Privacy policy UK

We are registered as a Charity in England and Wales, and our registration number is: 299717

We are registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioners Office, and our Data Protection Register number is: Z8087448 Any data that we collect will be used in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 / UK GDPR

Any electronic direct marketing communications will be made in accordance with the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR)

If you have any queries about this Notice or how we process your personal information please contact our Supporter Care Team

Email: supporter@rippleeffect.org

Write:

Ripple Effect
The Old Estate Yard
Newton St Loe
Bath
BA2 9BR
United Kingdom

Call: 01225 874222

Alternatively you can contact dataprotection@rippleeffect.org to raise any matter with our Data Protection Group

You have the following rights under the Data Protection Act 2018 / UK GDPR

• The right to be informed how your personal data is processed
• The right of access to your personal data
• The right to edit and update your personal data
• The right to have your personal information deleted
• The right to restrict processing of your personal information
• The right to object
• The right to portability
• The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing

The sections above explain more about how Ripple Effect processes your data in line with your rights as an individual.

We collect the personal information you provide us with as part of online purchases and donations, through donation forms, e-newsletter sign up’s, registering for events, surveys and meetings with our staff. We also collect how you want to hear from us (your preferences.)

The personal information we collect may include:

• Title & Name
• Postal address, email address, telephone number and mobile number
• Family & spouse/partner details, relationships to other donors or organisations
• Current interests and activities relevant to Ripple Effect’s work and our fundraising
• We will ask you to confirm that you are 18 or over when making a donation through our website. This is to ensure that we do not use the personal information of a minor for marketing purposes.
• Gift Recipient: Ripple Effect markets virtual charity gifts as one of its fundraising products. In order to fulfil these virtual gifts, a supporter may enter the name, email address and address of the individual they wish to send this gift to, along with a personal message. This data is stored on our CMS Craft and shared with our email marketing platform Brevo. This data is removed and permanently deleted from Craft monthly, and Brevo weekly. We don’t record any information on the gift recipient on our database or contact those individuals in the future.

We also collect and hold information about the contact you make and activities you take part in with Ripple Effect and this may consist of:

• Donation details
• Online purchase details
• Event registration/attendance
• Direct Debit details where applicable
• Gifts in Will information
• Details of correspondence sent to you or received from you
• Responses to surveys sent to you
• Any other information provided by yourself that is relevant to your relationship with Ripple Effect

In addition, for a small number of contacts, we may carry out further research using publicly available sources to understand how we can communicate in a meaningful way. Find out more about why and how we carry out research below under What we do with your data.

We may process the personal information you provide or that we may collect from publically available sources to support our legitimate interest in delivering Ripple Effect’s charitable mission. We process data to enable us to administer your donations correctly, and to help us build a positive relationship by contacting you in a way that is personal and relevant to support our fundraising. This also helps Ripple Effect to be as efficient as possible in using its resources for marketing and other contact with supporters.

We will only process your data where we have a legal basis to do so. You have a right to object to how we use your data and can change your preferences at any time by contacting us. There are some communications that we are required to send regardless of your preferences. These are essential communications, deemed necessary to fulfil our legal and administrative obligations to you. This would include Direct Debit confirmations and advanced notices, thank you letters, Gift Aid confirmation letters and querying returned mail, incomplete cheques or bounced Direct Debit payments with you.

There may be occasions where we are required to collect your email or telephone number to complete an order such as on our website. In these cases, we will always ask permission to use your email, and give you a way to object to us using your phone number, for marketing purposes.

Gift Aid

In order to claim Gift Aid on your donations from the HMRC, we need to hold records of your name and address, your tax status and donation details. Ensuring this information is accurate ensures that we claim Gift Aid correctly and can increase the value of the donations you give to us.

Financial audit 

We need to hold information about donations that you give to us to meet financial auditing requirements but also to help us understand how you support Ripple Effect so that we can talk to you about fundraising and supporting our work in a way that is relevant to you.

Address information

We hold your address details so that we can post newsletters, appeals and other information to you. We will also hold your address information on our database so that if you request us to no longer contact you, we can keep a record to ensure we remove you from any mailings in the future.

Privacy policy update 

From 1 September 2022, we are changing the way we determine how to communicate with new supporters in relation to phone calls. We will not change your current communication preferences on our database unless instructed to do so by you. If you have told us you do not wish to be contacted by phone, your preference will remain the same.

From September 1st September 2022, we will use the legal basis of legitimate interest to contact new supporters by telephone who will always have the opportunity to opt out of phone communications. We have looked at the expectations of our supporters and the needs of the charity and have assessed that this is now the most appropriate approach.

If you are an existing supporter and you contact us using one of our new forms after the 1st of September 2022 and you request for your communication preferences to change on that new form, we will always respect your latest instruction. Please read all forms carefully before submitting. You can contact us on 01225 874 222 Monday to Thursdays 9-5pm or email supporter@rippleeffect.org to change your contact preferences.

For any questions around this change or anything else privacy related, please contact us.

All the information we keep is stored on a secure database held on a server within the EU. If you donate from outside of the UK, your data will be stored on this system and in line with European Data Protection Directives. Depending on your relationship with Ripple Effect, and the preferences you have indicated, data we hold may be used by us for the following purposes to support Ripple Effect’s charitable mission and for your benefit to ensure that we process your donation correctly and contact you in a way that is personal and relevant. Whenever we process data we will always consider your personal rights and you have a right to object to the way that we use your data if you wish by contacting us.

Send you promotional, marketing or fundraising information by post, telephone or electronic means. These types of communications can include:

• News and updates about Ripple Effect, such as our twice yearly Lifeline newsletter and monthly e-newsletters.
• Fundraising appeals or to ask you to consider supporting us in other ways such as taking part in events
• Other relevant communications based upon your relationship with Ripple Effect
• Informing you of other activities, or events related to Ripple Effect such as volunteering, retail and corporate partnerships

Data screening and cleansing. We regularly review our records to ensure they are as accurate as possible. We may consult alternative sources in order to undertake these checks such as:

• Royal Mail National Change of Address database (NCOA) to ensure that we don’t send mail to old addresses
• Deceased Records (Mortascreen) to ensure that we do not cause upset by contacting somebody who has recently deceased

Tailoring what we tell you about. We may use existing data about your previous engagement with Ripple Effect to find relevant information for particular activities or to tailor communication. Examples might be:

• That you live in a particular postcode catchment near to an event we are holding
• That you previously gave to a match funded appeal (such as DFID Aid Match) which we have the opportunity to repeat

To send you surveys, and for market research purposes

Tools may be used to monitor the effectiveness of our communications with you, including email tracking, which records when an e-newsletter from us is opened and/or how many links are clicked within the message. The data from this tracking is generally used in an aggregated and anonymized form.

Research to help us understand our donors and potential donors.

If you do not want Ripple Effect to do research or profiling work in relation to your information, you can tell us by emailing info@rippleeffect.org. To help you decide, the following explains how and why we do this work and in what circumstances. Being targeted and appropriate in our fundraising is more cost effective for Ripple Effect, helping us to support more farming families in Africa. We may combine the information you have given us with other publicly available information using sources such as The Charity Commission, Companies House and company websites. We will use this information to create a profile of your interests and preferences, where they are relevant to engaging with Ripple Effect. We do this to help us determine whether and in what ways you might be interested in helping us. Examples might be:

• That you are a director of a company with an agricultural focus
• That you are a trustee of a grant making trust that exists to support development work in Africa
• That you are a known philanthropist with an interest in and potential to give to our work

Our Ripple Effect fundraising staff carry out this work in house. Such research would be carried out where we have an opportunity to engage at a significant level or depth (so we do not research or profile the majority of our donors or other interested parties). Examples might be:

• When you are meeting with our CEO or a trustee or engaging with our Senior Advisory Group
• When you have been referred by an existing high level Ripple Effect donor in your peer group who has introduced you to our work and you would like to meet with us
• When you have self-identified through a high level gift or other senior level engagement

We also do this work to try to minimize any negative impact on your relationship with Ripple Effect. Examples might be:

• Asking for a donation or an inappropriate level of donation
• Trying to engage you in activities about which you have no interest or no influence

Where you are not already a Ripple Effect supporter, we will provide this privacy notice to you at the first available opportunity after any engagement with you. If you have any questions about our supporter research work or if you would like to tell us more about yourself and your interests in relation to Ripple Effect please get in touch.

Due diligence research 

Ripple Effect’s trustees have a duty to ensure that there is no reputational or other risk to the organization in accepting a gift or other support. We may therefore need to carry out research which is necessary to ensure we comply with this duty. For more information on the type of information required and the circumstances when this might apply, you can visit the Charity Commission and refer to Chapter 2, Tool 6: Know your donor

Please contact our Supporter Care team to make any updates to your information by emailing supporter@rippleeffect.org or write to:

Supporter Care Team
Ripple Effect
Newton St Loe
Bath
BA2 9BR

Ensuring we have the right personal information is really important to us. If you wish to correct any information on you held by Ripple Effect please contact us on the details above

If you want to ask us to stop processing your personal data, we may continue to store your data to meet financial and other requirements. We will retain enough of your personal information to ensure that your request can be respected in the future.

If you want us to delete your data, please note that permanently removing your details means that we cannot guarantee to not contact you as we will no longer hold a record of your request.

It is our policy not to sell, trade or rent your personal information to anyone. We do not disclose personal data other than to data processors carrying out work on our behalf under a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Any such companies are acting as approved data processors for Ripple Effect, and we retain full responsibility for your personal data. Data processors will act only on our instructions. Examples of these data processers might be a mailing house (Echo) for sending out our bi-annual newsletter, our email distribution service (Brevo), telephone fundraising agencies working on our behalf such as QTS or occasional data analysis agencies. 

We may disclose to third parties aggregate statistics regarding donations but these statistics do not include any personally identifying information. The information given includes: total number of donors, total amount of donations for specific periods of time, and referring websites. 

Aggregate information of this kind is used to improve our fundraising. We use a third-party financial institution to process our credit card transactions. They receive the credit card number and other personal information of our donors only to verify credit card numbers and to process credit card transactions in a secure environment. If you provide us with your telephone number, we may give your contact details to a telephone agency such as QTS who will call you on our behalf. Supporters who have previously opted into telephone communication before the 1st September 2022, will continue to have their channel preferences respected as before unless they tell us otherwise. If existing supporters re-engage with us through a communication that has the updated permissions statement, after the 1st September 2022, will always respect their latest instruction. 

Look-alike' / 'Similar' audiences:

We send a list of email addresses to online platforms such as Meta or Google which are subsequently hashed during the upload (hashing is a security measure whereby the information is turned into a code). The online platform matches these hashed email addresses to existing users, and then creates a group of people with similar characteristics for displaying our advertising to.

The hashed data that we share with Meta and Google is deleted after a short period of time and not used for any other purpose. For more information, please review their respective privacy policies, the UK versions of which are available at https://en-gb.facebook.com/privacy/policy/?entry_point=data_policy_redirect&entry=0 and https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-UK

Use of personal data for digital advertising:

We provide our trusted 3rd party platforms, including Meta, Google and Microsoft, with a list of names, email addresses and addresses of supporters which they use to target individuals with, or exclude them from seeing, our advertisements. On occasion, we may also provide these platforms with prior donation information, such as amount, frequency, campaign, in order to better reach existing supporters and to create value-based Lookalike audiences (where we can target ads to audiences who are most similar to our supporters to help find new Ripple Effect supporters with similar behaviours to our existing supporters). We will only include supporters in these lists if they have consented to receiving our marketing. 

The contract terms with these platforms do not permit them to make any further use of the details we have provided. Data is deleted once it is no longer in use.

We believe we have a legitimate interest in bringing you targeted advertising in this way to try and personalise and improve your experience on our website and with our advertisements. If you do not wish us to do so, you can opt out of direct marketing by contacting supporter@rippleeffect.org or calling us on 01225 874222.

We will keep information such as your name and address to ensure that we don’t mail you in the future if you have asked to be removed from our mailing lists.

We will keep your donation history and tax status on our database for 6 years as legally required for financial and Gift Aid auditing purposes.

We will keep some communication details where they are relevant to support administration of Gifts in Wills.

We will ensure that we hold the minimum amount of data to meet the purposes of supporting Ripple Effect’s charitable mission and will hold historical data for analysis in an anonymised format so it is no longer linked directly to your personal information.

We will check your preferences with you every 24 months to ensure that you are still happy with the way that we contact you. You can make changes at any time by emailing us at supporter@rippleeffect.org or call 01225 874222

You can ask us if we are keeping any personal data about you and you can also request to receive a copy of that personal data – this is called a Subject Access Request.

To make a Subject Access Request you will need to provide adequate proof of identity such as a copy of your passport, birth certificate or driving licence before your request can be processed.

Please try to be as clear as possible about the information you are seeking.

Once we have received your Subject Access Request and proof of identity, you will receive a response from us within a month and you will be able to get copies of any information we hold on you. However, exemptions to disclosure may apply in some circumstances.

Subject Access Requests should be sent to:

Supporter Relationship Manager
Ripple Effect
The Old Estate Yard
Newton St Loe
Bath
BA2 9BR

Please note that repeated requests for a Subject Access Request could be subject to a small administrative charge to cover our costs.

We regularly review our privacy practices and this notice, and may make changes from time to time. Any changes made will be posted to this page, and will apply from the time we post them. We will inform you directly of any significant changes.

13th August 2024: To help us reach more potential new supporters and therefore help more families in rural Africa to grow a brighter future for themselves, we are making changes to how we use some of our supporter data.

By creating potential audiences that are similar to you, our supporters, we can make better use of our digital marketing budgets to make sure we are talking to the kind of people who might like to support us.

You can read the full privacy policy update below. If you would like to update the way we process your information in this way, please get in touch with us within 30 days by emailing supporter@rippleeffect.org or calling 01225 974 222 (Mon – Fri 9am – 5pm).

For any questions around this change or anything else privacy related, please contact us.

This privacy notice was last updated on 13th August 2024.

In order to make the Ripple Effect website easier to use and improve our service, we sometimes place small amounts of information on your computer. These are known as cookies and they are used by most major websites. We use cookies, small pieces of data stored inside a website browser, across our websites to improve their performance and to enhance your user experience. When you visit our websites, cookies allow us to collect some non-identifying basic information. This includes the total number of visitors, the pages viewed, and other anonymous information. We use this information to make your experience on our website as smooth as possible and to allow us to make any necessary improvements. Click here to find out more about the different cookies we use.

Necessary cookies 

These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Without these cookies, services you have asked for, like shopping baskets or e-billing, cannot be provided.

Functionality cookies 

Our ordering system is set up to remember what you are purchasing for only one visit. For example, if you are purchasing several gifts, our system will keep track of what you are purchasing while you make your selections. To allow you to keep the items in your basket, we utilise temporary cookies to process your order.

Targeting cookies

These cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the website operator’s permission. They remember that you have visited a website so you can be shown more relevant ads. Ripple Effect rarely uses this type of cookie. More detail on how businesses use cookies is available at www.allaboutcookies.org. If you decide you would like to disable cookies on this device, please view our information pages - How to disable cookies. However, please do be aware that some parts of the website will no longer function correctly if you disable cookies.

Emails

To enable us to determine which of our emails are more interesting to our users, Ripple Effect emails may contain a single tracking pixel. This pixel can allow us to see whether emails are opened and also which links people click the most. The pixel will be deleted when you delete the email. If you do not wish the pixel to be downloaded to your device, please set your email client to receive plain text emails from us.

We value feedback and you have a right to object to how we process your personal information to support our charitable mission through marketing and research. If you have a concern at any time, please contact our Supporter Care team by emailing supporter@rippleeffect.org or write to us at:

Ripple Effect
The Old Estate Yard
Newton St Loe
Bath
BA2 9BR

If you wish to lodge a complaint or seek advice from a supervisory authority, please contact the:

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

www.ico.org.uk

Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number