BfS Privacy Policy

At Business for Scotland, we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about our subscribers, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others (we wont without your explicit approval) and how we keep your data secure.

We may update this policy in line with regulation, this version was last updated in May 2018 to be compliant with GDPR.

By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.  Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to [email protected] 

Who are we?

BfS is a campaigning Business network and business and economic policy think tank – we are non party political and support a wide range of pluralistic political and economic policies.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you use our website, for example, when you contact us about reports and events, to make a donation, or if you register to receive updates from us.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, telephone number should we need to contact you.  If you make a donation online or purchase an event ticket book or report or similar from us, your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. 

How is your information used?

We may use your information to: 

  • Process a donation that you have made;
  • Process orders that you have submitted;
  • To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
  • Dealing with entries into a competition;
  • Seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
  • Request your participation in opinion polls;
  • Notify you of changes to our services;
  • Send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you: 
    • These may include information about campaigns, appeals, other fundraising activities, promotions of our associated companies’ goods and services;
  • To process a grant or job application;
  • We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis;
  • We will not hold your personal information in our CRM system for more than two years without reestablishing consent; 
Who has access to your information?

We will not sell, rent  your information to third parties. We will not pass on your information to third parties,unless you expressly ask us to do so.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf: When you are using our secure online donation and ticketing pages, your donation is processed by a third party payment processor, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us.

We may transfer your personal information to a third party as part of a donation, such as if you were to purchase a weekend at a lodge at our annual dinner etc – we would have to allow the lodge owner to arrange the booking with you.  

Your choices

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about the vital work we do in support of Scottish Independence and Scotland’s prosperity then you can unsubscribe by clicking the link attached to every business communication we sent to you by email. 

If you unsubscribe from the email confirmation we will email you a confirmation asking if you would also like us to delete all of your data or if you want us to be able to contact you for further campaigns and events.

If we have an ongoing direct debit contribution from you or you have purchased, consent is renewed with each payment.   

We will not contact you for marketing purposes by post if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us by email: [email protected].

You have the right to ask for a copy of the information BfS hold about you for free.  To cover our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you we may ask for a donation of £10, however this is not mandatory.

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information

When you give us personal information, we store it securely, in our Customer Management System and mailing list systems.  We do not store any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) which are only stored by trusted third party suppliers such as Paypal and Go Cardless. 

Our data can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure, and as with all organisations while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. However as a high profile organisation we take a professional and competent approach to your personal data security (unlike Scotland in Union). 

Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our websites, mobile Apps etc you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site.

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.

Review of this Policy

We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated in May 2018.