Privacy Policy
1. Who we are
Raise Your Hands is a registered charity (number 1174956) in England and Wales. We find some of the UK’s most effective small children’s charities and make it simple to support them. We are the data controller for the personal information described in this policy, which means we decide how it is used and are responsible for looking after it.
You can contact us about your information at any time:
- Email: [email protected]
- Post: Raise Your Hands, c/o Bowmer & Kirkland, 21 Conduit Street, London W1S 2XP
Our Data Protection lead is our Head of Communications and Development.
2. What this policy covers
This policy explains what we collect when you use raiseyourhands.org.uk, donate, sign up for our emails, contact us or interact with us on social media. We never sell your personal information.
| If you… | We collect | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Donate | Name, email, address, donation details, Gift Aid declaration | To take your donation, thank you, claim Gift Aid and keep proper records |
| Sign up for emails | Name, email, how you use our emails | To send you news about our charities and how to support them |
| Contact us | Name, email, phone (if given), your message | To reply to you |
| Visit the website | Device and usage information, cookies (with your consent) | To run the site securely, understand how it’s used and measure our campaigns |
| Message us on social media | Your profile name and message | To reply to you |
3. When you donate
When you give through our website, we collect your name, email address, postal address, the amount and date of your gift, whether it is one-off or regular, and anything you choose to tell us in the form.
- Card payments are processed by Stripe. Your card details go straight to Stripe and are never stored on our website or seen in full by us.
- Direct Debits are set up and collected by GoCardless, which handles your bank details.
- Gift Aid: if you make a Gift Aid declaration, we keep it with your name, home address and donation history, and share the details HMRC needs to process our claim.
- Donor records: we keep a record of you and your donations in Salesforce, our supporter database, so we can thank you, send receipts, process Gift Aid, answer your questions and keep accurate financial records.
- Spam protection: our donation forms use Google reCAPTCHA to check that a real person, not a bot, is giving. This helps stop fraud.
We will email you a receipt and may contact you about your donation, for example if a payment fails. These messages are about your gift, not marketing. We only send news and appeals if you have opted in (see section 4).
We do not pass your details to the charities we fund.
4. Our emails and newsletter
We only send you news, stories and appeals by email if you have said yes, for example by ticking the box when you donate or signing up on our website. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of every email, or by emailing us.
We use Mailchimp to store our mailing list and send our emails. Mailchimp tells us which emails were opened and which links were clicked, including by whom. We use this to understand what our supporters find interesting and to improve what we send. If you’d rather we didn’t, you can unsubscribe, or turn off images in your email app, which stops most open tracking.
5. When you contact us
If you use a form on our website or email us, we collect what you send: usually your name, email address, phone number if you give it, and your message. Website forms also record the date and time you sent it. We use this information to reply to you and to keep a record of our conversation.
6. When you visit our website
Running the site securely. Our website is hosted by 34SP.com. Like most websites, our servers keep logs of each visit, including your IP address, the page requested, the time, and your browser and device type. We use these logs to keep the site secure and working, and keep them for up to 2 years. Our security software, Wordfence, also uses IP addresses to block attacks.
Analytics (only with your consent). If you accept analytics cookies, we use Google Analytics to understand how people find and use our site, such as which pages are popular and which device types are used. We don’t use it to identify you.
Advertising measurement (only with your consent). We advertise on Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Google, Microsoft (Bing) and LinkedIn. If you accept advertising cookies, these platforms’ tags tell us when someone who saw our ads visits the site, starts a donation or completes one, so we can see which ads work and spend our budget well. For Meta, we also send these events from our own server (the Meta Conversions API) to make the measurement more reliable. Each platform uses this information under its own privacy policy.
Some of this tracking runs through our own server-side tagging set-up on Google Cloud, which passes the information on to Google Analytics and Meta.
7. Social media
We share our work on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. If you message us or comment on our posts, we see your profile name and what you wrote, and use it to reply. These platforms are run by other companies, which handle your information under their own privacy policies and may store it outside the UK.
8. Cookies
Cookies are small files saved on your device when you visit a website. We use a few that the site needs to work. With your permission, we also use some that help us understand how people use the site and measure our campaigns.
When you first visit, we ask which cookies you are happy with. You can change your choice at any time using the cookie icon at the bottom left of every page, or here: change your cookie settings.
Necessary cookies (always on)
| Cookie | Set by | What it does | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| cookieyes-consent | Raise Your Hands (CookieYes) | Remembers your cookie choices | 1 year |
| charitable_session | Raise Your Hands (Charitable) | Keeps your donation details together while you give | 1 day |
| __stripe_mid, __stripe_sid, m | Stripe | Processes card donations securely and prevents fraud | Up to 13 months |
| _GRECAPTCHA, rc::a, rc::c | Google reCAPTCHA | Protects our forms from spam and bots | Up to 6 months, or until you clear it |
| wpEmojiSettingsSupports | WordPress | Checks your browser displays emojis correctly | Session |
Analytics cookies (only if you agree)
| Cookie | Set by | What it does | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| _ga, _ga_* | Google Analytics | Counts visits and shows how people find and use the site | Up to 13 months |
| FPID, FPLC | Google Tag Manager | Supports our analytics set-up | Session |
| apb_post_viewed_* | Raise Your Hands | Counts a view of a blog post once per day | 1 day |
Advertising cookies (only if you agree)
| Cookie | Set by | What it does | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| _fbp | Meta (Facebook and Instagram) | Measures how our Meta ads perform | 3 months |
| bcookie, li_gc, lidc | Measures how our LinkedIn ads perform | Up to 1 year | |
| MUID, _uetsid, _uetvid | Microsoft (Bing) | Measures how our Microsoft ads perform | Up to 13 months |
These services handle data under their own privacy policies: Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Stripe.
Questions about cookies? Email us at [email protected].
Cookie information last updated: November 2026
9. Our legal reasons for using your information
Data protection law says we must have a lawful basis for each way we use your information. These are ours:
| What we do | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Sending news and appeals by email | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Analytics and advertising cookies | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Processing your donation, sending receipts, keeping donor records | Our legitimate interests in running the charity and accounting properly for gifts |
| Keeping Gift Aid and financial records | Legal obligation (HMRC and charity accounting rules) |
| Replying to enquiries and messages | Our legitimate interests in responding to people who contact us |
| Keeping the website secure and preventing fraud | Our legitimate interests in protecting our supporters and our site |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed them against your rights, and you can object at any time (see section 14). We don’t make decisions about you using fully automated processes.
10. Who we share your information with
We never sell your personal information, and we never share it with other organisations for their own marketing.
We use trusted service providers to run the charity. They only use your information to provide their service to us, under contracts that require them to keep it safe:
| Provider | What they do for us |
|---|---|
| Stripe | Processes card donations |
| GoCardless | Processes Direct Debits |
| Salesforce | Our supporter database |
| Mailchimp | Sends our emails |
| 34SP.com | Hosts our website |
| Analytics, reCAPTCHA spam protection, server-side tagging on Google Cloud, advertising | |
| Meta, Microsoft, LinkedIn | Advertising measurement, only with your consent. For advertising, these platforms and Google also use the information under their own privacy policies |
We also share Gift Aid details with HMRC, and may share information if the law requires it, for example with the police or a regulator.
11. Information stored outside the UK
Some of our providers, including Mailchimp, Salesforce, Stripe, Google, Meta, Microsoft and LinkedIn, may store or process your information outside the UK, mainly in the US and the EU. When this happens, we make sure it is protected by safeguards UK law accepts, such as a UK adequacy decision (including the UK-US “data bridge” for certified US companies) or approved contract clauses.
12. How long we keep your information
We keep information only as long as we need it, then delete it or make it anonymous.
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Donation records and Gift Aid declarations | 6 years, in line with HMRC rules |
| Mailing list details | Until you unsubscribe. We then keep your email address on a suppression list so we don’t contact you again by mistake |
| Messages and enquiries | 2 years after our last contact |
| Website server logs | Up to 2 years |
| Google Analytics data | Up to 14 months |
| Cookies | See the Cookies section above for each cookie |
13. Keeping your information secure
We take sensible steps to protect your information. Our website uses an encrypted connection (HTTPS), card payments are handled by Stripe rather than stored by us, and access to our supporter database is limited to staff who need it. Our website has security monitoring and two-factor sign-in for administrators.
No website or email can be guaranteed completely secure. If something does go wrong, we will act quickly and tell you and the ICO where the law requires it.
14. Your rights
You have the right to:
- ask for a copy of the information we hold about you
- ask us to correct anything that’s wrong or incomplete
- ask us to delete your information
- ask us to limit how we use it
- object to us using it, including for direct marketing
- ask us to send it to you or another organisation in a usable format
- withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on it
Some rights have limits. For example, we must keep Gift Aid records for as long as HMRC requires, even if you ask us to delete them. To use any of these rights, email [email protected]. It’s free, and we will reply within one month.
Not happy? Please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.
15. Changes to this policy
We review this policy regularly and will update this page when anything changes, for example if we start using a new service. Any questions? Email [email protected] and we’ll be happy to help.
Last updated: November 2026