s data to us) which we have grouped together as follows:
- Identity Data includes full name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth, gender, photography and film.
- Contact Data includes address, email address and telephone numbers.
- Financial Data includes bank account, payment card details and whether you are a UK taxpayer so we can claim Gift Aid.
- Transaction Data includes details about payments from you and other details of donations you have made.
- Profile Data includes connection to cause, family, friends, networks, job role, employer, types of activities you may be interested in, geographic and demographic data.
- Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, 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.
- Usage Data includes information about how you use our website.
- Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
We also collect, use and share statistical or demographic data in an aggregated form for any purpose so that no individual can be identified from such data (Aggregated Data).
For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature.
Where it is appropriate we may also collect Special Categories of Personal Data about you: information relating to your health (for example if you are taking part in a high-risk event), political opinions (for example if you are on a political register), racial or ethnic origin (for example if you are part of the family that we provide accommodation and support to) religious beliefs (for example to provide required support at our accommodations) or your sexual orientation. This is also relevant where you are sharing your story about your experiences in our Houses to help further our work.
We may also ask why you have decided to donate to us. We will never make this question mandatory, and only want to know the answer if you are comfortable telling us.
Children’s data
We only collect or publish a child’s personal data when we have the explicit informed consent of their parent or guardian.
Usually, we collect the personal data of children when their family are staying in one of our Ronald McDonald Houses. However, we may also collect data when children attend our events or fundraise for us. When we collect and manage information from children, we aim to manage it in a way which is appropriate to the age of the child.
Our events have specific rules about whether children can participate, and we’ll make sure advertising for those events is age-appropriate.
Where we know or have reason to believe a child is under 13 our policy is not to collect personal information from them unless it is necessary for a specific activity and where the child’s parent or guardian has first provided written consent to that specific activity.
Where we know or have reason to believe a child is under 16 we will not collect (nor encourage any child to give) more detailed information than is needed by us to facilitate that child’s selected activities, without first obtaining the written consent of a parent or guardian.
3. How is your personal data collected
We use different methods to collect data from and about you, as either a Supporter, through sharing your story or where we provide support to your family, including through:
Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes the personal data you provide when you:
- donate to us;
- sign up for one of our events;
- tell us your story;
- purchase our products;
- request marketing to be sent to you; or
- participate in a survey.
Please note that if you enter your details onto one of our online forms, and you don’t “send” or “submit” the form, we may contact you to see if we can help with any problems you may be experiencing with the form or our websites.
You may also choose to tell us about your experiences in our Houses to help further our work. You may take on a role as an ambassador, attend our events, or sit on our House Boards. This may include you sharing Identity, Contact or other Special Category Data such as information relating to your ethnicity, health or family life.
We also provide accommodation and support to individuals and families with children receiving treatment in specialist children’s hospitals. In addition to the other data collection methods, we will also collect Identity, Contact and other Special Category personal data such as information relating to your ethnicity, health or family life, directly from you in order to provide those services.
Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies. Please see our cookie policy for further details.
Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties including as set out below:
- Technical Data from analytics providers such as Google based outside the EU.
- Identity and Contact Data from health services, independent event organisers or fundraising sites such as the NHS, the London Marathon, JustGiving and Virgin Money Giving, all based inside the EU. These independent third parties will only pass us your personal data when you have indicated that you wish to support Ronald McDonald House UK and usually with your consent. You should check their Privacy Policy when you provide your information to understand fully how they will process your data.
- Identity, Contact, Financial and Transaction Data collected when you register for one of our events, e.g. the data you enter into EMMA or any other event registration platforms.
- Identity and Contact Data from online survey responses when you complete a survey on Survey Monkey or any other survey platform.
- Identity, Contact, Financial and Transaction Data entered when you make a donation via CAF (Charities Aid Foundation), or through Givergy, Gala Bid, or any other charitable organisations or platforms used at our charity auctions.
- Other third parties that may have introduced or recommended you to us.
- External sources may also include data from credible, publicly available sources such as Companies House, the Electoral Register, Post Office’s National Change of Address database, political and property registers, national and local press, other charity and company sites, ‘rich lists’ and social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter if you made these accounts public, along with data acquired from wealth screenings.
As a fundraising organisation, we undertake in-house research and from time to time engage with specialist agencies who are required to meet our strict standards, to gather information about you from publicly available sources. We may also carry out wealth screening to fast track the research using our trusted third-party partners. You will always have the right to opt out of this processing.
4. Why we use your personal data
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Ronald McDonald House UK uses any one of the following lawful basis for processing your personal information:
- Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you, for example, receipt of a one-time donation, setting up an ongoing donation or when you purchase our products.
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. Legitimate interest means the interest of our charity in pursuing our mission: to ensure we have sufficient funds and expertise to develop and sustain free accommodation at specialist children’s hospitals in the UK. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us on info@ronaldmcdonaldhouse.org.uk or 03000 111 113. For more information on legitimate interest, please see the ICO’s website or contact us.
- Where it is necessary for us to comply with legal and regulatory requirements. This is where we believe it is in the public interest to process your data and this interest is supported under the lawful basis of legal obligation, safeguarding and/or equality.
- You have consented to us processing your data. In particular, see the section on children’s data above.
Ronald McDonald House UK gets its authority to process your personal information from the legal requirements set out in the following legislation (laws):
- Data Protection Act 2018 (incorporating the UK General Data Protection Regulation)
- Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.
Your personal information is processed and stored in accordance with the legal requirements in the corresponding laws.
Purposes for which we will use your personal data
We have set out below a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so.
| Purpose of processing | Categories of personal data | Lawful basis for processing |
| To register you as a new supporter |
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Performance of a contract with you |
| To deliver services to you and your children, including managing donations, sharing your story or providing accommodation and support to families in our Houses |
If we provide you accommodation, this may include Special Categories of Personal Data |
Where this includes processing Special Categories of Personal Data, this is done pursuant to our legitimate activities as a not-for-profit body or is based on your consent |
| To notify you about changes to or services, terms or privacy policy |
|
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| To manage our relationship with you |
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| To identify prospective supporters who may have an affinity to our cause but are not in touch with us yet | We will only use publicly available information for this which may include:
This may include Special Categories of Personal Data |
Our legitimate interests (to grow our charity) Where this includes processing Special Categories of Personal Data, this is only done where information is made public by the data subject. |
| To carry out due diligence on our donors in line with our Gift Acceptance Policy and meet the money laundering regulations |
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| To provide you updates about our progress and ask for donations or other support (occasionally, this may include information from our partner organisations or supporting organisations) |
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| To enable you to complete a survey, leave a review, provide us with feedback or make a complaint. |
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Our legitimate interests (to study how customers engage with our charity, to develop and grow our supporter base) |
| To administer and protect our charity and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) |
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| To deliver relevant website content and material to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the material we serve to you |
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Our legitimate interests (to study how supporters engage with our charity, to develop and grow our supporter base and to inform our engagement strategy) |
| To use data analytics to improve our website, donation functions, products and services, marketing, supporter relationships and experiences |
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Our legitimate interests (to define types of supporters, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our charity and to inform our engagement strategy) |
| To make suggestions and recommendations to you about events, products and services that may be of interest to you and make other promotional offers |
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Our legitimate interests (to develop our services and grow our supporter base) |
| Build profiles of our supporters |
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Our legitimate interests (to develop our services and grow our supporter base, to ensure communications are relevant and timely, to target our resources effectively and to raise more funds, sooner and more cost-effectively) |
| Monitoring if there is a cause for concern in connection with a specific volunteer or donor. This is not done proactively. |
This may include Special Categories of Personal Data obtained from public sources. |
Our legitimate interests (to comply with our regulatory obligations, to keep our volunteers, supporters and families safe and to protect the charity’s reputation). Where this includes processing Special Categories of Personal Data, this is done pursuant to our legitimate activities as a not-for-profit body or substantial public interest. |
| Legal and regulatory purposes including to protect our charity (by bringing and defending claims) or comply with our obligations as a charity | Any of the identified categories of personal data that we hold about you |
In case of processing Special Category Data, the legal basis for processing is the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims |
| Restructuring our charity (including in the context of internal re-organisations, business transfers and the planning, administration and negotiation of the same) | Any of the identified categories of personal data that we hold about you | Our legitimate interests (to transfer books of business or restructure or sell our business). |
Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out above.
Where indicated above, we sometimes collect and use your personal data to enter into a contract with you or to perform our obligations under a contract with you, or because the law requires us to collect the personal data. If you don’t provide us with this information (or authorise its provision by a third party), we might not be able to enter a contract with you or perform it or provide services to you. In this case, we might have to cancel the contract or service you have with us, but we will notify you if this is the case.
6. Change of purpose
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.
If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
7. Disclosures of your personal data
We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table above. Third Parties may include:
- Event organising companies based in the UK who help us deliver fundraising events like Gala Dinners and Golf Days, including Four Impact.
- If we run an event in partnership with another named organisation your details may need to be shared with that organisation. We will clearly set out what will happen to your data when you register for a specific event.
- Marketing platforms, such as Facebook, to help us deliver content to let you know about news from the charity and ways you can get involved, including for
- the purposes of third-party targeted advertising to help us improve your experience and enable us to create custom audiences, provided you have consented to this through your advertising preferences. If you don’t want to see our targeted advertising, you can set ad preferences in your Facebook settings or you can adjust your advertising preferences in your browser settings.
- Legal advisors where necessary to investigate, exercise or defend legal claims or other claims of a similar nature.
- Police and law enforcement bodies when required to do so by law, legal process, statute, rule, regulation, or professional standard, or to respond to a subpoena, search warrant, or other legal request, and where necessary to facilitate the prevention or detection of crime or the apprehension or prosecution of offenders.
- Regulatory and government bodies and public authorities where necessary for us to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, or in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual illegal activity.
- Third party suppliers where we outsource our processing operations to suppliers that process personal data on our behalf. Examples include IT service providers who manage our IT and back-office systems, telecommunications networks, repair service providers, marketing agencies and partners, cloud hosting networks, and our courier and delivery suppliers. These processing operations shall remain under our control and will be carried out in accordance with our security standards and strict instructions.
- Successors of the business where we sell or transfer an affiliate or book of business, or acquire or merge with another organisation, in whole or in part. Personal data may be shared with relevant third parties as part of our due diligence process and transferred to the acquiring entity (where applicable).
- Internal and external auditors if necessary for the conduct of charity audits or to investigate a complaint or security threat.
- Other third-party business partners who may collaborate or co-operate with us. We will let you know if this is relevant and you should refer to their privacy notices for more information about their privacy practices.
Additionally, if you choose to tell us about your experience in our Houses and share your story, and if we have your explicit and informed consent (from our consent form), or your parent or guardian’s explicit and informed consent if you are under 16, the information that you provided in connection with your story may be made public by us at events and in materials and communications promoting our campaigning and fundraising work or in documents such as our annual report.
For individuals and families that we provide accommodation and support to, Ronald McDonald House UK may share your details in exceptional circumstances to comply with the ‘Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics for Nurses and Midwives’ code or where legally required, for example where a child reports abuse, or someone reports serious self-harm or a serious intention of harming someone else.
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.
8. International transfers
Some of our external third parties are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
where we use certain service providers, we may use contracts which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; and
where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the Europe and the US. For further details, see European Commission: EU-US Privacy Shield.
Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.
9. Data security
We ensure that there are appropriate technical controls in place to protect your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, volunteers, agents, contractors and other third parties who strictly need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
In addition, our online forms are always encrypted and our network is protected and routinely monitored.
Information about families that we provide accommodation and support to is stored on our database and only ever shared drive in password-protected folders.
Where we use external companies to collect or process personal data on our behalf, we do comprehensive checks on these companies before we work with them and put a contract in place that sets out our expectations and requirements, especially regarding how they manage the personal data they have collected or have access to.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
10. Data Retention
We will only retain your personal data 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.
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.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see “Request erasure of your personal data” below for further information.
In some circumstances, we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
11. Your legal rights
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You have the right to:
- Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you know whether we hold your personal data and, if so, to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it. You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data, unless your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive, in which case we may charge a reasonable fee or refuse to comply with your request. In addition, as a security measure to prevent unauthorised disclosures of personal data, we may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identify. We aim to respond to all legitimate requests within one month, however it may take longer in the case of more complex or numerous requests, and we may contact you to ask for follow up information to expedite the process.
- Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us. We really appreciate if you let us know if your details change.
- Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
- Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, obtain human intervention on the part of the controller, and to express your point of view. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
- Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
- Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable, portable and reusable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
- Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
- Opt out and refuse marketing. You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by contacting us. Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a product purchase, event registration, donation agreement or other transactions.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.