Privacy Policy

This Privacy Promise explains when and why we collect personal information about you, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others, this means any information that can directly or indirectly identify you. It also explains how we keep your data safe and secure and your rights and choices in relation to your information.

If you have any questions regarding Religion Media Centre’s Privacy Promise and our privacy practises or would like to exercise any of your rights, please get in touch via the following information:

Email us: [email protected]

Telephone us: 0203 970 0709

Write to us: Data Protection Enquiry, Collaboration House, 77-79 Charlotte Street, London, W1T 4PW.

If you are unhappy with the way we process your date, you can also make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) which regulates the use of information in the UK. They can be contacted by;

Telephone 0303 123 1113

Or by going online to www.ico.org.uk/concerns

If the organisation is based outside of the UK, the compliant should be directed to the relevant Data Protection Supervisory Authority in that Country.

Who are we?

We are Religion Media Centre, an impartial religion media charity who brief journalists from non-specialist backgrounds on the context of a particular issue in the news and provide easier access for journalists to reputable sources of expertise and ranges of opinion on a particular topic. It will be transparent about the background and denominational affiliation of any contact.

In this policy, Religion Media Centre, ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’ means:

Religion Media Centre, Charity Registration Number 1169562 with a registered address at Collaboration House, 77-79 Charlotte Street, London, W1T 4PW.

How do we collect information from you?

Information you give us directly

For example, we may obtain information about you when you take part in one of our events, or make a donation, when you apply to volunteer with us, purchase our products and/or services.

When you visit this website

We may, like many companies, automatically collect the following information:

Technical information, including the type of device you’re using, your IP address, browser and operating system being used to connect your computer to the internet. This information may be used to improve our services with you and make your experience better.

We collect and use your personal information by using cookies on our website – more information on cookies can be found under ‘the use of cookies’ section below.

Social Media

When you interact with us on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, we may obtain information about you (for example, when you publicly tag us in an event photo). The information we receive will depend on the privacy preferences you have set on those types of platforms.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect, store and use might include:

  • Your name and contact details (including postal address, email address and telephone number);
  • Your date of birth;
  • Your bank or credit card details. If you make a donation online or make a purchase. your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third-party payment processors, who specialise in securing your information and processing of debit/credit card transactions;
  • Any other personal information that may be shared with us.

Data protection laws recognise certain categories of personal information as sensitive or special categories of data and therefore requiring greater protection, for example, information about your health, religion, sex life or sexual orientation.

We do not usually collect sensitive data about you unless there is a clear and valid reason for going so and data protection laws allow us to, for example, we may ask for your ethnicity information if you are enquiring help form us. We would need this information to reach the objectives of our charity and to help you with our full potential.

How and why is your information used?

We may use your information for a number of different purposes, which may include:

  • Keeping a record of your relationship with us;
  • Carrying out our obligations under any contracts entered into between you and us;
  • Providing you with the services, products or information you asked for;
  • Checking for updated contact details against third party sources so we can stay in touch if you move (please refer to section ‘keeping your information up to date’)
  • Seeking your views or comments on the services and information we provide;
  • Notifying you of any changes to our charity;
  • Sending you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about campaigns, fundraising activities and promotion of goods and services Religion Media Centre provide; and
  • Processing job or grant applications.

How long is your information kept for?

We keep your information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes it was collected for. The length of time we keep your information for is determined upon our legal and operational considerations. For example, we are legally required to hold certain types of information to fulfil our statutory and regulatory obligations (e.g Health and safety and tax/accounting purposes).

We review our retention periods on a regular basis and update our Records of Processing Activities (RoPAs) accordingly.

If you would like to know more about how long we hold your personal information for – please email [email protected].

Who has access to your information?

We do not sell or rent your information to third parties. We do not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes. However, we may disclose your information to third parties in order to achieve the other purposes set out in this policy. These third parties may include

Third parties working on our behalf

we may pass your information to our third-party service providers, suppliers subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example, to process any donations to Religion Media Centre and send you mailings through the post). We would like to point out that when we use these third parties, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the services and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and prevents them for using it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be assured that your data will not be processed by these third parties for any other reason than the one stated above unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime or any other requirement by law.

Lawful Processing

Data protection law requires us to rely on one or more lawful basis for processing your personal information. Please see the following lawful grounds Religion Media Centre use and believe are relevant and lawful under data protection laws:

Specific Consent

Where you have provided specific Consent to using your personal information in a certain way, such as to send you information through an email, telephone marketing or by text.

Legitimate Interests

Where it is necessary to achieve our and others’ objectives as an organisation with reason. (As long as what the information is used for is fair and does not duly impact your rights). A few examples of when Religion Media Centre uses Legitimate Interest as a charitable organisation in pursuit of our aims and objectives would be:

  • To send you communications through the post which we believe might be of interest to you;
  • To personalise, enhance or modify and improve our services and communications to you to benefit our customers;
  • Conducting research to better understand Religion Media Centre’s supporters and improve the relevance of our fundraising;
  • To understand how people interact with our website, the effectiveness of our services, our promotional and marketing campaigns and our advertising.

whenever we use Legitimate Interest to process data, we perform a Legitimate Interest Balancing Assessment (LIA) and consider the balance and any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. Your information will not be processed if our interests as an organisation overrides your interests as an individual and if for any reason the processing overrides serious impact on you. For example, where Religion Media Centre would be excessively intrusive by sending multiple marketing campaigns on a regular basis.

When we process sensitive or special category information, we require an additional legal basis in order to process such information under data protection laws. We will either use your Explicit Consent or another lawful route available such as if we need to process employments, social security or social protection purposes, if it was for your vital interest or in some rare cases, if it is in the public interest for is to do so.

Legal Obligation

We will use this condition to process personal information for example where we are ordered by the Charity Commission or Fundraising Regulator.

Performance of a contract

Where we are entering into a contract with you, for example where you are a volunteer or ambassador with us we will process this data under contractual obligation.

Vital Interests

Where it is necessary to protect your life or health. An example would be in the case of a medical emergency by an individual attending one of our events).

Fundraising and Marketing Communications

Your contact details may be used to provide you with information about the vital work we do, our fundraising appeals and opportunities to support us, as well as the services and products you can buy to support our work, if we think this may be of interest to you.

Post

We may from time to time send you marketing and fundraising communications through the post. If you prefer not to hear from us this way, please get in contact and let us know by any of the contact details listed at the beginning of this privacy promise.

Phone/Email/Text

We will only send you marketing and fundraising communications by email, text and telephone if you have explicitly provided your prior consent. You may opt out of our marketing communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the end of our marketing emails.

Your Choices

Here at Religion Media Centre, we respect and value your choices. You have a choice whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications form us about the charitable work we do and any products or serves you can buy, you can opt out at any time by contacting one of the team at any of the contact details listed in this section.

Religion Media Centre are committed to putting you in control of your data and you are free to change your marketing preferences at any time, including if you do not want to receive further contact in regard to marketing purposes. Please contact us and we will be sure to amend your preferences:

Email us: [email protected]

Telephone us: 0203 970 0709

Write to us: Data Protection Enquiry

                       Collaboration House

                       77-79 Charlotte Street

                        London

                        W1T 4PW

Your Rights

Under data protection laws in the UK and EU, you have certain rights over the personal information that we hold about you. Here is a summary of the rights we think apply:

Right to be Informed

You have the right to be informed as to how we use your data under what lawful basis we carry out any processing. This privacy promise sets this information out however if you would like further information or feel that your rights are not being respected please get in contact with any of the details listed above.

Right of Erasure

You may ask us to delete some or all of your information we hold about you. Subject to certain exceptions, we will do so as far as we are required to.

Right to Object

You have the right to object to processing where we are using your personal information such as where it is based on legitimate interests or for direct marketing.

Inaccurate personal information corrected

inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you can be corrected. The accuracy of your information is important to us and we are working on ways to make this easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you. We will also carry out an annual accuracy check and contact you to ensure your information is up to date. If any of your information is out of date or if you are unsure of this, please contact through any of the contact details listed in this section.

Right of restriction

You have a right to restrict the processing of some or all of your personal information if there is a disagreement about its accuracy, or we are not lawfully allowed to use it.

Right to Access your information

You have a right to request access to a copy of your personal information that we hold about you, along with the information on what personal information we use, why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it for and whenever it has been used for automated decision making. You can make a request for access free of charge and proof of identity is required.

No automated decision making

Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. You have the right not to be subject to automated decisions that will create legal effects or create a similar significant impact on you, unless you have given us consent, it is necessary for a contract between you and us or is otherwise permitted by law. You also have certain rights to challenge decisions made about you. We do not currently carry out automated decision making.

Portability

You can ask us to provide you or a third party with some of the personal information that we hold about you in a structured. commonly used, electronic form so it can be easily transferred.

Keeping your information safe

We take looking after your information very seriously. We have implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to ensure that your personal information is secure when under our control, both on and offline, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.

Any sensitive information (such as your credit or debit card details or any information that is classed as sensitive or special category data) is encrypted and protected. All debit and credit card details are passed securely to our payment processing partner, according to the Payment Card Industry Security Standards.  Non-sensitive details such as your email address etc, are transmitted normally over the internet, this cannot be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so as a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Our websites may contain links to other sites. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy practises employed by other sites. Please be aware that advertisers or websites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy promise does not cover the information practises of those websites or advertisers.

Keeping your information up to date

We take reasonable steps to ensure your information we hold of you is accurate and up to date. We review our data annually. We really appreciate it if you let us know when you contact details change to ensure we have the most up to date record of you.

Use of ‘cookies’

Like many other websites, this website uses ‘cookies’ to collect and use personal information about you. Cookies are small text files that are used to store small pieces of information. The cookies are stored on your device when the website is loaded on your browser. These cookies help us make the website function properly, make the website more secure, provide better user experience, and understand how the website performs and to analyse what works and where it needs improvement.

How do we use Cookies?

Our website uses first-party and third-party cookies for a number of purposes. The first-party cookies are mostly necessary for the website to function the right way, and they do not collect any of your personally identifiable data.

The third-party cookies used on our websites are used mainly for understanding how the website performs, how you interact with our website, keeping our services secure and providing you with a better and improved user experience to help speed up your future interactions with our website.

The Cookies we use

The cookies used on our website are grouped into the following categories:

  • Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
  • Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
  • Performance cookies are used to understand and analyse the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for visitors.
  • Analytics cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
  •  Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
  • Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analysed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
 

For a full list of the cookies we use, please visit our Cookie Policy.

No Cookies, please.

You can opt out of all our cookies, but if you choose to refuse all Cookies, our website may not function for you as we would like it to. If you have any questions about how we use Cookies, please contact us. You can manage your cookies preferences by clicking on the “Settings” button and enabling or disabling the cookie categories on the popup according to your preferences.

Vulnerable circumstances

We are committed to protecting vulnerable supporters, beneficiaries, customers and volunteers and any other individual we hold data of and appreciate care may be needed when we use their personal information. In recognition of this, we observe good practise guidelines in our interactions with vulnerable people.

Transferring your information outside of the United Kingdom

When data is transferred outside of the UK, appropriate safeguards are in place to ensure adequate levels of security are in place and are in line with data protection laws. We do not currently transfer data outside of the UK and you will be notified if and when Religion Medias Centre does.

Changes to this policy

Any changes we may make to this policy in the future will be posted on this website so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. If we make any significant changes, we’ll make this clear on our website.

Review of this policy 

We keep this policy under regular review. This policy was last updated May 2021.