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Privacy Policy

The protection of your privacy is important to us
This policy exists to explain how and why Oak Foundation uses the personal information we collect when you visit our websites or apply for a grant. By visiting Oak Foundation’s websites/systems, you consent to our use of this information in this way.

This policy ensures Oak Foundation:
– complies with data protection regulation and follows good practices;
– protects the rights of individuals who access our websites/systems;
– is open about how it stores and processes individuals’ data on our websites/systems; and
– protects itself from the risks of a data breach.

Data protection principles
In relation to your personal data, we will:
– process it fairly, lawfully and in a clear, transparent way;
– keep your data for only as long as we need it; and
– keep it securely.

What information we collect
You are voluntarily giving us information that we use when you:
1. contact us through our websites;
2. subscribe to our newsletters;
3. submit a letter of enquiry;
4. apply for a grant;
5. apply for a job;
6. respond to surveys; and
7. report fraud or abuse.

That information can include your e-mail address, first and last name, organisation name, and project details. By giving us this information, you consent to us collecting and using the information for the indicated purpose and/or using the information to provide you with the communications you requested.

We use the information you give us to:
– send you the newsletters that you have subscribed to;
– provide you with the services and the information about our activities and events that you have requested;
– assess your application when applying for a job;
– conduct surveys and process your response to any survey you participate in for research, evaluation, and statistical purposes;
– use your information and share with relevant internal staff, external reviewers, evaluators, and auditors when you submit a letter of enquiry, report fraud or abuse, or apply for a grant;
– process your grant application;
– process, monitor, analyse, and evaluate your grant with Oak Foundation;
– offer you services, information (e.g., through email and newsletters) and support if you are a grantee of Oak Foundation;
– administer any user accounts we set up for you; and
– ensure that content from our websites is presented in the most effective manner for you.

The technical information we collect (e.g., through cookies described below) when you visit our websites is used for site administration and internal operations (i.e., troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, and statistical and survey purposes). This enables us to improve our websites/systems to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device, to allow you to participate in interactive features of our services when you choose to do so, and as part of our efforts to keep our websites safe and secure.

How we share your information
For the purposes described above: we may share your personal information with different parts of our organisation. Your information is processed by service providers that support our communications infrastructure when you sign up for our newsletter, submit a letter of enquiry, apply for a grant, report fraud or abuse or take a survey. The service providers are as follows:

  • for our newsletters, we use MailChimp to develop emails and track subscriptions;
  • for our online forms for submitting a letter of enquiry or reporting fraud or abuse, we use Jotform; and
  • for our surveys, we use Surveymonkey.

What are age limitations
Oak Foundation takes the protection of children seriously. We have a child safeguarding policy and photography guidelines, which are available on www.oakfnd.org. The photography guidelines ensure that we have the approvals necessary to capture and share images on our websites. This includes consent from children under 18 and their parents. In addition, the photography guidelines describe how we can protect adults and children from harm through the use of video and photography.

How we retain your data
We do our best to keep your data accurate and up to date, to the extent that you provide us with the information we need to do so. If your data changes, then you are responsible for notifying us of those changes. Upon request, we will provide you with information about whether we hold any of your personal information.

We will retain your information for as long as needed to provide you with the information and services you subscribed to. We may also retain and use your information to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, prevent abuse, and ensure our agreements.

What are your rights
In certain circumstances, you have the right to:

  • request a copy of the information we hold about you;
  • update or amend the information we hold about you;
  • change your communication preferences at any time including withdrawing consent to be contacted by email, phon,e or sms (e.g., if at any point in the future you decide you’d like to stop receiving newsletters from us, you can simply unsubscribe by clicking “unsubscribe” at the bottom of our emails); and
  • ask us to remove your personal information from our records.

If you are unhappy about the way we use your personal data or the way in which we respond to your request to exercise your data protection rights, you can contact the Director of Administration at address listed below. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

Oak Philanthropy Ltd
Avenue Louis Casaï 58
1216 Cointrin, Geneva
Switzerland
Tel :+41 (0)22 318 86 40

What third party affiliates we use
Our websites may contain links to and from the websites of third-party affiliates (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, Vimeo, and Tumblr, among others). These sites have their own privacy policies which you are advised to read. We accept no responsibility or liability for such policies.

When and why we make changes to this policy
As privacy and transparency are important, we may make changes to our policies to ensure that we are relevant and accurate, so please check from time to time for updates. Please contact the Communications Department (commdept@oakfnd.ch) for questions or further information.

Cookies and Google analytics information
Oak Foundation uses cookies to capture information about our websites’ users. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we save to your computer or device if you agree.

Cookies allow us to recognise and count your visits, and to see how you move around our sites while you are using them. This helps us to improve the way our website works and to provide you with the information you need.

Cookies are also set when you:
– click on social networking buttons on our website;
– read our highlights;
– watch videos;
– use our online forms; and
– take part in surveys.

We use Google Analytics and services provided by our internet hosting company to collect data via advertising cookies and identifiers. Google Analytics is a tool that helps website owners to understand how their visitors behave. It uses a set of cookies to collect information and report website usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors to Google. It also uses some cookies set by other websites to help us understand more about our sites’ visitors.

By continuing to use our websites and by viewing our content and engaging with our social media accounts, you consent to the relevant cookies being set on your device. You can control the use of cookies at the individual level through your Internet browser settings. For general information about cookies, and how to control and disable them, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

Additional information for job applicants
We will only collect your data for reasons that we find proper for the course of your job application and in a way that is explained to you.

As well as name and contact details, we hold the CV and/or application form you provide which includes information about education and qualifications, former employers and work history. All the information we hold is necessary for us to assess your suitability for the job role on offer.

Before we confirm a job offer, we carry out some pre-employment checks including taking up references. To carry out these checks we share your name and relevant employment information, to enable referees to identify you. Our pre-employment checks will include checks carried out in countries outside of the EEA if that is where you lived and worked previously. It is in our legitimate business interests, and your own best interests, to make sure that we offer the job to the most appropriate candidate.

Once your appointment is agreed we will use your personal data to send the employment contract and job offer to you. These are steps preparatory to entering into the contract of employment. We will also notify any recruitment agency involved in your recruitment that an offer has been made. Most of the information we hold at recruitment stage has been provided by you directly, or on your behalf by the employment agency.

We keep our recruitment records for the duration of recruitment process and then for no longer than 6 months for unsuccessful candidates. For successful candidates the personal data in the recruitment file will be carried forward into the employee’s HR file.
We may share your data with colleagues within the organisation where it is necessary for them to undertake their recruitment duties and we may share your data with external people who are involved in the recruitment, such as our HR adviser or those who work in other Oak Foundation offices.

Our commitment to GDPR
Data protection and privacy have always been a priority to us at Oak Foundation. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) came into effect on 25 May 2018.

Oak Foundation is committed to respecting privacy rights and keeping your personal information protected. We take security seriously and do all we can to keep your data secure. In our privacy policy we explain how we share your data. Our privacy policy provides more details on:

  • the information that we collect;
  • how we use this information and how we store it, and
  • how you can request us to update, correct, or delete your data.

Security Protocols

We securely store all information you provide to us. As the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure, we cannot guarantee the security of your information transmitted to our websites; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use appropriate procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Terms of use and conditions

This site or any portion of this site may not be reproduced, duplicated, copied, sold, resold, or otherwise exploited for any commercial purpose. Various content on this site may be subject to copyright by authors, consultants, journals, and publishers. Use of the copyrighted material is subject to the terms and conditions of use established by the author, consultant, journal, or publisher.

Although we endeavour to ensure that the content on our websites are accurate and up to date, Oak Foundation accepts no responsibility for loss arising from reliance on information contained in this site or other sites that may be linked to from our site from time to time. Some materials on this website are generated by staff, consultants, and occasionally, generative AI.

We would like to give credit and thank Wellcome Trust for its privacy and terms statement, which we used as inspiration for this policy in accordance with Wellcome Trust’s Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK licence.