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View our privacy policy
We want everyone who supports us, or who comes to us for support, to feel confident and comfortable with how any personal information you share with us will be looked after or used. This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal information (this means any information that identifies or could identify you).
The ASC Privacy Policy may change so please remember to check back from time to time.
ASC are committed to protecting your personal information and making every effort to ensure that your personal information is processed in a fair, open and transparent manner.
For further information about our privacy practices, please contact us by:
References to “we”, “us”, or “our” in this Privacy Policy are references to Action for Stammering Children, a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales, registered company number: 2328627; and a charity registered in England and Wales, registered charity number: 801171.
Action for Stammering Children is registered under the Data Protection Act 2018 as a Data Controller under number Z3588574.
Everything we do, we do to ensure that children and young people across the UK who stammer have access to effective services and support to help them meet the challenges created by their stammer. We want to make sure you receive the communications that are most relevant to you, be it through visiting our website or receiving emails, communicating with us via social media, video or voice calls. We want to make sure you receive the best possible experience when you join the ASC community, for example by becoming a supporter, attending our events, or taking part in our projects.
We collect information from you in the following ways:
Personal information we collect includes details such as your name, age, email address, postal address, telephone number, as well as information you provide in any communications between us. You will have given us this information whilst contacting ASC, making a donation, registering for an event, participating in one of our projects, interacting with our website or any of the other ways to interact with us.
We will use this information:
If you do not provide this information, we will not be able to process your donation. We may also use your personal information to contact you about our work and how you can support ASC.
We may also use limited personal data (such as your name, email address or phone number, in pseudonymised or encrypted form) to help us identify existing and potential supporters on secure third-party platforms such as Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Google, or similar advertising services. This allows us to reach people who may be interested in supporting our work and to avoid showing you fundraising messages that are not relevant. No sensitive personal information is used for this purpose, and your data is never visible to other users. You can opt out of this at any time by contacting us (see Section 9).
Sensitive Personal Information:
Data protection law recognises that some categories of personal information are more sensitive. An example of this is ethnic origin. If we collect information that is more sensitive, then we will only use such data in the way that we have specified and we will not share this information without your express consent.
In most cases, we will only use your personal information where we have your informed consent to do so or because we need to use it in order to fulfil a contract with you.
However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your personal information and one of those is called “legitimate interests.” This means that the reason that we are processing information is because there is a legitimate interest for ASC to process your information to help us to achieve our work as a charity.
When you make a donation to us, we will contact you to confirm and thank you for your donation. In these instances, we are processing your data under the lawful basis of legitimate interest. This is because we believe that it is important for you to know that your donation has been received and to have written confirmation for your records. As a donor, we also believe you have a right to understand how your donation has been used to support our work, and therefore, from time to time, we may send you updates about our charitable activities. It will be possible to opt out of these communications at any time either by clicking “unsubscribe” or contacting us directly.
We may also process your personal information under the lawful basis of legitimate interests where this is necessary to pursue our charitable objectives – for example, to communicate with supporters, carry out fundraising, analyse our supporter base, or use encrypted data to deliver relevant fundraising campaigns through trusted third-party advertising platforms. When doing so, we always consider your rights and expectations and will not process your data where we believe our interests are overridden by your privacy interests.
There may be instances in which an individual shares information that raises concerns about the safety and welfare of that individual. This may occur when a beneficiary is taking part in one of our projects, during discussions on the charity’s social media platforms, at an event, or when beneficiaries interact with us directly via phone, email, social media messaging, video call, or webchat. In such instances, ASC staff and volunteers will adhere to our Safeguarding Policies and Procedures. This may mean that we need to share your personal information with the relevant authority for your own protection. In these instances, we will be processing your data under the lawful basis of protecting an individual’s vital interests.
We may contact you about our work and how you can support ASC by phone, email, post or text message, but you can stop us sending you these communications at any time by contacting [email protected] or clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the relevant digital communication.
We may also use your contact information (in encrypted or pseudonymised form) to show you relevant ASC content on third-party platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Google Ads. This helps us to raise awareness and support for our work while ensuring you see information that matches your interests. These platforms do not receive your actual personal data in a readable format, and you can control your ad preferences directly through the settings in those services or by contacting us to opt out.
The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff (and volunteers) at ASC so that they can support you.
For some of our projects in which we have partnered with external organisations to deliver expert services, we may enter into a data-sharing agreement with the partner organisation. This will be made clear to you when you sign up to a particular project. If a data-sharing agreement is in place, this means that personal data that you consent to be collected by our project partner will be shared securely with ASC. The purpose for which your data is being shared will be made clear when you are asked for informed consent to process your data.
We will never sell or share your personal information with organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities. Nor do we sell any information about your web browsing activity.
In limited cases, we may securely share pseudonymised or encrypted supporter data with trusted third-party service providers who assist us with digital marketing or fundraising (for example, Meta or Google). This enables us to identify and reach individuals likely to be interested in supporting ASC, or to measure the effectiveness of our campaigns. We ensure that such data is handled under strict data-sharing agreements, that it cannot be used by those platforms for their own purposes, and that it is deleted after use. We never sell or share personal information in a way that would allow another organisation to contact you directly.
We take looking after your information very seriously. We’ve implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss. In 2023, the charity completed the Cyber Essentials Plus Scheme (certificate no. 33925e34-ee96-4e24-8764-f07596d57df8), which means we have put in place advanced cyber-security measures to safeguard personal data. We continue to implement the measures necessary to remain compliant with this accreditation. Only specified employees of the charity have access to our secure databases, where we store your personal data.
Nevertheless, the transmission of information across the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our utmost to protect your personal information sent to us this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site.
Our websites may contain links to external sites that may be of interest to you. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites. Please be aware that advertisers or websites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites or advertisers.
Any debit or credit card details which we receive via our website are processed securely by our payment providers who are fully GDPR compliant. In employing their services for processing online donations, we have entered into a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) with them.
We only keep personal data as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, the collection of Gift Aid). Typically, personal data that you share with us will be kept for 10 years. We will contact you when we are approaching this deadline to ask whether you consent for us to retain your data. From time to time, we may also contact you to check that the information we hold about you is correct. You can request we delete your data at any time.
You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below. If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting [email protected] or calling 020 3316 8113. You can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office, https://ico.org.uk/
Please note, some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to fulfil every request.
A “cookie” is a small file, usually of letters and numbers, which is downloaded onto your device, like your computer, mobile phone or tablet, when you visit a website. They let websites recognise your device so that the sites can work more effectively, and also gather information about how you use the site. A cookie, by itself, can’t be used to identify you.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to improve the user experience.
We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this site. We do this to make sure it’s meeting its users’ needs and to understand how we could do it better. Google Analytics stores information about what pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and what you click on. We do not collect or store your personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this information cannot be used to identify who you are. We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data.
Cookies are also used elsewhere on the site, including by the content management system we use, WordPress. These improve things by remembering settings, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you visit a new page, log in or leave a comment.
Our cookies aren’t used to identify you personally; they’re just here to make the site work better for you.
No cookies, please:
You can opt out of all our cookies (except the strictly necessary ones). Find out how to control and delete cookies in your browser. But if you choose to refuse all cookies, our website may not function for you as we would like it to.
If you have any questions about how we use cookies, please contact [email protected] or call 020 3316 8113.
This privacy policy was updated in November 2025.
We have outlined the amendments made to the existing policy here.
You can find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about stammering by taking a look at our Support Hub Knowledge Articles
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