The Message Trust (registered charity number 1081467) collects various data when you use our websites, sign up to our newsletters, make a donation, volunteer, come to an event, make a purchase or are involved in any other way with our organisation or mission. This page is here to help you understand how we use the data we collect about you. 

In addition to this general privacy policy, we also have specific privacy policies for a number of areas of our work including activity associated with (but not limited to) Community Grocery, Eden, Proximity, Advance, Creative Mission, Prisons and Enterprise and Message Community Church. If you would like access to these please email [email protected] 

For our HR privacy notice, please email us at [email protected] 

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, or the data that we keep about you, and how we use it or if you want to exercise any of your rights, please do contact us at [email protected] or by writing to The Data Protection Lead, The Message Trust, Lancaster House, Harper Road, Sharston, M22 4RG. 

Last updated: 5 August 2024 

Information Collection

 The Message Trust collects your information in different ways, including when you: 

• Buy or sign up for tickets for an event  
• Make a donation directly to The Message Trust or through third party websites such as Just Giving 
• Sign up to receive our news and/or prayer updates  
• Get involved in one of our activities 

What Data Do We Collect

The information we collect will be provided by yourself and depending on your contact with us may include your name, address, email address, phone number, bank account details and date of birth. 

In addition, at times we may need to collect additional information. This may include special category data which include health information, race, ethnic origin, political opinion, religion, trade union membership, genetic and biometric data. They may also contain criminal records information.  

At certain times, when you are getting involved in certain activities The Message Trust is running it may be necessary collect additional data from you. More details about what we will collect and the reasons for this can be found in the individual privacy notices, which are accessible online. 

Use Of Your Information  

We will only use the personal information that you give us for the purposes of:  

• Processing any donations you might have kindly made.  
• Sending you communications about our activities, so that you can find out more about our work, read stories about its impact, support us in prayer and find out more about how you can get involved with our work and mission including opportunities for partnership, volunteering or giving. 
• Informing you about events taking place and the ways you can get involved in the work and outreach of The Message.  
• Providing a service that you have requested such as becoming a Community Grocery member.  
• Providing you with personalised communication online, in print and via email so that you can learn more the areas of The Message mission you would like to hear more about. 
• Keeping a record of your relationship with us.  
• Classifying our supporters by location so that you can hear about what’s happening near you through our Message hubs teams. 

When you supply your information, we will tell you how your information will be used. By providing your details you are agreeing to these uses. It will not be used in other ways than is detailed.   

You may choose to unsubscribe from mail or email communications at any time without affecting your donations. If you have made a donation and/or given Gift Aid on a donation, we are legally required to store your data and may contact you regarding your donation. If you do not want us to email you, please do not provide your email address.  

Lawful Basis For Processing Your Personal Data

In accordance with the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018, we will rely on the following lawful basis for processing your personal data.  

• When you pay or sign up to attend a paid event, we rely on contractual obligation. When you sign up or attend an event without paying for it, we rely on legitimate interest. 
• When you get involved with The Message Trust through one of our areas of work, we are likely to rely on legitimate interest, but for more information on the area of work you are signed up through please refer to the specific privacy notice.   
• When you make a donation(s) on third party websites such as Just Giving, or on one of The Message Trust’s websites, we rely on our legitimate interests.  
• When you subscribe to our newsletters, communications or online updates, we rely on consent. 

For special category data, we rely on additional conditions in the Data Protection Legislation.   

How Long We Store Your Data For

We will only keep your personal information for as long as we consider it necessary to perform the activities listed above.  

To ensure this we have a data retention policy in place. Within this, as well as considering what would be reasonable for the way you have engaged with us, we take account of legal obligations plus accounting and tax considerations. For example, we will retain details of donations for seven years to meet tax and accounting requirements but will only hold information provided to us as part of a newsletter subscription for the length of the subscription.  

For events, we will retain data for attendees according to our retention schedule. 

Legacy income is an important source of income for The Message Trust. To ensure we can carry out the administration of legacies and to be able to communicate with the families of those leaving us legacies, we may keep the data you provide indefinitely.  

If you would like to know more about our data retention policy, please get in touch by emailing [email protected] 

Security

Access to your data will be restricted to our employees, administrative volunteers and where necessary to specific partners who need to use your data to perform the activities listed above.  

Your data is stored in a database hosted by Blackbaud whose security policy can be found here. Where your data is stored internally, we have physical and electronic security and procedures in place to ensure that it is not freely available.   

Use Of Your Data By A Third Party

We won’t share your data with other organisations for the purpose of them contacting you with marketing materials. We do however, use a few third party services that involve sharing your data, but only so that we can fulfil the purposes intended when you supplied the data to us. These organisations do not use your data for anything else. In such cases, we may have a data sharing agreement or data processor agreement in place. 

Online credit card processing is undertaken by a third party, Blackbaud Payment Services, over a secure connection. Their security and privacy policy can be found here.  

As mentioned in the security section above, our database is hosted by Blackbaud, who do not have direct access to your data except when aiding with database troubleshooting. In the event of this strict controls are in place and data will not be passed by The Message Trust to them.  

Use Of Information Collected Automatically Through Our Websites 

Cookies 

Cookies are files with a small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your internet browser from a web site and stored on your computer’s hard drive. Like many sites, we use third and first-party cookies to collect information. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. Please be aware, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our website.  

Online Security

The security of your personal information is important to us, but we acknowledge that no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Whilst we will always strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.  

Links To Other Websites

For your convenience, we may provide links to other websites and web pages that we do not control. Where this is the case, we cannot be responsible for the privacy practices of any websites or pages not under our control, and we do not endorse any of these websites or pages, the services or products described or offered on such sites or pages, or any of the content contained on those sites or pages.  

International Data Transfer  

No personal data will be transferred outside of the UK (or outside any country deemed to be adequate by the UK or the EU), without first ensuring that the destination country offers adequate levels of protection for personal data and the rights of data subjects. In accordance with the UK data transfer regime, we will undertake a Transfer Risk Assessment (TRA) and ensure that an appropriate UK safeguard is in place. This may include the use of the UK Addendum which converts existing EU standard contractual clauses (SCCs) into a valid UK safeguard or the International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA).

Your Rights

As an individual whose personal data is processed by The Message Trust you have the following rights: 

• Right to be Informed: You have the right to be informed about how we are using your data. If you think we are doing something with your information that we have not told you about in this Privacy Notice, you can contact us about this; 
• The Right of Access: At any time you can request access to a copy of the personal data that we hold about you; 
• The Right to Rectification: If you think that the personal data we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete, you have a right to request that it be rectified; 
• The Right to Erasure: You can ask us to delete your personal data where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, where you have withdrawn consent (if we process based on consent), or where we have no lawful basis for keeping it; 
• The Right to Restrict Processing: You can ask us to restrict the personal data we use about you where you have asked for it to be erased or where you have objected to our use of it; 
• Right to Data Portability: You can ask us to provide you, or a third party (if possible), with some of the personal data we hold about you in a structured, commonly used, electronic form, so that it can be easily transferred; and 
• Right to Object: You can object to the processing of your personal data. You should be aware that this right does not apply in all circumstances, for example, where we are processing information because it is necessary to complete a contract. 

You can ask us to stop processing your data for marketing and fundraising by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive from us. Or you can contact us at [email protected] to exercise your rights outlined above. We will treat your information with respect and will not share it with any other organisation.  

For more information about your rights under the Data Protection Act this is available on Information Commissioner’s Office website.  

Updating Your Information

To make sure we can keep our records up to date and that the information we send you as relevant as possible, we would appreciate it if you keep your details up to date. You can do this easily by emailing [email protected] and informing us of any changes.  

To help ensure our data accuracy, we may at times, use the Post Office address search tool, postcode lists or other available sources to confirm and complete the data that you have provided us with. We will not use these sources to complete data that you have chosen not to provide. For example, if you have left a telephone number blank we will not add this. We also will not automatically update changes of address until we are told this has changed. However, if you are a regular giver, continuing to give regularly, and items such as Flow magazine are returned to us, we may use external sources to update your address details so that we may update you on how your money has been spent through our news and stories.  

Changes To This Privacy Policy

This Privacy Notice is effective as of the ‘last updated’ date above and will remain in effect except with respect to any changes in its provisions in the future, which will be in effect immediately after being posted on this page.  

We reserve the right to update or change our Privacy Notice at any time and we would recommend that you should check it periodically. Your continued engagement and support of The Message Trust after we post any modifications to the Privacy Notice on this page will constitute your acknowledgment of these modifications and your consent to abide and be bound by the modified Privacy Notice.  

If we make any substantial changes to this Privacy Notice, we will notify you by placing a prominent notice on our website.