Privacy Policy

Information we collect and use:

Personal information (also called data) gathered by Bible Society NI may include your title, name, address, phone number, email address, financial information and occasionally church affiliation or church role. With specific regard to our “Bibles for Babies” project, we will also collect the name of your child, and their date of birth. We will also keep a record of your contact with us for an appropriate time or for the duration of your active interest.

We collect personal information in a few ways:

Information you give us – This is personal information given to us directly from individuals when they give us clear consent to contact them or when we receive a donation. This may be through a written form, an online form, face-to-face at an event, during a visit to our office, through a phone conversation, by email, through our website or social media pages, or through online subscription for prayer material and resources.

Information we gather - We may collect personal data from public sources E.g. Church Directories or Royal Mail’s Postcode finder to complete a record or check accuracy. If you visit our website, we will also collect some anonymous information that helps us understand how our website is used. This information is gathered through apps such as Google Analytics and does not identify you in any way. See section on Our Website for more details including the use of cookies.

Personal information is processed in several ways:

• To keep individuals informed about our work;

• To process donations and reclaim tax on Gift Aid donations;

• To raise funds for Bible Society projects and ministry both in Northern Ireland and in other countries;

• To promote events, projects, or resources;

• To maintain back-ups of our databases;

• To keep a record of correspondence, transactions or enquiries;

• To send materials specific to our “Bibles for Babies” project out to those who are registered.

We will not hold or use your information without a legal basis allowing us to do so. The legal bases that we apply are:

Consent. This is when you have clearly given permission for Bible Society NI to contact you in specific ways, thus retaining and using your personal information. This is information provided allowing posted mailings and/or email newsletters.

Legitimate interest. Information that is held on those who are currently funding or supporting the work of the Bible Society NI are retained and processed as there is a legitimate interest for both parties in maintaining contact. Some records are also held and processed for Direct Mail purposes to promote specific resources. E.g. Bible Sunday church resource pack is promoted to clergy and church leaders. This contact will be by post or email. We may also have a legitimate interest in processing information contained in communication that you send us, simply to respond to you or record the correspondence.

Legal or contractual obligations. When a financial transaction is made (either commercially or for charitable reasons) or information is processed for a Gift Aid claim, we are obliged to retain records for the correct accountancy period.

We have contractual arrangements with third parties who process your information for specific purposes. These are purposes such as preparing and sending a bulk post or email, or processing Gift Aid claims.

Mailing House. When we send our magazine, calendar, direct mail letters or campaign material in the post, the data is sent to Postal Group mailing house who are contracted to process and pack our bulk mail. They are contracted under the agreement that they are fully compliant with GDPR. Data is encrypted when transferred and it is not retained by Postal Group after the mailing has been processed.

Bulk Email System. Bible Society NI newsletters, occasional promotional material and prayer circulars are currently sent through Mailchimp, a bulk sending email system. This is a secure system and is compliant with GDPR. Email addresses are held on the Bible Society NI account on Mailchimp. This is securely protected and can only be accessed by Bible Society NI staff and Mailchimp technical support if required.

Financial Processing. Personal details necessary for processing transactions, donations and Gift Aid claims (as directed by individuals) will be shared and processed for banking purposes. - Danske Bank process our Direct Debit donations and we use Stripe to securely process giving subscriptions through our website.

Legal Purposes. We will disclose personal information only in the incredibly unlikely event that it is required to be shared by law. EG. HMRC Audit, Criminal Investigation or other legal proceeding.

How/where we hold your information. Personal information that we hold may be stored on computers or in paper files, or both if required. All computers are encrypted, and password protected. Paper files are stored safely on Bible Society NI premises and are only accessed by Bible Society NI staff. On occasions when a third party is required to access staff computers or files, all precautions are taken. Examples of this include our annual financial audit or occasional IT support.

How long we hold your information. Personal data that we keep on record for any reason will not be kept longer than necessary. The reason for holding the information will have an impact on the length of time it is held.

Funders/donors/financial transaction. We have a legal obligation to hold these records for a period that is suitable for financial recording. This is usually 6 years (plus the current financial year) following the last recorded financial transaction.

Consent based information. This is when an individual has given us consent to keep them informed in specific ways and we do not have any other Legal Basis for keeping in touch. We will only continue to hold their information and use it to contact them for as long as their consent remains or until the individual unsubscribes or requests removal.

Legitimate Interest Records. These records will be retained until there is no longer a legitimate interest to maintain contact or until we are asked by the individual to remove their record. These records will not be held if doing so goes against the rights of the individual.

Data Retention. To view our full data retention policy, please click here to open the PDF.

Your information belongs to you, so you have a number of rights about how it is held and used. Some of these rights are complex and we have not included all the details here. Please have a look at the Information Commissioner’s Office website for full explanations of your rights – www.ico.org.uk/

You have the right to:

• Access your information. You can request a copy of the personal information that Bible Society NI holds about you. We will provide this free of charge unless the request is unfounded, excessive or repetitive in which case an appropriate administrative fee may be charged or we may refuse to respond. Proof of identity will be required.

• Have inaccurate or out-of-date information corrected. You can contact us to update your record.

• Have your record deleted if possible. You can ask us to remove your record. We may not be able to remove your record if there are legal obligations involved in retaining it. We will inform you if that is the case.

• Restrict how we process your information. You can instruct us on how we can use your information. E.g. you may make a donation and ask us to claim Gift Aid but you do not wish to be kept informed about our work. In this case we will hold and process your information for financial reasons only and not contact you with additional information.

• Data portability. This applies where information is held by us because you have given consent or if information is held to carry out a contract. This means that if you need to have your information sent to you, we are able to do so in a format that can be read on an electronic device. Proof of identity will be required.

• Complain to a supervisory authority. If you have serious concerns about how we handle your data, you have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Details can be found at www.ico.org.uk

• Withdraw Consent. If we are keeping in touch with you because you gave us consent to do so, you can contact us and withdraw your consent at any time.

All rights will be upheld by Bible Society NI and requests will be actioned (where legally possible) without undue delay and within a period of no longer than one month.

When you visit our website we do not gather personal information about you unless you give it to us. Our system will collect anonymous information for statistics and reporting. This includes information such as the page that your search opened on, or the pages visited and click rates. This information is collected but not connected to individuals. We access this information through our website reports and apps such as Google Analytics to help us assess the helpfulness of our resources.

Cookies. The anonymous information gathered through our website requires the use of cookies. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that is stored on your browser or the hard drive of your computer. These help us gather anonymous information on how our website is used. You can accept or decline cookies by modifying the settings in your browser. Please note that if you disable all cookies then you may not be able to access some parts of our website.

Other Websites. Links may appear on our site taking you to other websites, advertisements, social media sites etc. We are not responsible for the privacy policies of these linked sites and we do not accept any liability for the way these sites use your information. We advise you to check the policies of linked sites before submitting any personal information.