PRIVACY NOTICE

This Privacy Notice explains what to expect when Empathy Action (registered charity in England and Wales, charity number 1162224) collects and uses your personal information.  We encourage you to read this notice carefully and if you’d like to learn more about our data protection and privacy policies or get further clarification, please contact our friendly team and we will be happy to assist.

Address: Data Protection Officer, Empathy Action, Bukara House, 28 Church Road, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN1 1JP, UK

Phone: 01892 576336 or

Email: contact@empathyaction.org

OUR PROMISE

Empathy Action is committed to respecting your privacy and ensuring the personal information you have entrusted to us is held securely. We hold and process your information in accordance with Article 6 of the General Data Protection Regulation 2018.

The following policy explains how and why we collect and process your personal information, what controls you have over the use of it and how we keep it secure.

HOW WE COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION

We collect personal information in the following ways:

Directly from you when you:

  • Make a donation;

  • Register to take part in our events (including simulations and fundraising);

  • When you register to receive our newsletter

  • Make a request for resources to share about Empathy Action;

  • Contact us with an enquiry;

  • Complete a survey;

  • Register to host an Empathy Action event;

  • Apply to volunteer for our team.

From other sources:

  • When you register to sponsor an Empathy Action fundraising individual through platforms such as Give.Net or other portals;

  • Information made available publicly by the Charity Commission, Companies House or information that has been published in newspapers and articles.

THE PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT

  • Personal identifiers such as your title, name and year of birth;

  • Contact details including postal address, post code, email and telephone number;

  • Financial information such as your bank details (donors only);

  • Whether you are a UK taxpayer (donors only);

  • The event location where you registered to attend;

  • Records of your contact with us.

WHY WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

  • For the administration of events

  • To process the monthly sponsorship payment and any other donations.

  • To reclaim tax on Gift Aid donations, if applicable.

  • To verify that you are over 18 and if not, obtain permission from your parent/guardian to process your information or accept any regular donations.

  • To enable us to take greater care when engaging with our older supporters.

  • When you visit our website, we may gather information about which pages you visit to help us provide you with the best service.

  • To determine and improve the effectiveness of our website and marketing campaigns.

  • To deliver interactive empathy simulation events.

  • To organise and coordinate Empathy Action Fundraising Challenge Events and Initiatives

  • To keep you informed about our work.

  • To manage and coordinate our volunteers.

MARKETING PERMISSIONS

We share news about how your support is changing lives. This includes sending you information about our work, news, appeals, campaigns, events and information on volunteering.

Email and text marketing:

We will ask for your permission to contact you by email or text for marketing purposes.

Empathy Action is committed to respecting your choice to receive marketing information. You can update your permission and contact preferences at any time by contacting the Empathy Action team, as above, or by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link included in each email communication we send.

FUNDRAISING

Fundraising is essential for Empathy Action in our mission to inspire community action to help address global deprivation. To fundraise more efficiently and steward our resources with integrity and excellence, we conduct research to gain a better understanding of our supporters. This helps us to personalise our funding requests to supporters. The research involves compiling information you’ve provided to us with general information from:

Publicly available sources

This may include information found from sources such as Companies House and other information that has been published in articles/newspapers.

Social Media

You may give permission for your information to be viewed publicly depending on your settings or the privacy policies for social media and messaging services.

Important note:

You can opt-out of your personal information being processed in this way by emailing or calling us.

COOKIES

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. Empathy Action uses cookies to enable our website to function effectively, to improve your experience and to determine and improve the effectiveness of our website.

Here is a brief overview of the types of cookies we use on the Empathy Action website, which consist of following:

  • CMS cookies – our Empathy Action website is created in a CMS system (Content Management System) called WordPress, which places a small number of standard WordPress cookies on your computer as you use it.

  • Analytics – examples include Google Analytics. Google Analytics cookies collect information about how visitors use a website and help us to continually improve our blog. For instance, they tell us which pages visitors go to most often and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies you. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. Empathy Action uses this data to help us to understand: which pages people visit on the site, which internet browsers are being used and what is popular on our website.

How to manage your cookie settings

Many web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Safari, will allow some control over cookies through their settings. To manage your cookie settings, please refer to your browser software. For more information about cookies and how to delete them, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org

ACCEPTANCE OF COOKIE USE

By using our website, you agree to use of cookies. This is subject to any preferences or browser setting you may have.

WHO WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION WITH

We will only share personal information which is either consented to, necessary to fulfil the simulations or to coordinate Empathy Action events that you are registered with.

We may also share your personal information with trusted third parties where it is necessary to provide products you have requested from us (such as products from the ‘Gifts That Give Twice’ range) or where they are contracted to develop or maintain our systems.

We monitor information security compliance and have written contracts which obligate our partners or third party providers to process your personal information only on our instructions and in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws.

HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR DATA

Empathy Action will only keep your personal information for as long as it is required and in accordance with statutory requirements. For example, HMRC requires that we keep a record of your name, address and Gift Aid declaration for six years from the date of your last donation. Where the information is no longer required, we will ensure that it is disposed of in a secure manner.

If you have indicated that you do not wish to hear from us in the future, we will keep the minimum information necessary to ensure we avoid contacting you any further.

YOUR INFORMATION RIGHTS AND CHOICES

The Data Protection Act (DPA) gives you the right:

  • To request in writing and securely obtain copies of the personal information Empathy Action holds about you.

  • To correct or update your personal information processed by Empathy Action.

  • To request Empathy Action to stop using your personal information for marketing purposes or for any other purpose where there is no legal requirement for continued processing.

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) gives you the right:

  • To choose whether or not to receive marketing communication from us by email, text or telephone.

  • To know about the cookies Empathy Action uses, so that you can decide whether to give us permission to store a cookie on your device.

For more information about your information rights visit www.ico.org.uk

REPORTING CONCERNS OR COMPLIMENTS

Please contact us if you wish to raise a concern about Empathy Action’s handling of your personal information or to compliment what you think we have done well.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office about how we manage your data.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

Empathy Action will review our privacy notice regularly. The terms of this notice may be updated at any time, for example, in the event of changes in law and how we operate. Please do check our website from time to time. If there are any significant changes in the way we process your personal information, we will provide a prominent notice on our website or send a notification. This notice was last updated in May 2018.

Thank you from everyone at Empathy Action for your amazing support.