Privacy Policy 2.3

Digital Boost Upskilling, Ltd. (company number 10187293) ("we", "us" and "our") is a subsidiary of Founders4Schools (registered charity number 1162197) 22 Chancery Lane, London, England, WC2A 1LS.

This privacy policy provides information about how we process Personal Data of members of our community including volunteers, mentors, mentees and event attendees (“Members” and “you”) that use our services. This includes when you register with or use our website or online services and for events or workshops we run.

Personal Data means information, or a combination of pieces of information that could reasonably allow you to be identified either directly or indirectly (“Personal Data”).

1. Controller

Digital Boost Upskilling, Ltd. is the controller and responsible for your Personal Data.

2. Updates to the Privacy Policy

We may amend this notice from time to time to keep it up to date with legal requirements and our business practices. Updates will be posted on this webpage. This privacy notice was last updated on 7 November 2025. Please regularly check for updates. If fundamental changes are made, we will notify you via our website or by email.

3. Third Party Websites and Links

External links to third-party websites may be found on our website. This notice does not apply to your use of those sites. This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

4. The types of Personal Data we collect about you 

Personal Data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. 

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of Personal Data about you which can include but is not limited to:

• Identity Data includes first name, last name, username or similar identifier, title, ethnicity, disability, and gender. This may also include data about your company, including its name, sector, stage of growth and size.
  
• Contact Data includes email address. 
  
• Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, device ID and other technology on the devices you use to access this website. 
  
• Profile Data includes your username and password, registrations, your interests, preferences, feedback, and survey responses. 
  
• Usage Data includes information about how you interact with and use our website, products and services. This may include messages your send, files you upload, or requests you make.
  
• Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

Some of the categories of information that we collect are special categories of Personal Data (also known as sensitive personal information). In particular, we may process Personal Data that relates to a disability you may have. We will only process this Personal Data in compliance with applicable data protection law. 

Note that we may be required by law to collect certain Personal Data about you, or as a consequence of any contractual relationship we have with you. Failure to provide this information may prevent or delay the fulfilment of these obligations. We will inform you at the time your information is collected whether certain data is compulsory and the consequences of the failure to provide such data.

We also collect, use and share aggregated data such as statistical or demographic data which is not Personal Data as it does not directly (or indirectly) reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate individuals' Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature in order to analyze general trends in how users are interacting with our website to help improve the website and our service offering.

5. How is your Personal Data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

• Your interactions with us. You may give us your Personal Data by filling in online forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise.
       
• Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this Personal Data by using cookies and other similar technologies as referenced in our Cookie Policy. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies.
  
• Publicly available sources. We will collect identity and contact data from publicly available sources such as the free school meals database.

6. How we use your Personal Data

Legal basis and purpose for processing your data

The law requires us to have a legal basis for collecting and using your Personal Data. We rely on one or more of the following legal bases:

• Perform our services: Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you. For example, to establish your qualifications as volunteer/, or to establish what assistance you require as organisations, to appropriately match together volunteer and organisation.
       
• Legitimate interests: We may use your Personal Data where it is necessary to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, for example to prevent fraud, provide you with a tailored customer experience and reporting and statistics purposes. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights (both positive and negative) before we process your Personal Data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your Personal Data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
  
• Legal obligation: We may use your Personal Data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to. We will identify the relevant legal obligation when we rely on this legal basis.
  
• Consent: We rely on consent only where we have obtained your active agreement to use your Personal Data for a specified purpose including in order to process your disability and ethnicity information and to send you email marketing.

If you would like to find out more about the legal basis for which we process Personal Data please Contact Us.

7. Direct marketing 

We will always obtain your prior consent in order to send marketing communications. 

We may analyse your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view which products, services and offers may be of interest to you so that we can then send you relevant marketing communications. 

8. Third-party marketing 

We will get your express consent before we share your Personal Data with any third party for their own direct marketing purposes. 

9. Opting out of marketing 

You can ask to stop sending you marketing communications at any time. If you have an online account with us, the easiest way to make updates to your marketing preferences and/or change your personal details is to log onto your account and make changes in the "Data and Privacy" tab in your Account. You can also click the "unsubscribe" link that you find on any online newsletters you receive.

Alternatively, you can contact our customer support team and request to be unsubscribed. Please specify whether you would like us to stop all forms of marketing or just a particular type (e.g. email). 

If you opt out of receiving marketing communications, you will still receive service-related communications that are essential for administrative or customer service purposes.

10. Cookies

For more information about the cookies we use and how to change your cookie preferences, please see our Cookie Policy.

11. Disclosures of your Personal Data

We may share your Personal Data with third parties in accordance with applicable law. 

We require all third parties to respect the security of your Personal Data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

We may share your Personal Data with third parties under the following circumstances:

• Service providers and business partners. We may share your Personal Data with our service providers and business partners that perform marketing services and other business operations for us or business partners that refer you to us.
  
• Client group companies. Digital Boost Upskilling Ltd. is a subsidiary of Founders4Schools (F4S), so we work closely with other businesses and companies that fall under the F4S group family. We may share certain information about your browsing history on our website with F4S and other F4S group companies for marketing purposes and internal reporting. 
  
• Law enforcement agency, court, regulator, government authority or other third party. We may share your Personal Data with these parties where we believe this is necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation, or otherwise to protect our rights or the rights of any third party.
  
• Asset purchasers. We may share your Personal Data with any third party that purchases, or to which we transfer, all or substantially all of our assets and business. Should such a sale or transfer occur, we will use reasonable efforts to try to ensure that the entity to which we transfer your Personal Data uses it in a manner that is consistent with this privacy notice.

12. International transfers

We do not transfer your Personal Data outside the EU / UK.

13. Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your Personal Data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your Personal Data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your Personal Data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. 

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected Personal Data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

14. Data retention

How long will you use my Personal Data for?

We will only retain your Personal Data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your Personal Data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for Personal Data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the Personal Data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your Personal Data, the purposes for which we process your Personal Data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

We will keep your Personal Data for as long as we have a relationship with you. Once our relationship with you has come to an end, we will retain your Personal Data for a period of time that enables us to:

• Maintain business records for analysis and/or audit purposes
• Comply with record retention requirements under the law
• Defend or bring any existing or potential legal claims
• Deal with any complaints regarding the services

We will delete your Personal Data when it is no longer required for these purposes. If there is any information that we are unable, for technical reasons, to delete entirely from our systems, we will put in place appropriate measures to prevent any further processing or use of the data.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see paragraph 8 below for further information.

In some circumstances we will anonymise your Personal Data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you. 

15. Your legal rights

You have a number of rights under data protection laws in relation to your Personal Data. 

You have the right to:

• Request access to your Personal Data (commonly known as a "subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the Personal Data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
  
• Request correction of the Personal Data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
  
• Request erasure of your Personal Data in certain circumstances. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove Personal Data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your Personal Data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your Personal Data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
  
• Object to processing of your Personal Data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) as the legal basis for that particular use of your data (including carrying out profiling based on our legitimate interests). In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your right to object.
  
• Restrict our use of your Personal Data.
  
• Receive your Personal Data in a usable electronic format and transmit it to a third party (right to data portability).
  
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
  
• You also have the absolute right to object any time to the processing of your Personal Data for direct marketing purposes.
  
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your Personal Data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. 
  
• Request restriction of processing of your Personal Data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your Personal Data in one of the following scenarios:

• If you want us to establish the data's accuracy;
  
• Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;
  
• Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
  
• You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

16. Contact details

The primary point of contact for all issues arising from this privacy notice is our Data Protection Officer. The Data Protection Officer can be contacted by emailing our customer support team at contact@digitalboost.org.uk or send an email at dpo@digitalboost.org.uk.

If you have any questions, concerns or complaints regarding our compliance with this privacy notice, the information we hold about you or if you wish to exercise your rights, we encourage you to first contact use We will investigate and attempt to resolve complaints and disputes and make every reasonable effort to honour your wish to exercise your rights as quickly as possible and in any event, within the timescales provided by data protection laws.

17. Duty to inform us of changes  

It is important that the Personal Data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your Personal Data changes during your relationship with us, for example a new address or email address.

18. Complaints

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Issue Date of Privacy Notice: 8 November 2025