Privacy Policy

We will look after any personal information that you share with us.

This is central to our values as an organisation. We want everyone who supports us, or who comes to us for support, to feel confident about how any personal information they share will be looked after or used.

You can be confident that:

• We only use personal information in the ways we need to and that is expected of us.
• We will keep you up to date with our work, including how we are campaigning to improve services, raising awareness, promoting understanding as well as our fundraising activities. We only use your personal information to do this if you have previously told us that’s OK.
• We will make it easy for you to tell us how you want us to communicate with you, including how to opt out from future communications – and we promise your request will respected straight away.
• We will never release your information to organisations outside Bethany Christian Trust for marketing purposes.
• We will be especially careful and sensitive when engaging with vulnerable people or those we have reason to believe might be vulnerable.
• We take all reasonable care to safeguard your personal information through security policies and secure business processes.
• We only share information with your consent, where we have a lawful basis for doing so or where we legally required to do so. Our main reasons for sharing information is to make sure you have access to the services you need; for your health and wellbeing; and for payment purposes.

 

We will always make it easy for you to contact us. Our Data Protection Officer is happy to answer any queries you have, at any time.

 

References to ‘we’ or ‘us’ are to Bethany Christian Trust (BCT) registered charity no: SC003783 (Scotland) of 65 Bonnington Road, Edinburgh EH6 5JQ.

If you have any questions, please telephone 0131 561 8931 or email us here:  dpl@bethanychristiantrust.com  

We regularly check this notice to ensure we provide you with the most up-to-date information regarding our data processing activities.  We advise you to read this page from time to time to ensure you are happy with any changes that might be made.

This privacy policy was last updated in August 2022.

 

Bethany Christian Trust: Your Privacy

 

Your privacy is very important to you. It is even more important to us.

1. How we collect personal information about you

We may collect personal information from you when you interact with Bethany Christian Trust. There are many occasions when this could happen, for example: if you enquire about our activities; register with us; make a donation to us; ask a question about our services; buy something from one of our shops; apply for a job or volunteering opportunity; if you chose to provide some optional feedback or otherwise provide us with personal information. This may be when you phone us, go onto our website, from our shops, through the post, or in person. We may also collect personal data from our specialist service providers who work with us to provide our services.

2. What information we collect

The personal information we collect might include your contact details such as name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number and credit/debit card details (if you are making a purchase or donation), as well as information you provide in any correspondence between us.  

We may also collect health information, information about criminal convictions and offences and your financial status if you tell us about your experience or the experiences of a friend or relative. You can decide if you want to remain anonymous or if you are happy to share your personal details.

We also gather general information about the use of our websites, such as your IP address, which pages users visit most often and which services, events or facilities are of most interest. We may also track which pages users visit when they click on links in our emails. We may use this information to personalise the way our websites are presented when users visit them, to make improvements to our websites and to ensure we provide the best service for users. Wherever possible we use aggregated or anonymous information which does not identify individual visitors to our websites.

3. Cookies

‘Cookie‘ is a name for a small file, usually of letters and numbers, which is downloaded onto your device, like your computer, mobile phone or table when you visit a website.

They let websites recognise your device, so that the sites can work, or work better, and also gather information about how you use the site. A cookie, by itself, can’t be used to identify you. 

How do we use cookies?

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you come to our website and also allows us to improve our site.  

The cookies we use

We use the categorisation set out by the International Chamber of Commerce in their UK Cookie Guide.

We use all four categories of cookies:

• Strictly necessary cookies are essential for you to move around our website and to use its features, like our shopping basket and your account.
• Performance cookies collect anonymous information about how you use our site, like which pages are visited most. No information that identifies you is kept.
• Functionality cookies remember choices you make to improve your experience, like your text size or location. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. They are anonymous.
• Targeting or advertising cookies collect information about your browsing habits in order to make advertising relevant to you and your interests.

 

No cookies, please

You can opt out of all our cookies (except the strictly necessary ones). Find out how to control and delete cookies in your browser.

But, if you choose to refuse all cookies you may not be able to use our website properly.

You can also opt-out of this tracking, although we think it improves your web experience.

If you have any questions about how we use cookies, please contact us.

The cookies we use are:-

Strictly Necessary – Name/Purpose/Duration

• ASP.NET_SessionID / Used by Microsoft .NET-based sites to maintain an anonymized user session by the server. This cookie expires at the end of a browsing session which is determined by the application configuration. / Expires at end of session
• __cf_bm / Cloudflare places the cookie on end-user devices that access customer sites protected by Bot Management or Bot Fight Mode. / Expires in 30 minutes

Performance and functionality  – Name/Purpose/Duration

• AWSELB / Used as a load balancer for web applications hosted on AmazonWeb Services (AWS). / Expires in 40 minutes
• NSC_# / Used to ensure traffic and user data are routed to the correct locations where a site is hosted on multiple servers, so that the end user has a consistent experience. It is also a HTTP cookie. / Expires at the end of a session.

Analytics and Customisation – Name/Purpose/Duration

• #collect / Sends data such as visitor’s behavior and device to Google Analytics. It is able to keep track of the visitor across marketing channels and devices. It is a pixel tracker type cookie whose activity lasts within the browsing session. / Expires at end of session
• _ga / It records a particular ID used to come up with data about website usage by the user. It is a HTTP cookie that expires after 2 years. / Expires in 1 year 11 months 29 days
• Vt / Pixel tracker / Expires at end of session
• _gid / Keeps an entry of unique ID which is then used to come up with statistical data on website usage by visitors. It is a HTTP cookie type and expires after a browsing session. / Expires in 1 Day
• _gat# / Enables Google Analytics regulate the rate of requesting. It is a HTTP cookie type that lasts for a session. / Expires in 1 minute

Advertising Cookies – Name/Purpose/Duration

• VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE / YouTube is a Google-owned platform for hosting and sharing videos. YouTube collects user data through videos embedded in websites, which is aggregated with profile data from other Google services in order to display targeted advertising to web visitors across a broad range of their own and other websites. Used by Google in combination with SID to verify Google user account and most recent login time. / Expires in 5 months and 27 days
• _fbp / Facebook tracking pixel used to identify visitors for personalized advertising. / Expires in 2 months 29 days
• YSC / YouTube is a Google-owned platform for hosting and sharing videos. YouTube collects user data through videos embedded in websites, which is aggregated with profile data from other Google services in order to display targeted advertising to web visitors across a broad range of their own and other websites. Used by Google in combination with SID to verify Google user account and most recent login time. / Expires at end of session
• 4. How we use personal information

  We may use your personal information to:

  • Provide you with the important advice and support you’ve asked us for, whether this be over our Information lines, through our publications or other important services;
  • Provide or administer activities relating to all our services: updating you with important administrative messages, to help us identify you when you contact us, and help us to properly maintain our records;
  • Improve your experience with us. We may use your information to enhance the service that our staff provide, to fulfil your orders and gift aid declarations, to improve our information and communications, or to personalise the website to better suit your needs;
  • Provide you with information about our plans. This may be letting you know about new or enhanced services that we hope will be useful and interesting to you, and may include fundraising updates; of course, we will only do this either with your consent, where we need to fulfil a contract or service with you, or where we believe you will expect to be updated and contacted by us. You can of course ask us at any time to change how we contact you. 
  • Analyse the personal information we collect about you so that we can better understand our supporters, their preferences and needs and important trends.  This may mean looking at all the interactions you have with us so we can aim to offer you the right information or offers at the right time; including financial interactions so we can ensure we ask you for an appropriate level of support. It may also mean using external sources of information about you, the area where you live, or people like you, so we can better inform how we talk to you about our work. We believe this enables us to offer you more appropriate offers and communications, but you can opt out of this activity at any time. To do this please email dpl@bethanychristiantrust.com with the subject line ‘Please stop analysis of my data’.  
  • We may need to disclose your information if required to do so by law (for example, to comply with applicable laws, regulations and codes of practice or in response to a valid request from a competent authority); or, in order to enforce our conditions of sale and other agreements.

   

  We will process your data where we have a contract or agreement with you, for example, for the provision of services to you. We will also process your personal data where we have a legitimate interest to do so and as set out at the bullet points above.

  Where you have entered into a contract with us, failing to provide data to us may mean that we are unable to properly implement the contract or that you are unable to exercise certain contractual rights.

  We will also process personal data where we are required to do so by law or where we are carrying out a task in the public interest and, in the case of more sensitive (“special category”) data health data where there is a substantial public interest or where we are carrying out our legitimate activities as a charitable organisation. We may also use special category data for the provision of health and social care and to protect the vital interests of individuals and where they cannot give consent, for example, where their health may be at serious risk.

  On some occasions we will ask for your consent to process your personal data but in those cases we will provide full details of what we are seeking consent for, so that you will be able to carefully consider whether to provide consent.

  Where you have provided consent to us, you can withdraw that consent at any time by contacting us. 

   

  A special note about the Sensitive Information we hold   

  If you contact us at Bethany Christian Trust, through our referral process or in other more general communications with us such as blogs or general emails, you may choose to provide details of a sensitive nature.

  We will use that information for the purposes of dealing with your enquiry, providing our services, for our training, and quality monitoring or evaluating the services we provide. Where possible we will anonymise the data we use for internal purposes. We will only pass your data to other where necessary and as detailed in this statement. Examples of this might include anyone reporting serious self-harm or posing a threat to others, children contacting us and sharing serious issues.

  If you provide us with any Sensitive Personal Data by telephone, email or by other means, we will treat that information with extra care and always in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

  Your personal information and details of the enquiries received are stored on a secure database for no longer than is necessary for the purposes of its use. We carry out periodic deletion of data whose retention period has expired and/or when the need to continue holding such data is no longer necessary. A copy of our retention schedule is available on request. 

  5. Your choices

  We like to keep all our valued supporters up to date with our progress. So, to update you on what we’re doing and ask whether you’d be able to support us, where we are able to, we’d like to keep in touch with you (by post, phone, email, text and other electronic means) about our progress and how you can continue to help us in this important mission.

  Please be reassured that respect lies at the heart of everything our committed staff and volunteers do: we respect any information that you share with us and you can change your mind and remove or add your consent at any time, by simply contacting us. 

  We do not transfer or process your personal information outside the UK.

6. Who sees your personal information?

The personal information we collect about people we support will be used by our staff (and volunteers) in Bethany Christian Trust so that they can support you; also, by a few selected organisations that work with us or on our behalf to deliver our services; and possibly to legal and regulatory authorities if required to by law.

We will never sell or share your personal information with organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities. Nor do we sell any information about your web browsing activity.

BCT may share information we collect about people we support with our trusted partners and suppliers if partnering together to provide emergency support, but it is never for their marketing approaches. We ensure that they store the data securely and delete it when it is no longer needed. 

We will also share personal data with third party contractors who process data while they are providing services to us or on our behalf. These are our IT and storage providers and our payment processing partners 

7. Your Information Security

We take the security of your personal information extremely seriously.

We’ve implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.

And, we only keep it as long as is reasonable and necessary, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, the collection of Gift Aid).

Here are some of the ways we protect your personal information:

• If you provide personal information to us online that information is encrypted for protection on transmission to us. Encryption is the process through which sensitive information is scrambled before it is transmitted so that it remains private even if it is intercepted. However, unless your internet browser supports you will not be able to take advantage of this level of security
• Offline, your personal information is kept securely in our databases and offices, or, where relevant, by our partner companies.
• Our website 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 practices employed by other sites. Please be aware that advertisers or Web sites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites or advertisers.
• Any debit or credit card details which we receive on our website are passed securely to sage pay our payment processing partner, according to the Payment Card Industry Security Standards.

8. Your communication with our teams at BCT

Your communications with our teams (including by telephone or email) may be monitored and/or recorded for training, quality control and compliance purposes to ensure that we continuously improve our customer service standards.

9. How to update or access your personal information

You may ask us at any time to update your details, correct, update or remove information you think is inaccurate or incomplete by:

Writing to Ruth Longmuir, Director of Internal Services, Bethany Christian Trust, 65 Bonnington Road, Edinburgh EH6 5JQ 

Email:  dpl@bethanychristiantrust.com Tel: 0131 561 8931

You also have a right to know what personal information Bethany Christian Trust holds about you.

To request a copy of your personal information we hold, please contacts us. 

You also have the right to stop Bethany Christian Trust processing data in certain circumstances; to have us delete or restrict the processing of your data in certain circumstances, to be provided with a portable copy of your data in certain circumstances and to stop particular uses of your personal data where your personal data is being processed on the basis of a legitimate interest. 

Please contact us to exercise any of these rights.

10. Changes to our Privacy Policy

Our Privacy Policy is reviewed regularly to ensure that it reflects how we use your information. Any changes will be notified to you by updating this policy so please check this Policy to see if any changes have been made that are important to you. Where appropriate, changes will be notified to you by email.

This Privacy Policy was last updated in August 2022.

11. Who we are

Here at Bethany Christian Trust, we are committed to protecting your personal information and to reassure you that that you have control over the information we store about you and what types of information you would like to receive from us.

For further information about our privacy practices, please contact our Data Protection Officer by writing to Ruth Longmuir, Director of Internal Services, Bethany Christian Trust, 65 Bonnington Road, Edinburgh EH6 5JQ 

Email:  dpl@bethanychristiantrust.com  Tel: : 0131 561 8931

While we hope that we can resolve any issues directly with you, if you have any concerns, you do have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

0303 123 111   www.ico.org.uk