Terms and Conditions

These terms and conditions govern www.charitychoice.co.uk (the "Website") and form a legal agreement between Wilmington Group and its associated companies and you.

In addition to these terms and conditions, your use of the Website is governed by our Copyright Notice and Privacy Policy (see here) (the "Policies").

By using the Website, you indicate that you accept and agree to abide by both these terms and conditions and the Policies. If you do not agree to these terms of use, please refrain from using the Website.

Information about us

The Website is a site operated by Wilmington Publishing & Information Limited ("We" or "Us"). We are registered in England and Wales under company number 03368442 and have our registered office at 19-21 Christopher Street, London, UK EC2A 2BS. Our VAT number is GB899372551. We are a limited company.

The Website forms a conduit between charities and users allowing the users to donate money, goods or specialist services, fundraise, volunteer, leave a legacy, make a pledge, or just become a friend of the charity.

Information we collect from you

When you make a donation (of money, a gift or a service), fundraise or volunteer on the Website, we may collect your title, first and last name, your email address, your declaration of tax status, your billing address and your donation details.

In addition, in your account details on the Website, we may collect your gender, date of birth, contact address and telephone numbers.

In order to process your payment, Worldpay will collect your credit or debit card details.

We do not intend to collect any information from individuals under the age of 14. Children may use the Website and participate only with the permission and supervision of their parents and/or guardians.

Use of additional information

In addition to the uses specified in the Policies, we use the information gathered about you from the Website in the following ways:

• To contact you about your donations and update you on developments and other relevant information from us. We may contact you via email, postal mailings, mobile communications and telephone;
• To allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so; and
• If you make a Gift Aid declaration, we will pass it on to HM Revenue and Customs for the purpose of reclaiming tax on behalf of the recipient charity. Your Gift Aid declaration includes your name and home address (which may be different from your billing address) along with the confirmation that you are paying sufficient amounts of tax in the current tax year.

We will only use your payment details for the purpose of processing your donation. The charities you have donated to will be able to use some of your details, unless you opt to remain anonymous when making the donation. Please note, however, we will never pass your payment details onto any charities and we will not pass on any of your personal or payment details to charities you have not donated to or third parties.

We may collect and compile reports on donations made through the Website. This information will contain demographic and monetary data relating to donations made through the Website, but will be completely anonymous and will not contain any personal data.

Security of Information

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Any payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL technology.

In relation to your payment details, we implement payment detail security via "Verified by Visa / MasterCard SecureCode".

Any printed financial details will be destroyed in line with PCI DSS compliance.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes.

You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data. You can also exercise the right at any time by contacting us at editorial@charitychoice.co.uk.

The Website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner charities, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own terms, conditions and policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

The Data Protection Act 1998 (the "Act") gives you the right to access information held about you. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act. Any access request may be subject to a fee of £10 to meet our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.

Any changes we may make to these terms and conditions or the Policies in the future will be posted on this page. In certain exceptional circumstances, we may make more significant changes to these Terms and Conditions or Policies, and in those circumstances, you will be notified by e-mail.

About the Charities and Organisations featured on the Website

The Website allows you to volunteer, donate money or goods or services, leave a gift in your will and raise funds for any of the charities and organisations listed on the Website.

Charities and not-for-profit organisations are accepted as members at our discretion and will only be accepted if they are registered with the Charity Commission or Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, or if they are registered as a charity with HM Revenue & Customs ("HMRC").

In cases where charities may not meet this criteria, we will accept charities that can provide evidence of their tax-exempt status in the form of a tax-exemption certificate. We have the right to refuse charities if sufficient evidence of charitable status has not been provided.

The charities listed on the site include over 160,000 charities obtained from a monthly data feed from the Charity Commission, and this information is subject to Crown copyright.

Charities must be registered for GiftAid with HMRC for us to reclaim GiftAid on their behalf. There are some organisations on the Website which are not eligible for GiftAid.

Charities and not-for-profit organisations can have similar names: it is your responsibility to check that you are donating to the organisation you intended.

If you are a charity and would like to know more about how to join the Website, please click here.

Gift Aid information

When you donate to a charity through the Website and confirm that you are a UK taxpayer in accordance with the requirements of the Gift Aid scheme as they apply from time to time, we reclaim Gift Aid on behalf of the charity under the Gift Aid scheme. We are not an accounting, taxation or financial advisor, and you should not rely on information given on the Website or its associated services to determine the accounting, tax or financial consequences of making a donation to charity. We strongly recommend that you consult your own adviser(s) about any accounting, taxation or financial consequences that may affect you.

Donations concluded through our site

We will process direct donation payments and fundraised donations on your behalf raised through the Website. All donations will initially be held in a non-interest bearing account on trust for the relevant charity specified in your donation. The donations will then be paid weekly via BACS transfer to the accounts specified by the relevant charities, although please note that payments can take up to 14 working days to be processed. Donations will be paid net of any fees and credit/debit card charges.

It can take up to 14 working days for donations to reach the relevant charity bank account, due to the time it takes to process the payments. Charities will be able to track the payment of their donations through their administration section on the Website.

We cannot be held responsible for collecting any offline donations reported.

GiftAid will be claimed back from HMRC by us and paid to the relevant charity on a monthly basis.

Please note that as soon as a donation is made via the Website, all rights to the funds donated are relinquished by you and it is not possible to obtain a refund, save for very certain circumstances where the charity ceases to exist, if a charity is not specified at the time of the donation or in circumstances where fraud is committed.

If you wish to obtain a refund, you may contact the relevant charity directly but it is the charity's decision as to whether or not the donation is refunded. We have no rights in the donation monies and cannot authorise the refund of donation monies.

Where donations are made by debit/credit card, a processing fee will be payable to the debit/credit card company and a transaction fee will be charged by WorldPay. You can either choose to add the fees on top of your donation or have them deducted from your donation. Please note that you are only able to claim GiftAid on your donation as opposed to any fees levied during the payment process.

Please ensure that you select the correct card type for your donation, as different debit or credit cards charge different fees. By selecting the wrong card type, it may mean that the fees you need to pay are more or less than you initially thought, and these fees once paid (via a deduction from your donation if more) are not refundable. CharityChoice does not benefit in any way from the fees paid to credit and debit card companies. Where there is a surplus from your donation after fees have been deducted, this will be passed on to the charity of your donation.

Use of your donation

We are not responsible for any dissatisfaction you may have regarding the recipient organisation's use of any donation you may make through the Website. Please note that the recipient organisation reserves the right to use your donation for its general purposes. Although we notify the charity of the appeal for which your donation was intended via our reporting system, we cannot guarantee that funds will be earmarked by the charity for the stated appeal, unless specifically stated by the recipient organisation itself.

Fraudulent/Unauthorised Transactions

When a donation is made through the Website, the transaction is final and not disputable unless unauthorised use of your payment card is proved. If you become aware of fraudulent use of your card, or if it is lost or stolen, you must notify your card provider in accordance with its reporting rules.

We will arrange for refunds to be facilitated from our trust account in the following circumstances:

• we are notified by your bank of fraudulent activity (suspected or proven) whilst we are still holding the funds; or
• we suspect fraudulent activity in respect of a donation or we are concerned as to the propriety of a donation, whether or not fraud has been proved.

Liability

Details of our liability can be found in clause 4 of the Policies.

Uploading material to the Website

Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload material to the Website (e.g. to your own fundraising page), or to make contact with other users of the Website, you must comply with the Policies, these Terms of Service and any applicable local, national or international laws or regulations. You warrant that any such contribution does comply with the Policies, these Terms of Service and any applicable local, national or international laws or regulations, and you indemnify us for any breach of that warranty.

Any material you upload to the Website will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary, and we have the right to use, copy, distribute and disclose to third parties any such material for any purpose.

In uploading material to the Website you are allowing the public to access and use that material.

We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any material posted or uploaded by you to the Website constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy.

We will not be responsible, or liable to any third party, for the content or accuracy of any materials or messages posted by you or any other user of the Website.

We have the right to remove any material or posting you make on the Website if, in our opinion, such material does not comply with the Policies, these Terms of Service and any applicable local, national or international laws or regulations.

Goods, Volunteering and Service Offers

We make no claims, guarantees or promises about the accuracy, currency or completeness of any information provided by charities or other users. All responsibility for the content of information exchanged between charities and users lies with the person from whom the information originated.

We do not pre-screen or approve volunteers. It is the sole responsibility of the relevant charity to review any individual who volunteers themselves through the Website to work for the charity.

Any goods donated or gifted are provided on as-is basis, and we do not warrant or guarantee the quality, merchantability or value of the goods.

User Behaviour

As a user you must not:

• misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any other person or organisation;
• use the Website to send junk email or 'spam' to people who do not wish to receive email from you;
• use the Website to conduct, display or forward surveys, raffles, lotteries, contests, pyramid schemes, chain letters or other activities that are not in any way related to the Website or the services provided from the Website; or
• interfere with, or disrupt, the service or services or networks connected to the service and introduce any computer virus (including any variant or similar malicious code or instructions) to our systems; or
• post or upload to the Website any content that is defamatory to any person, obscene, hateful, offensive or inflammatory, sexually explicit, promotes violence or any illegal activity.

Building a fundraising page in aid of a charity in no way implies neither our nor the charity's endorsement of your fundraising activity. Many charities disapprove of, and do not wish to be involved in, dangerous sports or unusual challenges. It is your responsibility to check with the charity first that your chosen activity does not contravene the charity's policies.

We reserve the right to cancel your membership and delete any fundraising page without notice in the event of a breach of the above rules. In such a scenario all monies previously donated through your fundraising page shall be held by the relevant charity.

Failure to comply with these Terms of Service

In the event that you commit a breach of these Terms of Service, we reserve the right at our sole discretion to immediately, and without notice, suspend or permanently deny your access to all or part of the Website and associated services.

Termination

You may discontinue use of the Website and associated services at any time. These Terms of Service will continue to apply to past use by you.

It is your responsibility post-termination to remove any information about you or your charity from the Website (including any micro-sites or donation pages you may have set up).

Variations

We may revise these terms of use at any time by amending this page. You are expected to check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes we made, as they are binding on you. Some of the provisions contained in these terms of use may also be superseded by provisions or notices published elsewhere on the Website.

Third party rights

A person who is not a party to these Terms of Service has no right under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 to enforce any term of these Terms of Service.

Jurisdiction and applicable law

The English courts will have exclusive jurisdiction over any claim arising from, or related to, a visit to the Website although we retain the right to bring proceedings against you for breach of these conditions in your country of residence or any other relevant country.

These terms of use and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or their subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the law of England and Wales.

Your concerns

If you have any concerns about material which appears on the Website, please contact editorial@charitychoice.co.uk.

Thank you for visiting the Website.