There are legal obligations on all organisations to manage personal data carefully and comply with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). Data protection is a big and complex issue but the DPA places some key obligations on organisations. This page provides more information about the DPA and how Rural Ministries looks after the personal data of our supporters and contacts.

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This policy only applies to our site and information we hold. If you leave our site via a link or otherwise, you will be subject to the policy of that website provider. We have no control over that policy or the terms of the website and you should check their policy before continuing to access the site.

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Information we may collect from you

We may collect and process the following data about you:

• Information that you provide by filling in forms on our site. This includes information provided when, submitting enquiries, subscribing to our service or requesting further services. We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our site.

• If you contact us by email, post, telephone or social media, we may keep a record of that correspondence.

• We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.

 

Rural Ministries uses a 3rd party website platform. The platform provider may store and process details of your visits to our site including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs, operating system, browser usage and other communication data.

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Cookies are small pieces of data that websites store on a device. Cookies can improve our website visitors’ browsing experience because they help websites remember preferences, understand how people use different features on the Rural Ministries website.

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The data collected by cookies is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual or collect personal information.

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Storing and protecting personal data you provide

Rural Ministries will only hold personal data where we have your permission to do so. This data may include name, contact details including address phone number and email address and other information relevant to your connection with Rural Ministries. It may also include information required for regulatory purposes such as reclaiming Gift Aid.

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Rural Ministries stores our supporters’ data securely. All data is held on the computers owned by Rural Ministries and is not held on staff’s personal computers. All data is password protected.

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Data is backed up to a cloud data storage provider. We commit to only using cloud providers that fully comply with the requirements of international agreements including the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Program ("Privacy Shield") framework and the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor ("Safe Harbor") framework. For more information on this please see information provided on Privacy Shield Program website.

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Only keeping information as long as necessary

We will only store data that we need to communicate with you, for example to send you VIBE magazine, or are legally obliged to retain. If we have no need to keep your details then we will delete them as part of a periodic review.

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Sharing data

Rural Ministries only uses our supporters’ data as part of our work and to communicate with you and our partner organisations. We only pass on data to 3rd parties for the purposes of:

• Communicating with you. This includes securely providing our mailing service provider with names and addresses.

• Complying with regulations and legal obligations.

 

Data Protection Registration

Rural Ministries is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office.

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Further information

If you would like to know more about this issue then please contact us.