• We work closely with suppliers and partners (including, for example, sub-contractors in technical, print, payment and delivery services and professional fundraising agencies who may sent out letters of appeal or who may make fundraising asks on our behalf) and may receive information about you from them.
• We sometimes use publicly available sources (e.g. the Royal Mail’s National Change of Address database, the Mailing Preference Service (MPS) or Fundraising Preference Service (FPS), and the Legacy Notification Service) to ensure your information is up to date, to ensure we are not sending you unsolicited marketing material, and when administering legacies.

Lawful processing of your data

Data protection law requires us to rely on one or more lawful grounds to process your personal data. This refers to Article 6 of UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). We consider the following grounds to be relevant:

• Consent – Where you have provided consent for us to use your personal information in a certain way. For example, when you make a gift or contact us you have the option to ‘tick a box’ giving us consent to send you direct marketing information. An individual has the right to withdraw their consent at any time.
• Legitimate interest – Where it is reasonably necessary to achieve our or others’ legitimate interests (if what the personal information is used for is fair and doesn’t unduly impact your rights). When we legitimately process your information in this way, we consider and balance any potential impact on you (positive and negative) and your rights under data protection laws. We will not use your personal information where our interests are overridden by the impact on you, for example, where use would be excessively intrusive (unless, for instance, we are otherwise required or permitted by law).
• Examples of processing based on legitimate interests include:
• Sending direct marketing material to supporters for fundraising purposes
• Conducting research and analysis to better understand who our supporters and potential supporters are
• Undertaking profiling to help us provide you with a more personalised and tailored experience across communications and fundraising activities
• Measure and understand how our audiences respond to a variety of marketing activity so we can ensure our activity is well targeted, relevant, and effective
• Promoting Midlands Air Ambulance Charity on social media, Google, YouTube, and other online platforms
• Taking and using photos or films of event participants and attendees
• Administering events
• We may also rely on the soft opt-in rule for electronic marketing communications where you have expressed interest in or supported our charity. This is permitted under the Data Use and Access Act 2025 and is based on our legitimate interest in fundraising and engagement.

When we use sensitive personal information we require an additional legal basis to process under data protection law This refers to Article 9 of UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). We will either do so based on your explicit consent or identify another route available to us (for example if we need to process it for employment, social security or social protection purposes, your vital interests or in some cases, if it is in the public interest for us to do so).

• Legal obligation – Where necessary so that we can comply with a legal or regulatory obligation to which we are subject. For example, HMRC requires us to collect information regarding Gift Aid or where we are ordered by a court or regulatory authority such as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
• Performance of a Contract – Where we are entering into a contract with you or performing our obligations under it for example when you sign up to our terms and conditions.

Should you wish to update the information we hold about you or change your contact preferences then please contact us at supportercare@midlandsairambulance.com or call 0800 8 40 20 40.

What information we collect

MAAC is what is known as the ‘controller’ of personal information you provide to us. We will usually collect basic personal data about you such as:

• Name
• Postal address
• Telephone number
• Mobile phone number
• Email address
• Bank details (if you are supporting us financially) Sometimes we will collect other information about you such as:
• Date of birth/age
• Gender
• Medical conditions
• Emergency contact details

We will only collect this ‘sensitive personal data’ if there is a clear reason for doing so. For example, participation in a strenuous event where we need this information to ensure we are complying with the law and to give support in case of emergency, or to ensure we do not make financial asks of children and those under the age of 18.

How we use the information we collect

We collect your personal information in connection with specific activities, such as donations, product purchases, registration requests etc. The information is either needed to fulfil your request or to enable us to provide you with a more personalised service.

We may use information held about you in the following ways:

• For administration purposes (for example, we may contact you to receipt your donation, to keep your contact details up to date, to issue materials for your fundraising activity, to process an order you have placed, to notify you of details relating to your lottery and/or regular giving subscription etc).
• To take a payment from you (for example, if you have registered for an event, if you have made a donation, if you have signed up for lottery and/regular giving, if you have made a purchase etc).
• To hold records that we are legally required to keep (for example, regarding Gift Aid, your lottery subscription, or your payment history to us).
• To code and record financial transactions against your supporter record so that we can log your financial support.
• To claim Gift Aid from HMRC if you are signed up to the scheme with MAAC. If you have registered for our Retail Gift Aid scheme, we are legally required to contact you if we make a claim.
• To keep a record of your preferences on how you want to engage with us. As part of this, we will keep a log of any supporter who has notified MAAC that they do not want contact from us.
• To provide you with information about our work and activities, including how your support is helping our lifesaving service.
• To raise funds (for example, we may send you information about how you can support MAAC, including direct asks for financial support).
• To ask you to upgrade your support for MAAC (for example, by changing payment method and/or donation amount).
• To conduct research and analysis to build a greater understanding of our supporters in order to provide you with a more personalised experience with us through our communications and fundraising activities. This research may include surveys, focus groups, database screening and analysis. We may also analyse information you provide to us with other freely available public information to create a profile of supporter interests, preferences, level of potential donations, so that we can contact you in the most appropriate way and with the most relevant information. You can choose to opt out of this screening at any time, by contacting supportercare@midlandsairambulance.com or call 0800 8 40 20 40.
• To promote our work through case studies and imagery. Some of the people who have benefited from the work of MAAC choose to share their experiences to help further our work. We will only share this information if we have obtained the fully informed consent of the individual involved, or their parent or guardian if they are under the age of 18. This information may be made public by us at events, in materials promoting our campaigning and fundraising work, or in documents such as our annual report.
• To contact your next of kin in case of emergency if you are participating in an event for MAAC. We may also hold details of pre-existing medical conditions you provide us with for health and safety reasons.

Using information for marketing purposes

Communicating with our supporters is vital to MAAC because it means, together, we can save more lives in the six counties we serve. We like to keep our supporters updated with our news, appeals, and ways they can support our work.

We will sometimes contact you using your email address or via your mobile phone using text messaging services to provide you with information about our work and/or ways you can support us

If you have provided your postal address, we may send you information by post about our work and/or ways you can support us unless you have told us you do not wish to receive such information in this way.

We will only contact you for marketing purposes by telephone if you have not opted out from receiving communication via this method. We screen against the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and, if you are listed, we will not contact you by phone.

We rely on the legitimate interest legal basis for some of our processing for marketing purposes. This applies to the following:

• When you are an existing supporter and we are contacting you by post and/or telephone calls about our news, appeals and other ways you can support our work.
• When we consider we have a legitimate interest in continuing to contact you by post and/or telephone calls once you have provided your details to us and there is no overriding prejudice to you or your rights by MAAC’s use of the data in this way and for these purposes subject always to our carrying out appropriate checks with the relevant preference services.

Soft Opt-In for Electronic Marketing

In line with the Data Use and Access Act 2025, Midlands Air Ambulance Charity may use the soft opt-in rule to send electronic marketing communications (such as emails, texts, and social media messages) to individuals who have expressed an interest in or offered support to our charity.

This means that if you provide your contact details while making a donation, registering for an event, or engaging with us in other supportive ways, we may send you relevant updates and fundraising appeals without needing your explicit consent.

You will always be given a clear opportunity to opt out of receiving such communications at the point your data is collected, and in every subsequent message.

We rely on the lawful basis of legitimate interest for this processing and have conducted a Legitimate Interests Assessment to ensure your rights are protected.

Building profiles of supporters and potential supporters

Researching and profiling are commonly used to aid fundraising and marketing communications. This involves analysing data to improve the targeting of our communications, so that we provide you with a more personalised supporter experience. Profiling allows us to target our resources effectively, which supporters consistently tell us is a key priority for them. It enables us to raise more funds, sooner, and more cost-effectively than we otherwise would whilst also identifying other areas of support such as volunteering, shared networks and identifying potential future trustees. This helps to maximise the effectiveness of our campaigns and to minimise the wastage that would result from sending marketing information where it is not of interest.

MAAC occasionally uses profiling techniques to help ensure our communications are relevant to you. The data we use to undertake this may have been provided to MAAC by you for example when responding to our marketing campaigns and surveys, when you have donated or fundraised for us, or when using our website, or social media sites such as Facebook.

This could include gathering information from publicly available sources including but not limited to: Companies House, the Charity Commission, the Electoral Register, company websites, “rich lists”, Funds Online, social networks

such as LinkedIn, property registers and news archives, geographic and demographic information. To carry this out efficiently, we may use trusted third-party specialist agencies who can do this in a more cost-effective way.

Using a personalised approach like this means we can give you the best possible supporter experience aligned to your type of support as well as your capacity to give. This research might also be used to exclude those who may be vulnerable to marketing.

Profiling also allows us to identify potential supporters and there are a number of ways in which we may identify or communicate with those potential donors:

• By conducting research on supporters
• By asking our existing supporters to give
• By asking supporters that may have given to MAAC in the past to give again
• By asking our existing supporters to tell us more about their interests, preferences, opinions, and motivations for support. By inviting potential supporters to attend our events as a way of engaging with them and sharing the impact of their gifts. We might also identify potential new supporters through researching event attendees who were previously unknown to us
• By researching people who have not given to the charity in the past but who we believe might have a connection to our work and have the capacity to give
• By asking our supporters and influencers to open up their networks to us
• By asking our supporters and influencers to introduce us to potential supporters we have identified through our research and that they have a link to
• By sharing your data securely and in an anonymised form with social media sites to help us identify similar users of these sites that might be interested in our services (see section on Social Media Sites).

If you do not wish us to use your data in this way, it is easy for you to opt out, just contact us at supportercare@midlandsairambulance.com or call 0800 8 40 20 40..

Sharing your information

You can support MAAC with confidence – we keep your contact details safe and we never pass them on to anyone else to use for their own purposes.

We do not share or sell supporter details with charities or other third parties (regionally, nationally, or internationally) for the purposes of marketing.

We may share your information with other companies within our Group.

Data Processors

We may need to share your data with our service providers who help to deliver our projects, activities, and goods. These service providers are “data processors” and will only act under our instruction and are subject to pre-contract scrutiny and contractual obligations containing strict data protection clauses. We will not allow these organisations to use your data for their own purposes or disclose to other third parties without our consent and will take all reasonable care to ensure they always keep your data secure.

Our service providers include but are not limited to fundraising agencies, telemarketing companies, prospect research companies, direct mailing companies, payment processors, and software platform providers.

Where legally required

We will also disclose personal data when obliged to do so by law, or the disclosure is ‘necessary’ for purposes of
national security, taxation, and criminal investigation.

How we keep your data safe and who has access to it

All of the data MAAC collects is stored in secure locations, with access restricted to only those who need it. All our security is regularly tested and audited to make sure that your data is safe and secure.