1. Purpose of this policy
The Renewable Energy Foundation is a registered charity promoting sustainable development for the benefit of the public by means of energy conservation and the use of renewable energy.
REF is supported by private donation and has no political affiliation or corporate membership. In pursuit of its principal goals REF highlights the need for an overall energy policy that is balanced, ecologically sensitive, and effective.
This privacy policy sets out how we manage and use your personal data to enable us to keep you informed about REF and provide opportunities for you to continue to be involved in REF’s activities. This includes providing you with services you have requested, for administration purposes, and to further our charitable and educational aims including fundraising, volunteering and other activities. Your data are stored securely and in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation 2018. We never sell your information to third parties.
This privacy policy does not refer to the impersonal, public domain data relating to renewable and other energies that REF processes, enriches and publishes in discharging its charitable and educational objectives.
2. What data are stored and processed by us
We record data about you (minimally your name and contact details):
• when you communicate with us
• when you request one of our services when you donate, or
• when you ask to receive information on or from REF
We update our records when you enquire about our services, make a donation, request us to do so by email to
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
, or provide us with or ask us for information.
Information we hold may include:
• Contact details
• Donation history to REF, including fundraising campaigns
• Records of communications with and from REF
• Registration, booking details and attendance at events and for volunteering opportunities
• Communication preferences
We aim to keep your data up to date and accurate, and your rights in relation to this are set out at the end of this document.
3. Data collected by our websites and emails
In common with other websites, the REF website uses cookies to collect standard information, including your IP address, browser type, operating system and access times when you visit our website. This helps us understand website traffic and webpage usage. We also make limited use of cookies to render the website more usable. Cookies in themselves do not identify the individual user, just the computer used. You can clear your cookie settings at any time by changing the settings in your browser.
We may display links to external websites to provide you with information; these sites are not controlled by REF and we cannot be held responsible for the content or accuracy of these external links.
We do not store any sensitive data, such as credit/debit card details, on our website. Payments are redirected to a third party payment processor. Our website uses secure socket layer (SSL) technology to encrypt communication.
4. Why and how we use your data
We use your information to keep you informed about REF, and to provide opportunities for you to continue to be involved in REF’s activities. This includes providing you with services you have requested, for administration purposes, and to further our charitable and educational aims including fundraising, volunteering, event invitations and newsletters. Information about your participation in REF’s charitable activities is also incorporated into our historical archive, but will not be published on the website unless by agreement.
We may from time to time want to send you relevant and appropriate messages via mail, email and telephone.
Fundraising is very important for REF. We were founded with philanthropic support and we continue this tradition of giving through our fundraising efforts which provide additional resources to support all aspects of our activities.
Our fundraising campaigns are managed in-house and may include direct mail (both postal and electronic), social media, telephone and face-to-face visits. None of our staff are paid commission on donations they raise.
We do not use external fundraising agencies or external professional fundraisers to ask for donations on our behalf.
If you donate to REF and do not wish your donation to be publicly recognised, you can choose to donate anonymously. This means we will record your donation on our system, but will not publicly acknowledge or publish your name on donor lists or other stewardship materials either online or in written publications.
5. Who is it shared with
We never pass information to third parties except in the following cases:
• We use external service providers to manage our payroll services, we claim Gift Aid from HMRC in the UK, We always make sure there are appropriate controls in place regarding how third parties handle your data and to ensure they never use the data for purposes unrelated to REF
• We may need to disclose your information if required to by law
• If we have obtained your permission to do so
We will never sell your information to a third party.
6. Future changes
From time to time, we may use your information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in our privacy policy. If our information practices change at some time in the future, we will post the policy changes on this page.
If you are concerned about how your information is used, you should check this page periodically. We will only use data collected from the time of the policy change onwards for these new purposes.
7. Your rights
You may opt out of receiving our communications at any time by contacting us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Should you object to the holding of your data by REF, the use of your data for any or all of the above purposes, want to complain about something we have done, to amend the type of communications you receive or the way in which REF contacts you, please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
You have the right to request a copy of the personal information REF holds about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected, or to have your data deleted. Upon such a request we will provide you with access to all the information we maintain about you subject to the conditions of the General Data Protection Regulation 2018. Please request this service by contacting us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .