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Bible Society Privacy Policy

Who are we?

In this policy, ‘we’, ‘our’ or ‘us’ refers to Bible Society, a registered charity in England and Wales (232759). This also includes Christian Research and our trading company (shop) Bible Society Resources Limited (registered company number 5450490).

Our address is: Stonehill Green, Westlea, Swindon, SN5 7DG.

Your Privacy

We respect your privacy and want to communicate with you in a way that suits you, in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and any other relevant data protection legislation. Your privacy is important to us, and this policy explains how we use your personal information and keep it secure.

What is personal information?

Personal information covers any data, that enables us to identify you as an individual, or relates to you as an individual, for example your name, address, telephone number, email address, bank details (submitted when making a donation or buying a product), church affiliation, interests, preferences and engagement with our work.

How do we use your personal information?

We use your personal information to send you postal mailings, such as our supporter magazine, appeal updates and other information you have asked for or that we feel would be of interest to you.

We use your email details to send you communications that you have requested, and if you represent an organisation or a church, we may also send you resource/event emails. If you have purchased from our shop, you will also receive emails promoting shop products and resources, unless you opt-out.

We may phone you to let you know more about our work or to ask if you would like to make a donation, but only where you have given your phone number for these purposes.

We may also phone you about your regular donations to see if you wish to change the amount you are currently giving.

Sometimes we work with a company called NTT/NTT Fundraising to make these calls on our behalf (see section below: Do we share your personal information?).

You can change the way we communicate with you, at any time, in the following ways:

When you supply personal information to us, we only use this information for the purpose for which it was given and ensure that it is kept securely.

Unless you ask us not to, we may carry out analysis of the personal information you have provided and add publicly available information to create a profile, in relation to (among other things) your interests, preferences, attitudes and level of potential donations, so we can contact you in the most appropriate way and with the most relevant information.

We may ask you to participate in surveys, which are used to help us improve how we work. They will not result in us providing additional resources and marketing to you, unless clearly stated in the survey. To opt out of surveys, please see the contact section at the end of this Privacy Policy.

Lawful basis for processing your information

We use one of the following lawful bases for processing your information:

Consent – we rely on your consent to process your information when you have given this to us e.g.to send you our weekly email newsletter

Contract – we may process your information when we need to do this to fulfil a contract with you, e.g., if you have purchased something from our shop

Legal Obligation – sometimes we will need to process your information because we have a legal reason to do this, e.g., if you have gift aided donations to us, HMRC require us to keep the information for up to 7 years

Legitimate Interest – we may process your information when it is in our legitimate interest to do this and when these interests do not override your interests and rights, e.g. when we send information to you by post.

How long do we keep your information?

In accordance with our Data Retention Policy, we retain your information for as long as reasonably necessary to maintain and expand our relationship with you, to comply with our legal and contractual obligations, to protect ourselves from potential disputes, to have proof and evidence concerning our relationship should any legal issues arise and to maintain a historical record of our activities and those involved in them.

Please note that except as required by law or by specific agreement with you, we make no commitment to retain your information for any particular period, and we are free to delete it securely or restrict access to it for any reason and at any time, with or without notice to you.

If you have any questions about our Data Retention Policy, please contact us by email at [email protected]

Do we share your personal information?

We never share your details with third parties for marketing purposes.

We share information with businesses that provide us with the services we need, to operate effectively and efficiently. Some of the ways we share your information for this purpose include:

  • storing the information
  • fulfilling orders on our behalf e.g., using Marston Book Services and Another Perfect Delivery Ltd
  • sending postal mail on our behalf e.g., using Advanced Direct Mail
  • sending emails
  • analysing data
  • providing marketing assistance
  • processing financial transactions (see next section)
  • event management
  • calling you, on our behalf e.g., using NTT/NTT Fundraising

When we share information, we have a data processing agreement in place to ensure your information will be kept secure and will only be used for the purpose for which it has been provided.

How do we use your financial information?

In order to process financial transactions, we may need your bank or credit card details. Online credit card payments are processed through Opayo/Evalon (formerly known as Sage Pay) via a secure server.

Credit card payments sent on donation forms are processed via Barclaycard and shredded as soon as processed through the terminal.

We do not retain or store complete credit card details, nor do we share financial details with any third parties.

If you have given us bank details to set up a direct debit, your information will be processed by Bible Society within a secure hosting environment.

Information you give us via the website is stored and processed in the UK. However, because of the nature of the internet, it is possible that your data may pass through countries outside the UK.

What happens when data passes outside the UK?

We use data processors and sub-processors based outside the UK. In this situation we follow data protection legislation and procedures

(including standard contractual clauses) to keep your data secure. To find out more, please get in touch with the Data Protection Officer: [email protected]

Your rights

 

You have the following rights:

  • ‘Right to be informed’, which means we will be completely clear and transparent about how we plan to use your personal information.
  • ‘Right of access’, which means you can request details of the personal information we hold about you and how we use it. We will provide this within one month.
  • ‘Right to rectification’, which means you can ask us to update or amend the personal information we hold about you, if it is incorrect.
  • ‘Right to restrict processing’, which means you can ask us to change, restrict or stop the way we are using your personal information.
  • ‘Right to erasure’ (or right to be forgotten), which means you can ask us to remove your personal information from our records.
  • ‘Right to object’, which means you can object to us using your personal information for marketing purposes.
  • ‘Right to data portability’, which means you can obtain the personal information we hold about you and reuse it for your own purposes.
  • ‘Right not to be subject to automated decision making’, which means if we use systems to make a decision about you, you have the right to ask for a person to intervene, which may change the outcome.
  • Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, such as the Fundraising Regulator or the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), if you are not satisfied with our response to a request you make to us, or you feel we are not using your information correctly.

If you have an issue with Bible Society that cannot be resolved, you can contact the ICO at www.ICO.org.uk

How we use cookies

Our website uses cookies to improve your online experience. Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer or device. Some cookies help provide website functionality, help keep our website secure and help us understand how our website is being used. Other cookies can be used for marketing purposes.

Find out more about the cookies we use and how you can manage your preferences, in our cookie policy, at biblesociety.org.uk/cookie-policy

Bible Society accounts

Some areas of the Bible Society website invite or require visitors to create Bible Society accounts when undertaking particular activities (e.g., purchasing from our shop, accessing The Bible Course online for groups, accessing Open the Book materials.

We ask for your name and email address to create an account. We may ask other questions depending on the activity you’re undertaking.

We store these for 3 years from the last date you logged in.

Accounts can be closed by logging into your account and clicking ‘Close my account’.

Children

If you are under 18, please get a parent’s or guardian’s permission before giving any personal information on our website.

If you buy something from our online shop, you may get other shop emails from us. We will not knowingly send any other email or postal marketing material to those under 18.

If you use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube you may see Bible Society adverts. Please get your parent’s or guardian’s permission before giving personal information in response to these posts.

We may hold children’s information on our database for administering our children’s work, but only where we have the appropriate permission to do so.

How to contact us or to update your details

You can get in touch with us in the following ways:

Please keep us informed of changes so we can stay in touch.

If you have any concerns regarding this privacy policy or the way we are processing your personal information, please contact:

The Data Protection Officer, at the address below, or email [email protected]

Bible Society, Stonehill Green, Westlea, Swindon SN5 7DG

 

Last revision November 2023

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