EMBASSY PRIVACY POLICY

October 2023

PURPOSE OF POLICY  

All Embassy employees and volunteers have responsibilities under the Data Protection Regulations (known as GDPR) and are trained appropriately for their specific roles in complying with the provisions of the regulations. Leaders are trained to ensure that within their areas of responsibilities they adhere to the relevant requirements and processes.

We are committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what information we hold about you.

Using personal information allows us to develop a better understanding of our supporters and in turn helps us to provide you with relevant and timely information about the work that we do and services we provide.

We use your information in accordance with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal information. Embassy collects various data when you use our websites, sign up to our newsletters/prayer letters, donate, volunteer, come to an event, make a purchase, or are involved in any other way with our organisation. This document is here to help you understand how we use the data we collect.

INFORMATION COLLECTION 

If you have given us information about yourself, say when you’ve donated, offered support in any way, come to an event, or put your name on a mailing list, we take that information and enter it into a database which helps us to understand who our supporters are and enables follow-up. 

We also collect information from other sources, such as fundraising sites like Stewardship and CAF, where you have agreed to support Embassy and have given your consent. You may wish to check their privacy policy to find out more information on how they will process your data. 

USE OF YOUR INFORMATION

We use any personal information that you give us (name, email address, postal address, etc), only for the purposes of: 

  • Processing any donations, you might make 

  • To provide a service you request, including to enable us to fulfil our obligations under any agreement/contract with you

  • Sending you mail and newsletters to inform you about our activities and events, which your support or interest are helping to provide, and informing you about opportunities for partnership through prayer, giving, supporting or volunteering 

  • For analytical purposes

  • Personalised communication, such as customised website content, emails or mailings

  • Keeping a record of your relationship with us 

By donating or registering your interest, you agree to the collection and use of information necessary to process your donation or provide you with the information you have requested. Providing your details means that you are agreeing to its use.   

You may choose to unsubscribe from mail or email communications at any time without affecting your donations. If you have donated and/or have Gift Aid, we are legally required to store your data and may contact you regarding your donation, but we won’t use this data for anything else. If you do not want us to email you, do not provide your email address.

HOW LONG WE STORE YOUR DATA

We will keep your personal information only for as long as we consider it necessary to perform the activities listed above or for as long as you continue to receive our mailings. 

We have a data retention policy to implement this. We take account of legal obligations and accounting and tax considerations as well as considering what would be reasonable for the activity concerned. 

For example, we will retain details of donations for seven years to meet tax and accounting requirements, but we will only hold information provided as part of a newsletter subscription for the length of the subscription. 

SECURITY

We restrict access to your data to our employees, and administrative volunteers. Your data is stored on Microsoft OneDrive. Where your data is stored, we maintain physical and/or electronic security and procedures to ensure that your data is not freely available. 

USE OF YOUR DATA BY A THIRD PARTY

We will not disclose your information to third parties for their own independent marketing or business purposes without your consent. However, there are certain circumstances under which we may disclose your personal information to third parties. These are as follows:

  • To our own partners and service providers who process data and provide services on our behalf and on our instructions (for example our ticketing and booking system software provider). In these cases, we require that these third parties comply strictly with our instructions and with data protection laws, for example around security of personal data. These entities are limited in their ability to use your information for purposes other than providing services for us.

  • Where we are under a duty to disclose your personal information to comply with any legal obligation (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies).

ONLINE SECURITY

The security of your personal information is important to us, but we acknowledge that no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. 

LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES

For your convenience, we may provide links to other websites and web pages that we do not control. We cannot be responsible for the privacy practices of any websites or pages not under our control and we do not endorse any of these websites or pages, the services or products described or offered on such sites or pages, or any of the content contained on those sites or pages. 

ACCESS TO YOUR INFORMATION

You have the right to request details of the information we hold about you. To receive a copy of the personal information we hold please write to Embassy, C/o The Message Trust, Lancaster House, Harper Road, Manchester M22 4RG. We will respond within 1 month of receiving your letter. 

For more information about your rights under the Data Protection Act, you can visit the website of the Information Commissioner’s Office. 

UPDATING YOUR PREFERENCES 

If you need to update your personal information or change any of your communication preferences, please contact us at ruth@embassyvillage.co.uk

UPDATING YOUR INFORMATION 

We do appreciate that you keep your details up to date. You can do so in the same way as updating your preferences (above). 

We may use Post Office address search, postcode lists or other available sources to confirm data that you provide us with, where, for example, we are unsure of what you have completed on a form. 

We will not use these sources to create data that you have chosen not to provide, for example, if you have left a telephone number blank; nor will we automatically update changes of address, we will normally only update your address when you tell us it’s changed. However, if you are a regular giver, continuing to give regularly, and items such as our newsletter are returned to us, we may use external sources to update your address details so that we may update you on how your money has been spent through our news and stories.

TELLING US TO STOP PROCESSING

You have the right to ask us to erase your personal data, to ask us to restrict our processing or to object to our processing of your personal data. You can do so at any time by writing to us at: 

Embassy
C/o The Message Trust
Lancaster House
Harper Road
Manchester
M22 4RG

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY 

We reserve the right to update or change our Privacy Policy at any time and you should check this Privacy Policy periodically. Your continued use of the Service after we post any modifications to the Privacy Policy will constitute your acknowledgment of the modifications and your consent to abide and be bound by the modified Privacy Policy. 

If we make any substantial changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by placing a prominent notice on our website. 

CONTACT US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the data that we keep about you and how we use it, please contact us at sid@embassyvillage.co.uk or by writing to us at: 

Embassy
C/o The Message Trust
Lancaster House
Harper Road
Manchester
M22 4RG

USE OF INFORMATION COLLECTED AUTOMATICALLY THROUGH OUR WEBSITES

COOKIES

Cookies are files with a small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your computer’s hard drive. 

Like many sites, we use cookies to collect information. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our website. 

LOG DATA/ANALYTICS

Like many site operators, we collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our site (“Log Data”). 

This Log Data may include information such as your computer’s IP address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our website that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages and other statistics. 

In addition, we may use third party services such as Google Analytics that collect, monitor and analyse this data for the purposes of understanding usage patterns and improving our site design. We do not use this data to try to identify specific people, and we do not collect data that would allow us to do this.