This policy is relevant to the spunout (Community Creations CLG) service Text About It. Community Creations is undergoing a rebrand which will result in a name change to spunout. Once the legal name change has taken place this policy will be updated. Text About It and spunout.ie are currently trading names of Community Creations CLG.
Text About It Volunteer Privacy Policy
Last updated: 23th October 2024
Who are we?
spunout (“we” or “us”) is a charity based in the Republic of Ireland. We provide active listening and information services, including Text About It and Youth Information Chat. Our registered charity number is 20057923.
We are independent, but receive financial support from the Irish state through the Health Service Executive (HSE), the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, the Department of Community and Rural Development, the City of Dublin Youth Services Board, and Pobal.
We will process the personal information you provide for our legitimate charitable interests and to enhance the experience of our volunteers. This includes contacting you about relevant volunteering opportunities, news and events.
In brief
We respect your personal data and store it securely.
We will never sell your personal data.
We will remove your data if you ask us to.
We will use your data to maintain contact with you, in order to facilitate your volunteering work with us
We may send you content we think is relevant or interesting to you but you can unsubscribe or change your contact preferences at anytime.
We may use your data to contact you about information you request or to allow you to access our services.
What is the purpose of this policy?
We collect and process personal information about you during and after your relationship with us in order to manage that relationship. We are committed to being transparent about how we collect and use your data to meet our obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
What personal information we collect and how it is used
Personal information means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. The information that we collect includes details such as your name, email address, physical address, postal code. The information does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
Please view below for a list of the purposes for which we use your personal data:
| Data we collect | What we use it for | Legal basis for processing |
| Names, addresses, telephone number, email addresses | To contact you to discuss volunteering opportunities or to keep you updated on our services, activities or events; to record your location in order to understand where our volunteers come from | Justified on the basis of legitimate interest in ensuring the proper functioning of our business operations and ensuring proper communication and emergency handling. Justified on the basis of your consent. |
| Curriculum Vitae or other profiles | To assess and determine your skills, experience and interests in order to assess your suitability for volunteering opportunities or specific projects | Justified on the basis of legitimate interest in ensuring the recruitment of appropriate volunteers. Justified on the basis of your consent. |
| Demographic information | To capture information which will help us to identify the demographics most interested in volunteering to assist future marketing campaigns. To capture demographic information to ensure a broadly diverse volunteer population and to seek to rectify any under-representation of a particular demographic amongst our volunteer population, to help us better understand or serve all members of the public who reach out to our services | Justified on the basis of legitimate interest in ensuring the recruitment of appropriate volunteers. Justified on the basis of your consent. |
| Information gathered from business and social media sources in the public domain, eg LinkedIn, Facebook | To build a picture of your skills, experience and interests in order to assess your suitability for volunteering projects | Justified on the basis of legitimate interest in ensuring the recruitment of appropriate volunteers. Justified on the basis of your consent. |
| References and Garda Vetting information | To assess your suitability for volunteering with us, and for being utilised on specific projects | Justified on the basis of compliance with the law. Justified on the basis of legitimate interest in ensuring the recruitment of appropriate volunteers. Justified on the basis of your consent. |
| Information on special requirements, health or medical conditions | To assess your suitability for volunteering with us, and for being utilised on specific projects; to carry out our legal duties (eg to ensure health and safety) | Justified on the basis of compliance with the law. Justified on the basis of legitimate interest in ensuring the recruitment of appropriate volunteers. Justified on the basis of your consent. |
| Information related to project monitoring such as hours spent on a project | To assess your suitability for being utilised on specific projects; to use such data for statistical analysis and reporting | Justified on the basis of legitimate interest in ensuring the proper functioning of our business operations. Justified on the basis of your consent. |
| Information related to availability and the reasons for periods of unavailability | To assess your suitability for volunteering with us, and for being utilised on specific projects | Justified on the basis of legitimate interest in ensuring the proper functioning of our business operations. Justified on the basis of your consent. |
| IP Addresses | As an extra cybersecurity measure, we may log the IP address of the computer used to email us a contact form as part of our registration process. | Justified on the basis of legitimate interest in ensuring the proper functioning of our business operations. Justified on the basis of your consent. |
| Content of volunteers’s conversations arising out of or concerning our services | To monitor the quality of the service provided to texters, to support volunteers in the execution of their role, and to analyse trends and operational considerations for the improvement of the service. | Justified on the basis of legitimate interest in ensuring the proper functioning of our business operations and ensuring proper communication and emergency handling. Justified on the basis of your consent. |
Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information. If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to register you for volunteering opportunities, or we may be prevented from meeting our legal obligations (such as to ensure your health and safety).
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason, and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
How is your personal information collected?
We collect information through our volunteer registration process, either directly from you or the references you will be asked to provide. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including business and social media searches such as LinkedIn. We may collect personal information in the course of volunteering activities throughout the period of you volunteering for us.
How we use particularly sensitive personal information
We do not need your consent if we use special categories of your personal information to carry out our legal obligations. We ask you for your consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. We may gather sensitive information within our application form. We ask for details that allow us to understand the background and experience of our volunteers. We also ask about your experiences of mental health and related services. This is to allow us to consider whether working with people in crisis might cause you any emotional harm. You should carefully consider whether you wish to consent to us holding this data.
Automated Decision Making
We do not envisage that any decisions will be taken about you using automated means, however we will notify you in writing if this position changes.
Who has access to your data?
Your information may be shared internally, including with staff members responsible for managing and administering projects, HR, health and safety, insurances, events and marketing activities.
We share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers, for example in connection with supporting our CRM system and IT network (including remote support) and professional advisers where necessary, who may be party to confidential discussions related to an individual. In providing our services we are supported by technical staff who are based in the United States. In order to provide support, in some cases they may have to access material which includes our volunteer personal data. The United States of America does not have data protection laws which are equivalent to those we have in the European Union, but we have ensured that our third party based here have complied with relevant security and data protection standards.
We require third parties to respect the security of your data and treat it in accordance with the law. We will share your information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer our relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest. All our third party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
Data Security
Spunout takes the security of your data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, or subject to unauthorised access. Where necessary, we implement appropriate network access controls, user permissions and encryption to protect data.
Where we engage third parties to process personal data on our behalf, they do so on the basis of written instructions, are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
Data Retention
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. Details of retention periods, archiving and destruction policies for different aspects of your personal information are available in our retention policy which is available from the person responsible for data protection.
Your legal rights
As a data subject, you have a number of rights, details of which can be found at https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/individuals/rights-individuals-under-general-data-protection-regulation
If you have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Once confirmed, we will no longer process your information for the purpose you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.
If you believe that the organisation has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Data Protection Commissioner.
Accessing your data
As a matter of course, you will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information. However, if we think that your request is unfounded or excessive, we may charge a reasonable fee or refuse to comply with the request.
We may need to confirm your identity or ensure your right to exercise your legal rights. This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
Changes to this policy
We reserve the right to update this policy at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.
How can you contact us?
If you have any general questions, you can email us at hello@spunout.ie.
If you have any questions about how we use your data, you can email our Data Protection Officer at dpo@spunout.ie.
Our postal address is spunout, 48 Fleet Street, Dublin 2.