Privacy policy

We may collect personal data about people who visit our website. That’s things like IP addresses (which tell us, for example, the places where people are logging on), which pages people visit and which files they download. 

This helps us find out if our website is working well and helps us improve it. This information is collected using cookies. The cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify you. – see the section on cookies below for more information.

When you give us your personal information, we save it and use it to communicate with you. Personal information means things like your name, contact details, church role or job title.

Examples of when you give us this information are: when you request resources or information, sign up to receive emails, start an e-learning course, provide comments, or complete surveys.

If you open an email from us and click through to our website, we may record this to help us improve our future contacts with you.

We are required by data protection law to have an appropriate legal basis for the processing of your personal data. When processing your personal data we rely upon:

• where you’ve given us your consent to contact you or hold your information
• where it is needed for the performance of a contract or legal agreement with you
• where there is a legal obligation placed upon us – for example if you allow us to claim gift aid
• where it is in your vital interest, such as a medical emergency
• where it is in our legitimate interests to do so

Where we rely upon our legitimate interest to process your data (including contacting you), we only do so after having carefully considered how it might affect the impact upon you and your rights and having weighed this up against our need and potential benefits from contacting you.

Where you provide us with sensitive personal data, such as where you worship or any medical information about you, we will process this using one of the following permitted criteria; with your explicit consent (i.e. you make clear to us that you are happy for us to hold this information); where you manifestly make this information publicly available – such as on a church website; or where you have been in regular contact with us. We will hold your data securely and only those who need to will be able to see or use this information.

For organisations such as churches or NGOs we may contact you where we have a legitimate interest – ie we believe it is reasonable to do so. Again we will only do so having carefully considered how it might affect you and the potential benefits from contacting your organisation.

Where we contact you, by calling or emailing you, in a professional capacity rather than a personal one, about your job role for example, we will usually consider you to be a ‘corporate subscriber’ under Data Protection Regulations or Law.

As a ‘corporate subscriber’ we are permitted to contact you unless you tell us that you would like no further contact from us. We may also mail you unless you tell us that you don’t want us to do so. Further information on this (what is generally called a ‘business to business’ approach) can be obtained at the Information Commissioner’s Office website and on the Telephone Preference Service website.

If you signed up to Tearfund’s fundraising content, we may use your personal data to:

• keep you up-to-date on news and stories about our work
• ask for financial support and non-financial support such as volunteering or prayer
• process donations you give us, or support your fundraising for us, including Gift Aid
• provide information or packs, for example church packs you’ve asked for
• provide a personalised service, such as customised website content or personalised emails
• improve your browsing experience and use of the website
• keep records of your relationship with us, for example questions you’ve asked, surveys completed or complaints you’ve made

If you signed up for Tearfund Learn resources, we may use the personal data we collect to:

• keep you up-to-date on news and share learning from our international development work
• provide information or resources, for example Footsteps magazines which you have asked for
• provide a personalised service, such as customised website content or personalised emails
• improve your browsing experience and use of the website
• keep records of your relationship with us, for example questions you’ve asked or complaints you’ve made

We might use your data to:

• let you know about campaigning opportunities, such as writing to your MP
• send you fundraising and emergency appeals
• tell you about our work and the work of our partner organisations
• let you know about opportunities such as volunteering, praying and community fundraising
• tell you about opportunities to share your learning, participate in online discussions and register for online courses
• deliver digital advertising about our work to you on social media such as Google and Facebook. See ‘Social media marketing’ section below
• help guide our marketing. For example, we will look at location and interests so we can invite you to a local event or tell you about an emerging need in an area you’re interested in
• engage with your church (if you have given us information about it), for example by providing speakers or offering church packs
• understand whether you might want and be able to support us with a larger gift. This may involve looking at personal information about you, through in house desk research or by using third parties
• approach you in your professional capacity, for example as a Trustee or church leader, to talk about supporting our work track the success of our communications by recording whether or not you open or respond to our email or other electronic communications
• carry out market research

Where you have provided your email address with consent for us to market to you, we may reach out to you by using Facebook advertising.

We may also reach out to people who have similar interests to you through Facebook. For example, we might use Facebook’s Custom Audience Programme.

In both instances, we do this by providing Facebook with your email address. If you don’t have a Facebook account, Facebook just deletes the information. Any Facebook advertising you might end up seeing from us through this process, will have been processed in accordance with the terms and conditions you agreed to for Facebook and the privacy settings you set within Facebook.

When we use Facebook’s Custom Audience Programme, Facebook will use your activity on Facebook, such as the things you like and events you attend, to find others who have similar interests and therefore may wish to support Tearfund. This matching is carried out by Facebook on our behalf and is not at any time seen by Tearfund.

This social media marketing provides us with a cost effective way of reaching both you and new supporters. There are more details on Custom Audiences at Facebook Business, and you can read Facebook’s Privacy policy here. Facebook also allows you to have a say in the adverts you receive. You can find out more here.

Please contact us if you have any questions on how we use social media, or would prefer us to exclude you from social media marketing activities.
Call us on: 020 3906 3906
Email us at: [email protected]
Write to us at:
Supporter Care
Tearfund 100 Church Road, Teddington, TW11 8QE

When you apply for a job, you send us personal information through your CV or by completing an application form. We will store and use this to:

• recruit for the role
• make it easy for you to submit your CV online for jobs, and to subscribe for job alerts
• answer your questions
• do reference checks, qualifications checks, criminal referencing, service checks and verify your information. We’ll also use it for health screening and psychometric evaluation or skills tests. This is all done using third parties.
• automatically stop online applications if you don’t meet the basic requirements. For example, if you tell us you don’t have the right to work in the UK, and the job is based in the UK, the system won’t allow you to submit an application. You have the right to: (1) ask for an explanation of the decision that was automatically reached; (2) contest the automated decision; and (3) ask for your application to be reviewed by a Tearfund staff member and not be subject to automated decision making. To exercise any of these rights please email [email protected].
• check we’re following our equal opportunities policy

If you are volunteering, travelling on a trip, or doing an internship with us, you may need to send us personal or sensitive personal data – things like information about your dietary requirements, mobility requirements, or your health. We’ll keep and use this information to:

• ensure that the volunteering opportunity, trip or internship is suitable for you
• answer any questions you may have
• check we’re following our equal opportunities policy

We keep your personal information only for as long as we need it for each activity. We may need to store your information for a certain period of time for accounting and tax purposes, for example. We also have a separate data retention policy to guide us.

If you tell us you’re happy for us to send you marketing materials, we’ll keep contacting you for up to five years, unless you tell us not to. We decided on this length of time by asking our supporters what they thought. We will anonymise your data after a further 10 years of no contact.

For surveys, pledges or petitions, we will keep your responses for a short period of time, typically under 6 months, for analysis purposes. Thereafter we keep the results anonymised at an overall level and a record that we approached you and whether you responded. Each survey will make it clear what we intend to do, so you are informed before you choose to respond.

If you have questions on any of this, or want to see the data retention policy, just get in touch.

Write to us at:
Tearfund
100 Church Road
Teddington
TW11 8QE
Or email us at: [email protected]

We do all we can to protect your personal data, and this includes having the right technology. For example, online forms are encrypted and our network is protected and regularly monitored.

The only people who can access personal data are those Tearfund staff members or volunteers who can’t do their jobs without it. These people are all trained in data protection.

Occasionally we also use external companies to help us with personal data tasks. We do checks on these companies, have them sign contracts, and keep checking them regularly. When we do use external companies, we are still the ones responsible for keeping your data safe.

But please remember, despite all of this, the internet is never 100 per cent secure. When you submit data there is always a risk.

If you use your debit or credit card to donate, purchase something or pay for a trip, whether online, over the phone or by mail, we’ll process your information securely in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCIDSS). You can find out more about the standard here.

We never store your debit or credit card details once your transaction is complete – they are all securely destroyed.

We do keep bank account details so we can collect direct debits in accordance with direct debit mandate rules. You can find out more by reading about the Direct Debit Guarantee.

We use cloud-based systems to process data – that means data may be processed outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). We only let this happen when we believe your data will be kept safe. We do everything we can to make sure your data is looked after as described in this policy.

By giving us your personal data you’re agreeing to us using the cloud-based systems to process it.

If you travel outside of the UK with us we may share personal information with partners in other countries. This may include sensitive personal data – things like medical information. When we do this we’ll let you know what we’re sharing and check you’re happy.

We may need to pass on information if required by law or if a regulatory body, like HMRC, or the police ask us to.

We may also share your information where required to do so under a contract with a Governmental or grant making body, such as to qualify for aid match from the Department of International Development. In these cases, we will only share the minimum data necessary to fulfil the obligations.

Sometimes we use agents to help us with tasks such as fulfilling orders or processing donations. They are bound by contract to protect your data and we are still the ones responsible for keeping your data safe.

Sometimes we give external companies information about the people using our website, to help us make sure the website is working well and to find out how we can improve it. But this information is both anonymous and delivered in bulk. We’ll only use IP address information to identify someone if we feel they may cause safety/security issues, or if we have to give this information by law.

Every time you visit our website, it sends us a cookie. This is a text file that tells us about your visit. And when the data comes to us, it’s bulked together with information from all the other visitors to our site. 

Cookies tell us, for example, about traffic data, location data, device information, the date and time people visit and the pages they visit.

Most major websites use cookies. You can find out more at allaboutcookies.org .

To make the most of our website you should leave cookies turned on, otherwise you might not be able to see all of our website.

Cookies help us:

• customise what you see when you visit our site, and help us understand what would interest you
• process any requests, applications or transactions
• do our internal administration and analysis

You can turn off cookies on most browsers. To find out how, use the Help function.

There are a few external companies that Tearfund works with, who set cookies on our website. These cookies are mainly used for reporting and advertising so we can improve the way we communicate. 

We use websites like Youtube and Vimeo to embed videos, and they may send you cookies too. We don’t control the setting of these cookies, so check those websites for more information.

Tearfund also uses companies like Facebook, HotJar and Google Analytics, which may use cookies. They may also use tracking pixels, which tell us how effective our adverts are.

You can opt out of Google's tracking cookies any time you want. Google uses cookies to match adverts with your preferences so they’re more relevant to you. If you don’t want to see adverts from us based on that information, you can use Google's Ad Personalisation Tool.

All information we get through Google's cookies is anonymous, it just helps us understand how people use our website and which pages are more popular. If you don’t want Google to include you in this information, you can install the Google Analytics Opt Out Tool.

You can also visit the Digital Advertising Alliance website to personalise your advertising preferences.

As some of these services may be based outside of the UK and the European Union, they might not fall under the jurisdiction of UK courts. If you’re worried about that, you can change your cookie settings (see above). Or for more information, visit https://ico.org.uk/.

You can see a detailed list of the cookies we use on our website.

If we are sent a child’s data through our Tearfund.org website, eg if they sign up for a community fundraising event such as The Climb, we’ll ask for their date of birth. If they’re 12 or under, we’ll ask their parent or guardian to sign up on their behalf.

Please note: Resources on our Tearfund Learn website are written primarily for adults and some of the content, such as information on sexual and gender-based violence, may not be suitable for younger children. Therefore we do not intentionally collect or maintain data about anyone under the age of 13 through our subscription lists or otherwise.

We want to do all we can to support anyone we engage with who is in vulnerable circumstances. Our public-facing staff are all trained to identify signs of vulnerable circumstances and engage with the person in the right way. We have a separate vulnerable circumstances policy to guide us in this.

Information about the person may be recorded so we can respond appropriately in future, eg by no longer making fundraising requests or calls.

If you want to change what we send you, or how we contact you, just let us know – eg you can ask us to contact you by email rather than post.

Call us on: 020 3906 3906
Email us at: [email protected]
Write to us at:
Supporter Care
100 Church Road, Teddington, TW11 8QE

It’s really helpful if you keep your details with us up-to-date. Just get in touch and let us know if things change, using the contact details above.

Sometimes we use a Post Office address search or postcode lists etc to check data you send us. This could be when, for example, we are unsure of what address you’ve written on a form.

We won’t use these sources to gather information you haven’t given us, for example if you’ve 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. But if you donate regularly to Tearfund and mail is returned to us, we may use external sources to update your address details. This is so we can let you know how your money has been spent through our news and stories.

At any time you can:

• ask us to delete your personal data
• limit how we keep and use your personal data
• disagree with our reasons for keeping and using your personal data, eg where we have said we have a legitimate reason for processing it
• disagree with automated decision making in online job applications and personalised marketing, where we build up a profile of you (see the section on ‘What we do with your data’ above). If you don’t
• want us to use profiling we might not be able to send you the information you’d find most interesting or useful.
• ask us to give you an electronic copy of the information we have about you so you can send it to another organisation (data portability)
• ask to see what information we have about you. We’ll respond within one month

If you do want to do any of the above, just get in touch and let us know.

Write to us at: Tearfund, 100 Church Road, Teddington, TW11 8QE
Email us at: [email protected]
Call us on: +4420 3906 3906

For more information about your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation, visit the Information Commissioner’s Office website at https://ico.org.uk.

If you have a concern that your rights have not been protected you can contact our Data Protection Officer at [email protected]

We last updated this policy in March 2021. We’ll amend this policy if there are any changes to how we do things or changes to data protection or other legislation. If we make any significant changes, we’ll show you clearly on our website, in our publications or by writing to you.

Whenever you engage with us through our websites, social media, email or telephone, or send us your personal information in any other way, we’ll process your information as explained in this policy. When you provide your information, you’re agreeing to this policy. If you don’t agree, please don’t give us your data.

We’d love to hear from you with any feedback or questions. You can also contact us if you’re worried about anything in this policy or if you want to make a complaint.

Call us on: +4420 3906 3906
Email us at: [email protected]
Write to us at: Tearfund, 100 Church Road, Teddington, TW11 8QE, UK

You can also make a complaint about the use of your personal data with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK data protection regulator. You can do this by calling the ICO helpline or through the ICO website. For details, visit https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.