Privacy Policy

Women for Women International - UK works hard to develop open, honest and respectful relationships with our supporters, from our student societies and patrons to our donors and ambassadors.

This ensures we can provide the best possible support to women survivors of conflict around the world who are fighting to reclaim their lives and build themselves and their families a better future. Your time, interest and donations make this vital work possible.

We want to be as transparent as possible, to make sure that everyone who supports us feels confident and comfortable with how any personal information you share with us will be looked after or used. This privacy notice together with the Women for Women International – UK Website Terms and Conditions sets out how we collect, use and store your personal information (this means any information that identifies or could identify you).

Please read our privacy notice information carefully, and if you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

1. Who is responsible for protecting your data?

Your details are stored, maintained and protected by Women for Women International - UK. This makes us a "data controller" for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 and (from 25 May 2018) the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 ("Data Protection Law").  This means that we are legally responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information.

If you have any questions about your personal data, we can be contacted via email, phone or post. Please note our normal office hours are Monday to Friday 9:30am to 5:30pm, excluding UK bank holidays.

Women for Women International - UK’s data protection is managed by our Managing Director Carrie Brownlee who can be contacted at ukoperations@womenforwomen.org. Please include in the subject line of your email ‘FAO The Data Protection Lead’.

2. How do we collect your information?

We want to make sure you receive the communications that are most relevant to you, be it through visiting our website or receiving emails, post or phone calls. We want to make sure you receive the best possible experience when making a donation.

We collect information from you in the following ways:

• When you interact with us directly: This could be when you donate to our work with a one-time or monthly gift, sign-up to receive our newsletter or other publications, apply for a job or volunteering opportunity or otherwise provide us with your personal information. This includes when you email us, visit our website, attend an event, or get in touch through the post, or in person.
• When you interact with us through third parties: This could be if you provide a donation through a third party such as Just Giving or Charity Aid Foundation and provide your consent for your personal information to be shared with us.
• When you visit our website: We gather general information which might include which pages you visit most often and which services, events or information is of most interest to you. We may also track which pages you visit when you click on links in emails from us. We also use "cookies" to help our site run effectively. There are more details below – see section 11, 'Cookies'.  
• On rare occasions, if you have expressed an interest in supporting us in a significant manner, we may collect information about you from publicly available sources in order to tailor our communications with you to your background and interests (we have provided further details about this below – see section 6, ‘Research and Profiling’).

3. What information we collect and how we use it

What types of personal data do we collect?

With your knowledge and permission, we may collect your personal information, which may include your name, address, email address, phone number, bank account or credit card details when donating or setting up regular transactions, as well as information you provide in any communications between us. This will be collected when you sign up to our website, make a donation towards our women survivors of conflict or any of the other ways in which you interact with us. Occasionally, we may also need to record additional information such as your date of birth, passport or dietary requirements to ensure your best care on trips and at events. These details are always collected with your express permission and are deleted when no longer needed.

Why do we collect this?

Women for Women International - UK will process your data to maintain up to date records of Stand With Her memberships, donations and our relationships with supporters of our charity.

• We keep up to date records of your donation or Stand With Her membership to manage our relationship with you and for our own accountancy purposes, such as to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions.
• To provide the services or goods that you have requested.
• To update you with important administrative messages about your donation, an event or services or goods you have requested.
• To comply with the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 and follow the recommendations of the official regulator of charities, the Charity Commission, which require us to identify and verify the identity of supporters who make major gifts so we can assess any risks associated with accepting their donations.
• To keep a record of your relationship with us.
• To keep you updated on general Women for Women International – UK news, events, campaigns and appeals in the ways that you have consented to.

Sensitive personal data

Data Protection Law recognises that some categories of personal information are more sensitive than others. “Sensitive personal data” is any information about a person’s:

• Health
• Political opinions
• Religious or philosophical beliefs
• Genetic and biometric data
• Membership of trade unions
• Sex life or sexual orientation
• Racial or ethnic origins

If we have a close relationship with you and you share this data with us, we will only store it with your explicit consent. On very rare occasions, we gather health information related to food allergies which are necessary for supporter visits to our programmes. This information will be deleted as soon as the trip is completed.

4. Marketing and Consent

At Women for Women International – UK we will only contact you about our work if you have agreed that you are happy for us to do so.

When donating, subscribing to our newsletter or requesting a publication from us you will have been asked how we can stay in touch. You can choose what information you would like to receive – e.g. monthly newsletter, invitations to events, and how it will come to you – by email, text, post or if you are happy to receive a phone call.

Depending on your response we will also keep you updated about our work, campaigns and appeals, events and other ways in which you can get involved.

We will only get in touch with you if you explicitly say it is ok to do so and you can update your preferences at any time by getting in touch with us via our contact form.

5. Legal basis for using your information

In cases where we are contacting you about our work, we will only do so with your consent. However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your personal information and one of those is called 'legitimate interests'. This means that the reason that we are processing information is because there is a legitimate interest for Women for Women International to process your information to help us to achieve our vision.

Whenever we process your Personal Information under the ‘legitimate interest' lawful basis we make sure that we take into account your rights and interests and will not process your personal information if we feel that there is an imbalance.

Some examples of where we have a legitimate interest to process your Personal information are where we use your personal information for conducting research to better understand who our supporters are, improving our services, for our legal purposes (for example, dealing with complaints and claims), or for complying with guidance from the Charity Commission.

6. Research and Profiling

All research and profiling that we do is completed personally by a Women for Women International – UK member of staff. We do not use any automated decision-making tools to profile supporters on mass, nor do we use third party wealth screening companies. That’s because we appreciate that all of our donors are individuals with personal reasons behind their support. We only wish to make our communications with you as personal and relevant as possible, we are not trying to rank you or assign you a number.

A profile is primarily based on information that you have given through previous interactions with us. This may include broad information relating to you, such as geographic and socio-economic data (e.g. postcode), in order to have a better understanding of your potential interests and preferences. This helps us to only contact you with the most relevant communications.  If you have made a gift to us, we would bear in mind its value and your gift patterns to help us be as relevant to you as we can. For example, if you have made a donation through our Stand With Her programme we will prioritise sending you further information relating to Stand With Her activity.

On rare occasions, we may also seek additional information about you from publicly available sources, such as LinkedIn, company biographies, media articles and social media. This includes information such as listed directorships, employment and philanthropic history or typical earnings in a specific commercial sector or profession. The details we research help us to do our job efficiently and effectively, to better serve the women we are working to support. If you have expressed interest in supporting Women for Women International - UK, or have been referred to us, and are meeting us for the first time, it means we will be well prepared and not waste any of your time. At an appropriate point in the conversation, we will check that you are happy for us to keep this information. We will always make sure to get your consent within one month of our first contact and details will not be saved unless we have your permission.

For our long-term supporters– understanding your interests and employment background can help us to ask you for support in areas you may not have yet considered, enriching our experience of working together. We also use research to familiarise staff at events, helping to ensure a smooth running and enjoyable event for everyone.

This may include a photograph, current and previous employment, membership of charitable boards, publicly shared philanthropy and attendance at high profile events.

Our supporters have told us that the informed and professional manner in which our team approach asks for substantial donations is a key reason for their continued relationship with us. It ensures we only ask those who might be willing and able to give, and we are able to tailor the projects we present to your own interests. Research, including desk searches, to better understand the potential size of donation you might consider will only be stored with your explicit consent.

We will only save this information with your consent and will use it to improve your experience with Women for Women International - UK. This is stored safely and securely on our private servers and can only be viewed by relevant Women for Women International - UK staff. If you would like us to delete this record, please let us know.

7. Sharing your information

Women for Women International - UK will NEVER sell or swap your details with any third-party organisations.

However, we may share your information with our trusted partners and suppliers who work with us to deliver our services. Processing of this information is always carried out under our instruction and we make sure that they store the data securely. Data is only shared for a specific purpose, such as distributing a postal campaign. We ensure that they delete all shared data when they no longer need it and that they never use it for any other purposes beyond that which has been contractually agreed.

As a global organisation, Women for Women International headquarters are based in the United States. In order to most efficiently manage our programmes and operations, we use a shared supporter database or “CRM system”, which is cloud based. Therefore, your data may be accessed by Women for Women International employees in the United States for administration of Stand With Her membership and our letter sharing programme.

Only personal information such as your name, contact details and notes regarding our relationship are stored on this system. No credit or debit card information is stored on this system and is never transferred outside of the EU.

While this is a shared system, all supporters of Women for Women International – UK are clearly marked as such, and are excluded from all communications from our US global headquarters.

Additionally, we have a contractual data sharing agreement with our US headquarters. The agreement covers all of the data that is shared between the two organisations and provides that the information of EU residents is protected to EEA standard protection.

If you have any questions related to the data sharing agreement, please email our Data Protection Lead on ukoperations@womenforwomen.org.

8. Protecting your information

We take looking after your information very seriously. We've implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and offline, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.

Our data is stored on a private server. All access to this server requires a secure VPN connection. All data transmitted by our customers is sent over encrypted TLS 1.2 connections.

Our cloud CRM, Salesforce, has been in compliance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework since August 2016 and is working with us to ensure compliance with the new privacy law, General Data Protection Regulation, which goes into effect on May 25th, 2018 in the European Union. This is secured and there are multi-faceted protection levels to ensure the safety of your personal data.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information using the internet is never completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information sent to us this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site.

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 practices employed by other sites. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites or advertisers.

9. How long will you keep my data?

Women for Women International - UK needs to keep some details, such as financial information from donations, for an extended period to ensure we meet requirements for annual audits.

We only keep your data for as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, the collection of Gift Aid).

10. What are my rights?

Women for Women International - UK will be happy to give you access to your personal information stored in our filing system should you request it. We are only able to share information relating to yourself. If you would like us to erase your data we will do so upon request (except for information that is required by law for financial audits). We are keen to make sure the data we maintain is up to date so please do let us know if you move, get a new phone number or email address.

Your rights:

• To see the personal information we store about you
• To change your personal information if it is inaccurate or incomplete
• To be forgotten – as long as this doesn’t contradict our legal obligations
• To limit the ways we process your data – so we can store it but not use it any further
• To access and move your data – to another company, etc.
• To object to legitimate interest processing, direct marketing or processing for statistics

Can I take back my consent once it’s given?

You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. We’ll be very sorry to see you go, but all you have to do is send us a message via our contact form telling us you withdraw your consent and we will immediately update our records. You will no longer be contacted by Women for Women International - UK. If you are happy to receive communications in some ways e.g. you would like to receive emails but don’t want letters through the post, you can let us know this at any time and we will make sure to only contact you in your preferred way.

I would like to make a complaint, what should I do?

If you are ever uncomfortable with the ways Women for Women International - UK is handling your data, then you of course have the right to lodge a complaint with either Women for Women International – UK directly, or with the Fundraising Regulator and/or Information Commissioner’s Office. Simply get in touch with us at ukoperations@womenforwomen.org.

Am I under any legal obligation to provide my personal data?

The decision to make a donation to Women for Women International - UK, is a completely free choice. However, in order for us to process your gift and meet certain legal obligations, such as financial auditing, we will require your bank details and some personal information such as your name and address. We keep this information securely stored and will only use it for the administration of your donation. Unless you ask to be contacted about other news from us, we will not use data collected for donations for any marketing purposes.

11. Cookies

What are cookies? Cookies are small text files which are placed on the computer of a website user to provide the website operator with information about use of the website.  Cookies help us to improve the way our website works and help us authenticate users when they log in to their online accounts.

We use cookies on the website for the following purposes:

Session cookies: We use session cookies for the online account on our website. Their purpose is to keep the user logged in while browsing through the site. They expire at the end of the session so the next time the user visits the website, s/he will have to log in again.

Google Analytics cookies: We have a Google Analytics code placed on our website. This enables us to collect data on user behaviour and visitor numbers so we can optimise our website in terms of content and functionality.

Google Analytics uses cookies to achieve the following on an anonymous basis:

• Determining visitor session: e.g. how long a session lasted and what did the user do during one session. This helps us to improve the way the site works.
• Tracking traffic sources & navigation: Where did users come from, e.g. Google, harpersbazaar.co.uk, etc.

Hotjar

We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimise this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device's IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymised user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf.

For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.

Your cookie preferences

To make full use of the site, your computer or mobile device will need to accept cookies, as the website will not function properly without them. In addition, cookies are required in order to provide you with personalized features on the site.

Amending cookie preferences

If you wish to remove cookies set by the website from your browser in the future, you may delete them. The instructions for removing cookies from your computer or mobile device depend on the operating system and web browser you use. Please note, however, that withdrawing your agreement to the use of cookies on the website will impair the functionality of the site.

If you would like to find out more about cookies in general and how to manage them (including removing cookies), please visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

12. Monitoring

To ensure that we are sending you engaging communications, we do monitor the success of our marketing emails. This tells us who chose to open an email, how many other emails they have opened and whether they have clicked on any links within. This shows us which emails you are enjoying and which you are not, helping us to improve the quality of what we send you in future. You can unsubscribe from these emails at any time.

13. Changes to our Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time.  If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal information we will make this clear on the Women for Women International - UK website or by contacting you directly.

If you have any questions at all about your personal data and how Women for Women International-UK is using it, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Contact our Data Protection Lead at ukoperations@womenforwomen.org.