Data protection

Data Protection Policy

The School for Social Entrepreneurs (“SSE”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is committed to protecting your information and acting in accordance with your rights under data protection laws. This Data Protection Policy sets out how we will use your information.

This Data Protection Policy shall apply to any individual, including applicants, students, employees, trustees, volunteers, agents and independent contractors, who provide us with personal information for the purposes of registering for or attending courses, applying for grants, applying for employment, or supporting SSE’s work as a funder, partner or volunteer. This Data Protection Policy is supplementary to other contracts that SSE might have with any individual or organisation listed above.

Collection of your information

SSE may collect the following information about you:  

1. a) personal details such as your name, date of birth, e-mail address, home address, country of residence, and other information provided by you in your programme application, course registration, employment application, contract or any other registration provided by us and completed by you;
2. b) information you provide to help us monitor equal opportunities. You are not required to give this information and can opt-out (choosing not to provide it). This includes special categories of personal data such as information concerning your gender, nationality and racial or ethnic origin, disability information, sexual orientation, faith, educational attainment and carer responsibilities;
3. c) the content and information you provide when you create a profile on the SSE Community Platform, any messages or communications you share with other members of the community and information about the groups you are connected to and how you interact with them. Information you exchange on the community platform is not within SSE’s control and is provided at your sole discretion. SSE does not monitor or share this information with any third parties.
4. d) details of any organisations you work for or have interests in including information obtained through reference checks;
5. e) your bank account details if you are accepted on a programme which has a grant attached, or are paid a salary as an employee of SSE, as a contractor, or incur expenses as a volunteer for SSE.
6. f) other information that is otherwise lawfully obtained about you including images from SSE events, quotes, and social impact information.

How we will protect your personal and sensitive data

We protect your personal data by storing it securely, and ensuring only certain personnel with password protected authentication can access personal data for the purposes set out below (please see the section on ‘How we will use your information’). Personal data related to employees will only be accessed by authorised personnel.

Sensitive data is captured to enable SSE to monitor equal opportunities and to ensure our programmes are as accessible as possible to those with additional needs. You are not required to provide this and you can choose not to provide this information. We will never share your sensitive personal data and, to the extent possible, we will not attach such data to your personal record

How we will use your information

We will use your information for the purposes of administering your application or contract, in order to contact you about your application or contract, and for the monitoring of equal opportunities.

This includes making reasonable adjustments in line with the Equalities Act 2010, or other additional support that maybe required by staff, students, volunteers or any other individual supporting SSE’s work.

By submitting an application or registration, or agreeing to support SSE and our programmes, you are providing your consent to us processing your information for the purposes of the applicant selection process (either as an employee or a student), for the monitoring of equal opportunities, or to carry out our legitimate business interests and activities.

If your application is successful, we will continue to process your information as necessary for the performance of our contract with you, for your participation in the programme or course, and as we further notify you. Please note that whilst you can withdraw your consent at any time in the manner set out below, failure to provide your consent may mean that we cannot consider your application or you may not be able to continue your programme or contract.

We may use your information to communicate with you about programmes, courses and services we believe may be of interest to you in accordance with your communicated preferences. This might include sending you our newsletter on courses / programmes, wider sector news, funding opportunities, inviting you to speak on one of our programmes (paid or unpaid) or offering you other opportunities such as PR, business introductions, invitations to events or introductions to potential clients.

On occasions we may also use information you provide such as quotes, questionnaire and interview feedback, photographic images and video footage (where SSE owns the copyright), case studies and social impact information for marketing or fundraising purposes.  This includes social media, website and on printed material.

We will use employee information to maintain records about your employment and basic personnel files. We will use contractor and volunteer information to maintain records about your engagement with SSE and to keep records accordingly.

Disclosure of your information

We may share your information with:

• other SSE schools within the SSE network (you can see a list of the schools included within our network here in the UK);
• Funders; including corporates ( e.g. Lloyds Banking Group); Trusts and Foundations (e.g. Big Lottery Fund, Power to Change); Councils and government bodies (e.g. Bath and North East Somerset Council, Devon County Council) and individual donors
• our volunteers;
• those within our network such as students, fellows, etc.;
• third party suppliers
• others to confirm your identity for money laundering purposes and fraud prevention.

We make the disclosures of your information described above in order to process your application, to determine whether you are a suitable candidate, or (if your application is successful) to facilitate your engagement with SSE as a student, fellow, staff member, contractor, volunteer etc. including offering you other opportunities such as business introductions, invitations to events or introductions to potential clients.

We may also provide your information to our professional advisors and grant managers for the purpose of the services they provide to us (including 3^rd party data processors for evaluation purposes) and may need to disclose your information if compelled to do so by law, a regulator or in the course of legal proceedings.

Transfer of data outside UK

We may store your information on third party data centres located outside the UK, where there is not a similar standard of data protection laws. If so, we will take steps to ensure that adequate levels of protection are applied to your information. SSE shall make available a current list of third-party third service providers outside the UK receiving your information.

Retention of your information

We will hold your information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity unless a longer retention period is required by law, in which case we will hold your information for the period required by law.

For SSE Community Hub if there has been no contact or activity for 3 years SSE will contact you three times to explain that we are going to remove your personal data from the SSE Community Hub.

Your rights

Under data protection laws, you have a right to:

• obtain a copy of your information;
• correct or complete your information;
• procure that we delete your information; and
• withdraw consent to our use of your information (to the extent such use is based on consent) or otherwise object to the way in which we use your information.

Providing us with your information is necessary for us to consider your application and enter into a contract with you. Failure to provide your information may mean we cannot consider your application.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, or if you have any questions about our use of your information, please use this form or write to Data Protection Queries, 13-15 Dock Street, Whitechapel, London, E1 8JN.

You also have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office or other appropriate regulatory authority in relation to your information held by us, and how we use it (contact details can be found here https://ico.org.uk/).

Status of Data Protection Notice

This Data Protection Notice is non-contractual. We reserve the right to amend it from time to time. Amendments will be posted to the website and, where appropriate, through e-mail notification. Unless otherwise specified all such changes will take effect immediately upon posting to the website.