In this policy, ‘we’, ‘our’ or ‘us’ refers to The British and Foreign Bible Society, also known as Bible Society, a registered charity in England and Wales (232759). This also includes Christian Research and our trading company (shop) Bible Society Resources Limited (registered company number 5450490).
Our address is: Stonehill Green, Westlea, Swindon, SN5 7DG.
We respect your privacy and want to communicate with you in a way that suits you, in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and any other relevant data protection legislation. Your privacy is important to us, and this policy explains how we use your personal information and keep it secure.
Personal information covers any data that enables us to identify you as an individual, or relates to you as an individual, for example your name, address, telephone number, email address, bank details (submitted when making a donation or buying a product), church affiliation, interests, preferences and engagement with our work.
One of the ways in which we use your personal information is to send you postal mailings, such as our supporter magazine, appeal updates and other information you have asked for or that we feel would be of interest to you.
Our promise: We'll only use your details to share Bible Society information with you. This may include Bible resources, events, appeals, volunteering opportunities, or shop products. We may use your data and other publicly available information for analysis, so that we can use our resources effectively and contact you appropriately, unless you ask us not to. For further details, including your rights and to change your preferences, see the section ‘How to contact us or to update your details’ within this Privacy Policy, biblesociety.org.uk/privacy or call Freephone 0808 178 4921.
We use your email details to send you communications that you have requested, and if you represent an organisation or a church, we may also send you resource/event emails. If you have purchased from our shop, you will also receive emails promoting shop products and resources, unless you opt-out.
We may phone you to let you know more about our work or to ask if you would like to make a donation, but only where you have given your phone number for these purposes.
If you have previously given your permission, we may also phone you about your regular donations to see if you wish to change the amount you are currently giving.
Sometimes we work with a company called Entity Hub Ltd (trading as NTT) to make these calls on our behalf (see section below: Do we share your personal information?).
You can change the way we communicate with you, at any time, in the following ways:
When you supply personal information to us, we only use this information for the purpose for which it was given and ensure that it is kept securely.
Unless you ask us not to, we may carry out analysis of the personal information you have provided and add publicly available information to create a profile, for example, in relation to your interests, preferences, attitudes and level of potential donations, so we can contact you in the most appropriate way and with the most relevant information.
We may ask you to participate in surveys, which are used to help us improve how we work. They will not result in us providing additional resources and marketing to you, unless clearly stated in the survey. To opt out of surveys, please see the contact section at the end of this Privacy Policy.
We use one of the following lawful bases for processing your information:
Consent?– we rely on your consent to process your information when you have given this to us e.g., to send you our weekly email newsletter
Contract?– we may process your information when we need to do this to fulfil a contract with you, e.g., if you have purchased something from our shop
Legal Obligation?– sometimes we will need to process your information because we have a legal reason to do this, e.g., if you have gift aided donations to us, HMRC requires us to keep the information for up to 7 years
Legitimate Interest?– we may process your information when it is in our legitimate interest to do this and when these interests do not override your interests and rights, e.g., when we send information to you by post.
In accordance with our Data Retention Policy, we retain your information for as long as reasonably necessary to maintain and expand our relationship with you, to comply with our legal and contractual obligations, to protect ourselves from potential disputes, to have proof and evidence concerning our relationship should any legal issues arise and to maintain a historical record of our activities and those involved in them.
Please note that except as required by law or by specific agreement with you, we make no commitment to retain your information for any particular period, and we are free to delete it securely or restrict access to it for any reason and at any time, with or without notice to you.
If you have any questions about our Data Retention Policy, please contact us by email at?[email protected]
We only share information with businesses that provide us with the services we need, to operate effectively and efficiently. Some of the ways we share your information for this purpose include:
When we share information, we have a data processing agreement in place to ensure your information will be kept secure and will only be used for the purpose for which it has been provided.
In order to process financial transactions, we may need your bank or credit card details. Online credit card payments are processed through Opayo/Evalon (formerly known as Sage Pay) via a secure server.
Credit card payments sent on donation forms are processed via Barclaycard and shredded as soon as processed through the terminal.
We do not retain or store complete credit card details, nor do we share financial details with any third parties.
If you have given us bank details to set up a direct debit, your information will be processed by Bible Society within a secure hosting environment.
Information you give us via the website is stored and processed in the UK. However, because of the nature of the internet, it is possible that your data may pass through countries outside the UK.
We use data processors and sub-processors based outside the UK. In this situation we follow data protection legislation and procedures (including standard contractual clauses) to keep your data secure. To find out more, please get in touch with the Data Protection Officer:?[email protected]
You have the following rights:
If you have an issue with Bible Society that cannot be resolved, you can contact the ICO at?www.ICO.org.uk
Our website uses cookies to improve your online experience. Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer or device. Some cookies help provide website functionality, help keep our website secure and help us understand how our website is being used. Other cookies can be used for marketing purposes.
Find out more about the cookies we use and how you can manage your preferences, in our cookie policy, at?biblesociety.org.uk/cookie-policy
Some areas of the Bible Society website invite or require visitors to create Bible Society accounts when undertaking particular activities, e.g., purchasing from our shop, accessing The Bible Course online for groups, accessing Open the Book materials.
We ask for your name and email address to create an account. We may ask other questions depending on the activity you’re undertaking.
We store these for 3 years from the last date you logged in.
Accounts can be closed by logging into your account and clicking ‘Close my account’.
If you are under 18, please get a parent’s or guardian’s permission before giving any personal information on our website.
If you buy something from our online shop, you may get other shop emails from us. We will not knowingly send any other email or postal marketing material to those under 18.
If you use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube you may see Bible Society adverts. Please get your parent’s or guardian’s permission before giving personal information in response to these posts.
We may hold children’s information on our database for administering our children’s work, but only where we have the appropriate permission to do so.
You can get in touch with us in the following ways:
Please keep us informed of changes so we can stay in touch.
If you have any concerns regarding this privacy policy or the way we are processing your personal information, please contact:
The Data Protection Officer, at the address below, or email?[email protected]
Bible Society, Stonehill Green, Westlea, Swindon SN5 7DG
Last revision October 2024
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