RSC Operational Directives

Operational directives

INDEX

Membership
Quorum for Meetings
Voting
Roles and Responsibilities of Members
Research Funding and Grant Applications
Funding Advice for Researchers
Acknowledging CLEFT in presentations and publications

Item no.	Date decision made	Title	Details	Review date
1	21st May 2021	Membership	Members will be appointed to advise the trustees on CLEFT’s research funding activity. They will be appointed for 3 years in the first instance subject to renewal. The Chair and Vice-chair will be trustees and will be voting members if necessary. Trustee members of the committee can vote only once – either in the committee meeting or the trustees’ meeting. Other trustees may attend the meetings as non-voting members.	Agreed March 2024 To be reviewed June 2026
2	21st May 2021	Quorum for Meetings	A quorum should be 50% of voting members plus 1. The chair and vice-chair are part of the quorum.	Agreed March 2024 To be reviewed June 2026
3	21st May 2021	Voting	Voting will be by majority.	Agreed March 2024 To be reviewed June 2026
4	21st May 2021	Roles and Responsibilities of members	Members will advise trustees on matters concerning the second charitable objective of CLEFT as registered with the Charity Commission: 1) TO RELIEVE THE SUFFERING OF AND PROMOTE AND PROTECT THE PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH OF PATIENTS AFFECTED BY CLEFT LIP AND PALATE AND RELATED CONDITIONS BY SUPPORTING RESEARCH IN DESIGNATED CLEFT CENTRES WITHIN THE UK AND IN OVERSEAS CENTRES SUPPORTED BY CLEFT INTO THE CAUSES AND METHODS OF TREATMENTS AVAILABLE. This will include: 1. Advising the trustees on the best use of undesignated research funds. 2. Encouraging the development of research projects – especially clinical research projects – in UK cleft centres and in overseas centres supported by CLEFT. 3. Ensuring that all projects supported by CLEFT have ethical approval. 4. Offering feedback regarding projects, including: - advising where there may be similarities with projects from other centres, and where cooperation or joint projects would strengthen proposals. - agreeing realistic time-scales with the researchers. - ensuring that each project has a realistic funding proposal. 5. Working with the CLEFT International Steering Group to ensure that projects in overseas centres are “owned” by that centre. 6. Following the progress of projects and offering advice if there are delays. 7. Where funds are to be raised by the local team, ensuring, with the CLEFT fundraising team, that the project has a realistic plan for fund-raising with a clear fall back plan if the target is not met in the agreed time frame. 8. Advising on the appropriate use of funds if projects cannot be completed.	Agreed March 2024 To be reviewed June 2026
5	13th July 2023	Research Funding & Grant Applications	Signed off costing should be supplied on all Research Grant Applications. When an RSC member is a research grant applicant, they may not score their own or any other applications in that round of applications. All conflicts of interest should be declared and documented before scoring of research grant applications.	Agreed March 2024 To be reviewed June 2026
6	1st July 2025	Funding Advice for Researchers documented	Useful information for recipients of CLEFT funding	To be reviewed June 2026
7	1st July 2025	Acknowledging CLEFT in Publications and Presentations	Guidelines for Acknowledging CLEFT 2025	To be reviewed June 2026

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We will always store your personal details securely. We'll use them to provide the service that you have requested, and communicate with you in the way(s) that you have agreed to. Your data may also be used for analysis purposes, to help us provide the best service possible. For full details see our Privacy Policy or contact us on 01245 421901.

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Privacy Policy
At CLEFT, we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who contact us, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.
We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to [email protected] or by writing to CLEFT, 10a Warren Estate, Lordship Road, Writtle, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 3WT. Alternatively, you can telephone 01245 421901.

Who are we?
We are CLEFT, we support cleft lip and palate teams in poorer countries by working with local surgeons and other specialists to help them develop high quality multidisciplinary cleft centres. We do this by visiting and working with them regularly, helping to provide education and training and donating much needed equipment. Our goal is to help local teams so that children born with clefts in these countries will have the same opportunities as those in the UK.

CLEFT also supports research in the UK which will potentially benefit the much greater number of cleft lip and palate patients in countries other than the UK. Our research projects include a pilot project to develop techniques for 3-D MRI scanning of the palate, a study of the muscles of the soft palate to try to improve the quality of the surgery as well as investigating submucous cleft palate development and therapy.

CLEFT is a registered charity (no. 1119630). The registered address is CLEFT, 10a Warren Estate, Lordship Road, Writtle, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 3WT.

How do we collect information from you?
We may obtain information about you when you contact us about what CLEFT does, register for one of our events, to make a donation or if you register to receive one of our newsletters.

What type of information is collected from you?
The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, phone number, and birth date. If you make a donation online or by phone, your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions, as explained below.

How is your information used?
We may use your information to:
• process a donation that you have made;
• to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
• seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
• notify you of changes to our services;
• send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about campaigns, appeals, other fundraising activities;
• process a grant or job application.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations (for example the collection of Gift Aid). We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

Who has access to your information?
We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.
We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf: We may pass your information to our third party service providers, agents subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process donations and send you mailings). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties beyond the CLEFT Network for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.

Third Party Product Providers we work in association with: When you are using our secure online donation pages, your donation is processed by a third party payment processor, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us.

Your choices
You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about the vital work we do in other countries and our research here in the UK then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form on which we collect your information.

We will not contact you for marketing purposes by email, phone or text message unless you have given your prior consent. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by post if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us by email: [email protected] or telephone on 01245 421901.

How you can access and update your information
The accuracy of your information is important to us. We’re working on ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you. In the meantime, if you change email address, or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please email us at: [email protected], or write to us at: CLEFT, 10a Warren Estate, Lordship Road, Writtle, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 3WT. Alternatively, you can telephone 01245 421901.
You have the right to ask for a copy of the information CLEFT hold about you.

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information
Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site.

16 or Under
We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Review of this Policy
We keep this Policy under regular review.

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Useful Reading

There is a lot of information available on the Charity Commission website about what it means to be a trustee but the essential documents are available here to download.
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Trusts and Foundations

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Privacy Policy

PRIVACY POLICY