Privacy Policy

Sight Loss Ministries Privacy Policy

Sight Loss Ministries is a charitable mission organisation that provides holistic Christian resources and services for people with sight loss. We do so in the following ways:

1. We organise events where people with sight loss come together with sighted people. These events have a focus on the social and the spiritual;

2. We provide advice and support for people with sight loss on how they can utilise accessible Christian content in a suitable format for their needs;

3. We signpost to other services for people with sight loss in the UK.

Sight Loss Ministries has a legal duty to protect your information and provide you with information about the rights that you have. As we control how the information we collect will be used, the law refers to us as a ‘data controller’.

Sight Loss Ministries is a company limited by guarantee and we are registered in Northern Ireland under the name Sight Loss Ministries Limited, company no. NI681987. We are also a registered charity in Northern Ireland no. 108622. Contact details are provided at the bottom of this form.

What personal information do we collect?

The type and amount of personal data we collect depends on why you are providing it.

If you are requesting advice, support, information, or wish to attend our events, we may collect your name, address and/or email address and telephone number. At times, we may also need to collect sensitive personal information about you and your circumstances due to the specific nature of your request and the response required. Certain types of personal data, including information about a person’s health, is given a higher level of protection under data protection legislation.

If you are applying for a volunteer role, the information you provide in your application and interview, and any references we take up, are necessary for the purposes of our considering the application.

If you are a supporter, donor or a customer making a purchase, we will ask for your name, address and/or email address, telephone number, credit or debit card details, and whether or not you are a taxpayer (in order to claim Gift Aid).

How we collect information?

We may collect information from you whenever you have any involvement with us, for example when you:

Enquire about our activities or services

Visit our website

Post content on to our website or social media sites

Volunteer or work for us

Donate to us or fundraise for us

Attend our events or meetings and provide us with information

Where we collect information from?

We collect information:

From you when you give it to us directly: You may provide your details when you ask us for a service or make a donation, volunteer with us, fundraise for us, or attend an event.

Indirectly from third parties: We may also receive information as a result of vetting procedures, if you apply to volunteer or work with us. An example of this could be contacting referees for references.

Your information may be shared with us by other organisations such as fundraising sites if you are supporting or fundraising for us, and from solicitors or funeral directors where a gift has been left in a will or donations made at a memorial service. These third parties should only share information with us in the way they have set out in their own Privacy Policies, which you should check when you give them your details.

When you use our website. Please see the information below about the use of cookies.

We also use a marketing platform called MailChimp to send out prayer points and news updates to those who have subscribed for these mailing lists. This service allows us to track some level of user engagement with our content. For further information about this please find more information here on the MailChimp website including their privacy policy.

How we use your personal information?

We may use the information provided by you in a number of ways which reflect the legal basis applying to processing your data. These include:

To manage your event booking.

To provide you with support and/or advice about how you or someone else with sight loss can utilise accessible Christian content in a suitable format for their needs.

For carrying out your obligations under a contract between us, for example the purchase of a meal/s at an event.

To process donations and legacies.

To process job or volunteer or grant applications.

To provide you with communications that may be of interest to you including marketing information about our services and activities, campaigning, fundraising and appeals for donations.

For analysing the operation of our marketing, website and analysing your website behaviour to improve the website and its usefulness.

Analysing your data and seeking your views so that we can make improvements to our services.

For accurately maintaining our organisational records and ensuring we know how you prefer to be contacted.

What is our legal basis for processing your information?

Consent

Consent is where we ask you if we can use your information in a certain way, and you agree to this (for example when we send you prayer points and updates about Sight Loss Ministries). Where we use your information for a purpose based on consent, you have the right to withdraw consent for any future use of your information for this purpose at any time.

Legal obligation

We are able to use your personal information where we need to do so to comply with one of our legal or regulatory obligations. For example, in some cases we may need to share your information with a regulator such as the Charity Commission, or to use information we collect about you for due diligence.

Performance of a contract / take steps at your request to prepare for entry into a contract

We are able to use your personal information where we are entering into a contract with you or performing our obligations under that contract. Examples of this would be if you are buying something from us (for example a meal/s at one of our events) or applying to work with us.

Vital interests

We have a basis to use your personal information where it is necessary for us to protect life or health. For instance if there were to be an emergency impacting individuals at one of our events, or a safeguarding issue which required us to contact people unexpectedly or share their information with emergency services.

Legitimate Interests

We may also process your data where we are furthering our legitimate aims and have assessed that the processing is not likely to be too intrusive, or to unduly infringe on your rights and freedoms. In legal terms, this is called the “legitimate interests” basis.

How do we protect your personal information?

We use cloud-based systems to store our data and take all reasonable steps necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to us through the internet; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Who has access to your information?

We always ensure only authorised volunteers or staff have access to your information. Others who may have access to your information include:

Third parties who provide services for us, including MailChimp (see note above including their privacy policy), our accountants and legal advisers, and the banks that process payments on our behalf. We select our third party service providers with care and we only provide these third parties with the information that is necessary to provide the service.

Analytics and search engine providers that help us to improve our website and its use.

We may also disclose your personal information if we are required to do so under any legal obligation and may use external data for the purposes of fraud prevention and credit risk reduction, or where doing so would not infringe your rights, but is necessary and in the public interest.

Other than this, we will not share your information with other organisations without your consent.

Do we transfer your information out of the UK?

We may transfer your information to other countries that have appropriate safeguards in place – for example, processors based in the European Union or the USA, where they are certified to the EU-US Privacy Shield. In particular, we may host your data on servers operated by Google LLC which conform to the standards of the EU-US Privacy Shield.

How do we use cookies?

This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyse traffic. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies. For more information:

https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies

Individuals aged 18 or under

We do not knowingly solicit or process personal information from anyone aged 18 or under without parental or guardian’s consent.

Anyone aged under 18 who contacts Sight Loss Ministries should have the consent of a parent or guardian before supplying any personal information. If our staff consider that someone contacting us or requesting our services is under 18 they will ask for details of age before proceeding.

How long will we keep your personal information?

Whenever we collect or process your personal data, we will only keep it for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. For example, if you no longer want to hear from us, we may keep a record of your contact details to enable us to comply with your request.

In certain circumstances, we are required to keep your personal data to comply with our contractual or legal obligations. For example, we will keep a record of your donations subject to gift aid for at least seven years to comply with HMRC rules. We may keep your information indefinitely if you donate to us by Direct Debit or pledge a gift in your Will to Sight Loss Ministries.

At the end of the appropriate retention period, your information will either be deleted or anonymised.

What are your rights?

You may withdraw consent where we are using your information on the basis of this

You may object where we are using your information on legitimate interest grounds

You can ask us what information we hold about you and can request a copy of this. There is normally no fee for this - unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive

You can ask us to correct information we hold about you if it is inaccurate

You can ask us to erase your information in some circumstances

You can ask us to stop using your information for a period of time if you believe we are not doing so lawfully

To submit a request by email, post or telephone, please use the contact information provided below. We will deal with your request within one month, unless it is particularly complex, in which case we will contact you within one month to let you know that we may need a further two months to comply.

If you have any queries about this policy or concerning your personal information, including updating us about changes to your information, please contact us by email using info@sightlossministries.org or by phone on 07516636741 or write to Sight Loss Ministries, 7 Holstein Lodge, Lisburn, BT28 2QB.

If you are not happy with the way we have processed or dealt with your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioners Office. Further details can be found here https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

Changes to this policy

We review this policy regularly. Do please check this policy each time you consider giving your personal information to us.

Date of last review by the trustee board: 3rd February 2022.