Privacy Policy

The Royal Theatrical Fund

Privacy Policy

We want all of our supporters, or those who come to us for support, to feel confident and comfortable with how any personal information you share with us will be looked after or used. This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal information.

The Royal Theatrical Fund's (RTF) Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time so please remember to check back.

The RTF respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice tells you how The RTF looks after your personal data and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact The RTF, using the details below in section 1.

This notice was last updated on 4th August 2026.

Third-party links

This website may include links to third-party websites (e.g. other arts charities), 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 policies.

We are committed to informing you how we use your personal information and how we keep your data safe.

The Royal Theatrical Fund and contact details
How we collect information about you
Information we collect
Legal basis and purpose for using your information
Marketing
Sharing your Information and international transfers
Keeping your information safe
How long we hold your information for
Your legal rights
Monitoring

1. The Royal Theatrical Fund and contact details

Here at The Royal Theatrical Fund we take your privacy seriously and we are committed to informing you how we use your personal information and assuring you that we keep your data safe.

We, The Royal Theatrical Fund, charity number: 222080, are the "data controller". This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information.

If you require more information or have any questions, please contact our Data Protection Officer:

The Royal Theatrical Fund, 11 Garrick Street, London, WC2E 9AR
Calling us on 020 7836 3322
Emailing admin@trtf.com

2. How we collect information about you

We collect information from you in the following ways:

When you make contact with us directly: This could be to make an application, become a benefactor, buy a ticket to an event, make a donation or volunteer or provide us with your personal information for another reason. This includes when you contact us on the phone, visit the RTF website, or get in touch through the post, or in person.

When someone provides your personal data in relation to a grant: This includes when a family member provides your personal data in connection to a grant or grant application.

When you interact with us through the other charities that we are associated with: This could be enquiring about support, asking for guidance with an application, volunteering or donating to ourselves.

When you interact with us through third parties: This could be if you provide a donation through a third party such as Just Giving or through our contactless payment station or with one of the other third parties that we work with.

When you visit our website: We don't use 'cookies' to gather information regarding which pages you visit or what is of most interest to you. We don't track which pages you visit when you click on any links in emails from us.

Other third parties or publicly available sources: We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources. This could include:

Governmental authorities such as HMRC and Companies House.
Our partners and agents, which may include if we are considering or proceeding with a merger or acquisition of another charity or partnering with another organisation in connection with our charitable purposes.
Media outlets.

3. Information we collect

Personal data and personal information means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed and RTF cannot re-identify it (anonymous data). The information we collect may include:

Identity Data includes names, title, date of birth and gender.

Contact Data includes home address, email address and telephone numbers.

Financial Data includes bank account details if we pay grants into your account and payment card details, if you are making a donation or booking a ticket to one of our events.

Donor Data includes details related to membership subscriptions and donations (including from benefactors).

Grant Data includes details about grants we have made, or are considering to make (including all information collected as part of the grant application or to administer and review grants, and feedback in relation to the grant and any use of funds). This could include details of family members, bank statements and details of the financial situation in order to advise you with regards to benefits. Grant Data may also include certain "Special Categories of Personal Data" which is any personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data (where used for identification purposes), data concerning health, and data concerning a person's sex life or sexual orientation.

Volunteer Data includes details related to when you apply to or volunteer with RTF.

We may also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data about the type of grants we give, and the regions beneficiaries live in. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.

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.

If you fail to provide personal data we may not be able to work with you, including that we may not be able to provide grants to you.

4. Legal basis and purpose for using your information

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use the various categories of your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Purpose	Type of data	Legal basis
To process your donations or other payments (including from benefactors or in connection with events), to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions. To comply with the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 and follow the recommendations of the official regulator of charities, the Charity Commission, which require us to identify and verify the identity of supporters who make major gifts so we can assess any risks associated with accepting their donations. To update you with important administrative messages about your donation.	Identity Data Contact Data Financial Data Donor Data	Necessary to comply with a legal obligation Necessary for our legitimate interests (to administer donations, including in relation to gift aid and communicate with donors about their donations)
To award and administer grants including to make payment to any beneficiary	Identity Data Contact Data Financial Data Grant Data	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to administer grants for delivery of our charitable purposes) For special category data, we rely on your consent. For children, we collect the consent of the applicable parent or guardian where necessary.
To keep records and carry out charitable reporting obligations	Identity Data Contact Data Financial Data Donor Data Grant Data Volunteer Data	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep records in relation to our charitable activities) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
To organise and operate RTF events, either as an attendee or participant	Identity Data Contact Data	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to enable RTF to organise and run events)
To keep a record of your relationship with us, to manage our relationship with you, including responding to any enquiries or complaints and notifying you about updates to our privacy policy	Identity Data Contact Data Financial Data Donor Data Grant Data Volunteer Data	Necessary to comply with a legal obligation Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and manage our relationship with you)
Where you volunteer with us, to administer the volunteering arrangement	Identity Data Contact Data Volunteer Data	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to enable us to assess whether you can be a RTF volunteer and to help organise any volunteering)
To contact you about our work and how you can support The Royal Theatrical Fund	Identity Data Contact Data	Consent, where legally required Necessary for our legitimate interests (to grow our charity and inform others of our work)
To administer and protect RTF and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)	Identity Data Contact Data	Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our charity, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a reorganisation or group restructuring exercise) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
To improve the services we provide and our charity	Identity Data Contact Data Financial Data Donor Data Grant Data Volunteer Data	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to improve our charity)

5. Marketing

We will only contact you about our campaigns and events and how you can support The Royal Theatrical Fund by phone or email, if you have provided your consent for us to contact you in this way.

If you have provided us with your postal address, we may send you information about the work of The Royal Theatrical Fund and how you can support us by mail unless you have specified that you would not like to hear from us this way.

You can update your communication preferences at any time by contacting the secretary at admin@trtf.com

6. Sharing your Information and international transfers

We may share your personal data where necessary with the parties set out below:

To contractors, service providers, professional advisers, other third parties we use to support our charity and third parties who we partner with to further the objectives of our charity, and who are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and who use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them.
Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our charity or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other charities or merge with them. If a change happens to our charity, then the new controller may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.
For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information, with your consent.
To comply with any court order, law or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request.
To enforce our agreements, including for billing and collection.
If disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of RTF, our grantees, donors or others. This includes exchanging information with companies and organisations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

We may transfer your personal data to service providers that carry out certain functions on our behalf or to other third parties. This may involve transferring personal data outside the UK and/or European Economic Area ("EEA") to countries which have laws that do not provide the same level of data protection as the UK or EEA. Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK or EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring that the following safeguards are in place:

We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed under applicable EEA or UK law to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
We may use specific standard contractual terms approved for use under UK and EEA law which gives the transferred personal data the same protection as it has in the UK and EEA.

7. Keeping your information safe

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.

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.

We take looking after all of your information seriously and take reasonable precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of information you give us.

Sending information via the internet is not completely secure. We do our best to protect your personal information sent to us this way but we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our website.

Our websites and emails may contain links to other sites. We are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites or advertisers.

Computer viruses can be transmitted via email. The recipient should check email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The originator accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. Email transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The Royal Theatrical Fund therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of the email message which arise as a result of email transmission. Although the originator has taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses are present in this email, The Royal Theatrical Fund cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of email or attachments.

8. How long we hold your information for

Data retention

The RTF will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, 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.

We only keep your information as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant action and to fulfil our obligations to you (for example, supporting beneficiaries, the collection of Gift Aid). 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.

9. 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. You also have the absolute right to object at any time to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
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 services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
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 using the details in section 1.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Complaints

You have the right to complain to us if you consider that there is an infringement of your rights in relation to your personal data. You can submit a complaint by email or post.

When we receive a data protection complaint, we will:

Acknowledge receipt no later than 30 days from receiving it.
Take appropriate steps to respond without undue delay, which may include making enquiries into the subject matter of the complaint and, where appropriate, keeping you informed about the progress of our handling of the complaint.
Inform you of the outcome without undue delay.

You have the right to make a complaint to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). However, before doing so please make sure you have first made your complaint to us or asked us for clarification if there is something you do not understand.

10. Monitoring

Your communications with our teams (including by telephone or email) may be monitored and/or recorded for training, quality control and compliance purposes to ensure that we continuously improve our customer service standards.