Sightsavers’ supporter promise and privacy policy

Our supporter promise

Together we’re doing the amazing job of restoring sight, preventing sight loss and campaigning for a world where everyone can participate equally in society without fear of stigma or discrimination. We couldn’t do it without you.

We’re so grateful for your support

We value your trust highly. So when you make the decision to support us, we make these promises to you:

• We promise to put our beneficiaries first and spend our money in the way that’s best for them.
• We promise not to sell your data.
• We promise not to share your data with others for their own use.
• We promise to keep you informed about our work and what we’re achieving with your money.
• We promise to raise money honestly and properly.
• We promise to follow your instructions on how we can contact you.
• We promise we will only phone you if you have given us your permission. We don’t make cold calls via telephone to members of the public.
• We promise to monitor our call centre and our suppliers to make sure they share our high standards.
• We promise to listen to you and offer a friendly and personalised experience.

Sightsavers is registered with the Fundraising Regulator, which oversees our fundraising obligations and regulates our work, and is a member of the Data and Marketing Association.

We comply with all relevant laws and follow best practice. We are committed to The Fundraising Promise and adhere to the Fundraising Regulator’s Fundraising Code of Practice.

You’ll be transforming lives

Every gift you give helps change lives for people in some of the world’s poorest countries. Since our work began, your donations have helped to provide more than 9 million cataract operations and distribute more than 1 billion treatments to prevent debilitating diseases such as trachoma and river blindness. Our donors have also helped us to support more than 380,000 people with disabilities, enabling them to live fuller and more independent lives.

We think it’s money well spent, and we hope you do too.

Our supporter privacy policy

As a Sightsavers supporter, we’d like you to be happy and proud of the wonderful support you give to Sightsavers. We aim to make it as easy as possible for you to understand what we do with the information you entrust us with. The Sightsavers supporter privacy policy aims to help donors, supporters and the wider public understand how and why we collect, process and look after your personal data.

Your data is precious to us and we take the responsibility to look after it very seriously.

If you have any questions on the information below, please do not hesitate to contact us. You can also get in touch at any time to change your communication preferences or to check the information we hold about you is accurate. You will find our contact details at the end of the policy.

How do we collect your information?

We will collect the information that you decide to share when communicating with us. This could be while making a donation or signing up to an email newsletter. We won’t go looking for personal telephone numbers or email addresses if you haven’t supplied them to us.

We may also receive information about when you interact with third parties with whom we work, for example if you’ve made a donation to us through a third party (such as JustGiving) and given them permission to share your information with us.

The type of information we collect depends on what you have decided to share with us, but could include your name, email address, postal address, telephone number, taxpayer status for the purposes of tax reclaims, bank account details if you have a direct debit, date of birth and contact preferences. We may also collect information about any interactions you have with us, including donations, campaigning actions and contact with our supporter care team.

In some circumstances, we may also collect other types of data which are considered more sensitive, if you choose to share it with us. For example, if you tell us about an accessibility requirement so you can attend an event or tell us you support our work because you have problems with your eyesight. We will only collect this information with your explicit consent, or where it is necessary and lawful under data protection legislation.

We also collect general information about visitors to our websites using cookies, with their consent, including which web pages they look at and for how long. This helps us make our websites better and more relevant for visitors. We cannot use this information to identify individual people. When we send out certain types of email, we track whether people read them and click through to our websites. This helps us understand what content supporters find useful and enables us to improve our emails, making them more relevant and enjoyable. You can view our cookies policy on our website.

Sometimes to help us understand our supporters in a thoughtful and responsible way, we look at publicly available information about you. This includes sources such as Companies House, the Charity Commission, news articles, or other reputable sites that anyone can access. Charities sometimes refer to this as supporter research or wealth screening. For us it simply means using open public information to help make sure our fundraising is appropriate, relevant and respectful.

This may include working with trusted third parties to automate some of the process, but we never use data that is not responsibly sourced or publicly available. You have the right to object to your personal data being used for supporter research or wealth screening and can do this at any time by contacting the team on the details below.

What do we do with your information?

We like to communicate with our supporters so you can hear about the work that you’re making possible, and also to give you the opportunity to provide additional support, should you want to. We will send you updates and opportunities to support us through the post, unless you have told us you’d rather not hear from us in this way.

We will only share information over email and telephone if you have asked us to and only where permitted under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), including screening numbers against the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) where required.

Your time and support mean a great deal to us, so we aim to ensure our communication is relevant and tailored to your interests. We use our data and look at the information you give us to try to understand more about you and how you choose to support us. We may also look at other publicly available information that enables us to better understand you, such as postcode demographics. This ensures we can contact you in the most appropriate way. By focusing only on the updates and opportunities that matter to you, we can reduce unnecessary mail and direct more of our resources towards the life-changing work your generosity makes possible.

To help us plan fundraising responsibly and reduce unnecessary or inappropriate approaches, we carry out supporter research, which can include wealth screening. This uses information from publicly available sources to help us understand whether someone may have the capacity and potential interest to make a larger gift, and to ensure we approach people in a respectful and proportionate way. We only use reputable public sources. We do not buy third party lists for this purpose and we do not make automated decisions. You have the right to object to this type of processing at any time and can contact us to request your information not be processed in this way.

If you have agreed to receive email or text message communications from us, we may provide those contact details to social media or online marketing platforms, in an encrypted format, to help us identify the best people to communicate with about our work and ways to help. This data can only be used for Sightsavers’ marketing and really helps us to attract new supporters. These platforms act on our instructions and are not permitted to use your data for their own purposes.

We’ll store your information on our secure systems to make sure we have an accurate record of all the donations we receive. This is required for our financial auditing and also enables us to provide a history to you, should you want it.

We don’t sell or share your data with others for their own use. We sometimes work with trusted companies to help us with things like fundraising or communicating with our supporters. This may include companies who print our leaflets, mail our letters or take phone calls. We only provide these companies with the data they need to deliver this work. They are contracted to us through a legally binding contract and don’t keep this data on their systems longer than necessary. We may on occasion use a supplier that resides outside of the UK and European Economic Area, however if we do so we put in place suitable safeguards to protect your data.

We also think it’s important to keep our data accurate and up to date, which means each year we compare it to nationally held registers to check for deceased records, or supporters that have moved.

We will keep your data only for as long as necessary for the purpose that it was collected, taking into account relevant legal or regulatory, requirements, for example those of the HMRC on Gift Aid.

We take the security of your data extremely seriously and uphold your rights in relation to how we use your data. We only hold it for as long as is necessary and use a range of technical measures to ensure that your data is safeguarded. This is to protect you and our organisation and ensure your valuable support has the greatest impact.

On what legal basis do we process your information?

We adhere to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 and any other relevant data protection laws in the countries where we fundraise, including the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR). Depending on the purpose, we may process your data on one or more of the following legal bases.

Legitimate interest

We conduct some activity on the basis of legitimate interest. This includes sending you information through the post about the vital work your support has helped achieve and further opportunities to support our work (unless you have told us you would prefer not to hear from us in this way).

It also includes using your personal data to respond to a request or query we receive from you, or to administer your donations. For example, if you email us asking for confirmation that a donation has been received, we will reply via the email address you have used.

We conduct research and analysis, including the use of publicly available information, to help understand who our supporters are and the best way to communicate with them. This includes conducting proportionate supporter and prospect research to help us understand who has an affinity with our work and who may wish to support us or introduce us to others who might.

This research also plays an important role in our due diligence checks, helping ensure we do not accept donations that don’t align with our values, mission and legal obligations.

Consent

You may provide your consent for us to use the data you’ve provided in a certain way. This includes using your email address or telephone number to send you updates about our work and ways you can support us. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us.

Legal obligation

In some cases, we are required to process your data to comply with the law. This includes information related to Gift Aid and financial transactions for audit purposes.

Your rights

We uphold your rights in relation to how we use your data, including the right to access, update, erase and transfer it. We will respect any request you make to stop processing your data in a specific way and will respond appropriately if you exercise your right to complain. If your request goes against our legal obligations we will clearly explain what this means and what we will do.

If you would like to discuss your rights or request any changes to how we contact you and process your data, or to make a complaint, please get in touch with us using the contact details below.

Alternatively, you may contact the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) if you have any concerns about your rights or the use of your data: www.ico.org.uk/global/contact-us

If you prefer, you can update how Sightsavers and other organisations can contact you through the Fundraising Preference Service: www.fundraisingpreference.org.uk

How to get in touch

If you’d like to find out more about Sightsavers or provide feedback, we will be pleased to hear from you.

If you’d like to check the data we hold about you is accurate, or want to change your communications choices at any time, please contact our UK supporter care team on [email protected], or call 01444 446 600.

You can also write to us at Sightsavers, Bumpers Way, Bumpers Farm, Chippenham, SN14 6NG.

If you would like to discuss your rights or have any questions about our privacy policy, please get in touch with our Data Protection Officer via [email protected], or write to:

Data Protection Officer
Sightsavers
35 Perrymount Road
Haywards Heath
West Sussex
RH16 3BW