The International Rescue Committee (UK registered charity number 1065972) (“IRC”), is committed to protecting your privacy.

At all times we aim to respect any personal information you share with us, or that we receive from other organisations, and keep it safe. This Privacy Notice (“Notice”) sets out our data processing practices and your rights and options regarding the ways in which your personal information is collected (including through our website – www.Rescue-UK.org) and used.

This Notice contains important information about your personal rights to privacy. Please read it carefully to understand how we use your personal information.

The provision of your personal information to us is voluntary. However, without providing us with your personal information, your use of our services or your interaction with us may be impaired. For example, you will be unable to make a donation.

  1. When do we collect personal information about you?
  2. What personal information do we use?
  3. How and why will we use your personal information?
  4. Lawful basis
  5. Supporter research
  6. Communications for marketing/ fundraising
  7. Donations
  8. Children’s personal information
  9. How long do we keep your personal information?
  10. Will we share your personal information?
  11. Security/ storage of and access to your personal information
  12. International data transfers
  13. Exercising your rights
  14. Changes to this notice
  15. Links and third parties
  16. How to contact us

 

1. When do we collect personal information about you?

  1. Technical information, including the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions and operating systems and platforms.
  2. Information about your visit to the websites, including the uniform resource locator (URL) clickstream to, through and from the website (including date and time), services you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, referral sources, page interaction information (such as scrolling and clicks) and methods used to browse away from the page.

We also collect and use your personal information by using cookies on our website – please see our Cookie Notice.

In general, we may combine your personal information from these different sources for the purposes set out in this Notice.

2. What personal information do we use?

We may collect, store and otherwise process the following kinds of personal information:

Do we process special categories of data?

The UK General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) recognises certain categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore requiring more protection, for example information about your health, ethnicity and political opinions.

In certain situations, the IRC may collect and/or use these special categories of data (for example, to provide our services to you if you are a beneficiary since we need to know your health information). We will only process these special categories of data if there is a valid reason for doing so and where the GDPR allows us to do so.

3. How and why will we use your personal information?
Your personal information, however provided to us, will be used for the purposes specified in this Notice. In particular, we may use your personal information:

4. Lawful basis

The GDPR requires us to rely on one or more lawful basis to use your personal information. We consider the grounds listed below to be relevant:

The GDPR allows us to collect and process your personal information if it is reasonably necessary to achieve our or others’ legitimate interests (as long as that processing is fair, balanced and does not unduly impact your rights).

In broad terms, our “legitimate interests” means the interests of running IRC as a charitable entity and pursuing our aims and ideals; for example providing information about current humanitarian crises, processing donations, administering events and taking applications for volunteers.

When we process your personal information to achieve such legitimate interests, we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. We will not use your personal information for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you, for example where use would be excessively intrusive (unless, for instance, we are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

5. Supporter research

We may also analyse your personal information to create a record of your interests and preferences. This allows us to ensure communications are relevant and timely, to contact you in the most appropriate and relevant way and in general to provide you with an improved supporter experience. It also helps us to understand the background of our supporters so that we can make appropriate requests to those who may be willing and able to give more than they already do, enabling us to raise funds and help clients sooner and more cost-effectively.

As part of this activity, we undertake research and profiling of supporters who may have an interest in, and financial ability to, further support IRC.

When undertaking research on supporters we may collect information from publicly available sources such as Companies House, the Charity Commission, the Electoral Role, Land Registry, newspaper and online articles, as well as open social media profiles such as LinkedIn. The information we review from these sources includes things such as whether a person is a company director or trustee of a charity and is combined with the information we already hold about you in order to create a profile, which could include an overview of your career, the level of donation/gift you may be able to make, how you are connected to us and others, and your philanthropic and other interests. To undertake this work, as well as to understand our supporters’ capacity to become a potential major donor, we may also draw on publicly available information compiled by third party companies, such as Wealth-X.

We may also use behavioural and transactional profiling which tracks the recency, frequency and value of gifts to the IRC, which enables us to better target our campaigns and appeals.

We may also ‘segment’ our database of supporters using third parties to assist us with this activity, such as CACI Limited (Acorn) (acorn.caci.co.uk). These organisations provide aggregated data on averages and information relating to the general public (such as consumer attitudes, habits, motivations and behaviours), providing a snapshot of the demographic make-up of different areas of the UK. This type of activity is not aimed at identifying specific individuals. This information helps us target our fundraising to reach new potential supporters, ensuring we reach out to those likely to be interested in our work with the ability to financially support our organisation.

As part of our supporter research and profiling, we apply a balancing test, to ensure that the research is necessary, proportionate and does not override your individual privacy rights or unduly impact on you. We undertake this research on the basis of it being within our ‘legitimate interests’ – see section 4 of this policy which explains what that term means.

If you would prefer us not to use your personal information for supporter research, please let us know by using the contact details below.

We may also undertake due diligence on individuals and organisations before accepting major donations from them – this is in accordance with our legal and regulatory obligations and our own internal risk management procedures.

6. Communications for marketing/ fundraising

We may use your contact details to provide you with information about our work, events, services and/ or products that we consider may be of interest to you (for example, about services you previously used, or updates about fundraising appeals and/or volunteering opportunities via our newsletter).

Where we do this via email, SMS or telephone, we will not do so without your prior consent (unless allowed to do so via applicable law).

Where you have provided us with your consent previously but do not wish to be contacted by us about our projects and/or services in the future, please let us know by email at [email protected]. You can opt out of
receiving emails from the IRC at any time by clicking the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our emails.

7. Donations

When you use our secure online donation function you will be directed to a specialist payment services provider who will receive your financial information to process the transaction. We will provide your personal information to the payment services provider only to the extent necessary for the purpose of processing your donation.

8. Children's personal information

When we process children’s personal information, where required we will not do so without their consent or, where required, the consent of a parent/ guardian. We will always have in place appropriate safeguards to ensure that children’s personal information is handled with due care.
 

9. How long do we keep your personal information?

In general, unless still required in connection with the purpose(s) for which it was collected and/or processed, we remove your personal information from our records six years after the date it was collected. However, if before that date (i) your personal information is no longer required in connection with such purpose(s), (ii) we are no longer lawfully entitled to process it or (iii) you validly exercise your right of erasure (please see Section 13 below), we will remove it from our records at the relevant time.

If you request to receive no further contact from us, we will keep some basic information about you on our suppression list in order to comply with your request and avoid sending you unwanted materials in the future.

10. Will we share your personal information?

We do not sell or rent your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes. However, in general we may disclose your personal information to selected third parties in order to achieve the purposes set out in this Notice:

  1. International Rescue Committee USA and other IRC affiliates;
  2. healthcare professionals and organisations involved in the provision of care, facilities and/ or supplies;
  3. suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them, for example IT service providers such as website hosts or cloud storage providers;
  4. parties administering our benefit payments, reward programmes and pension contributions;
  5. insurers;
  6. financial companies such as Paypal and WorldPay that collect or process donations on our behalf;
  7. professional service providers such as accountants and lawyers;
  8. parties assisting us with research to monitor the impact/ effectiveness of our services;
  9. external fundraising entities/ platforms;
  10. news media outlets;
  11. social media platforms (certain online identifiers, such as IP address, only);
  12. regulatory authorities, such as tax authorities;
  13. advertisers and advertising networks (certain online identifiers, such as IP address, only); and/or
  14. analytics and search engine providers (certain online identifiers, such as IP address, only).

In particular, we reserve the right to disclose your personal information to third parties:

11. Security/ storage of and access to your personal information

IRC is committed to keeping your personal information safe and secure and we have appropriate and proportionate security policies and organisational and technical measures in place to help protect your information.

Your personal information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff, volunteers and contractors, and stored on secure servers with features enacted to prevent unauthorised access.
 

12. International Data Transfers

Given that we are part of an international organisation and because we use agencies and/ or suppliers to process personal information on our behalf, it is possible that personal information we collect from you will be transferred to and stored in a location outside the UK and European Economic Area (“EEA”), for example the United States

Please note that some countries outside of the UK and EEA have a lower standard of protection for personal information, including lower security requirements and fewer rights for individuals. Where your personal information is transferred, stored and/or otherwise processed outside the UK and EEA in a country that does not offer an equivalent standard of protection to the UK and EEA, we will take all reasonable steps necessary to ensure that the recipient implements appropriate safeguards (such as by entering into standard contractual clauses) designed to protect your personal information and to ensure that your personal information is treated securely and in accordance with this Notice. If you have any questions about the transfer of your personal information, please contact us using the details below.

Unfortunately, no transmission of your personal information over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure – however, once we have received your personal information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try and prevent unauthorised access.

13. Exercising your Rights

Where we rely on your consent to use your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This includes the right to ask us to stop using your personal information for marketing or fundraising purposes or to unsubscribe from our email list at any time. You also have the following rights:

We may ask you for additional information to confirm your identity and for security purposes, before disclosing personal information requested to you. Please note that some of these rights only apply in limited circumstances. For more information, we suggest that you contact us using the details below.

You are further entitled to make a complaint about us or the way we have processed your personal information to the data protection supervisory authority in your home country. In the UK, the data protection authority is the Information Commissioner’s Office – www.ico.org.uk. For further information on how to exercise this right, please contact us using the details below.

14. Changes to this Notice

We may update this Notice from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes by contacting you directly where reasonably possible for us to do so and by placing an update notice on our website. This Notice was last updated on 08 December 2022.

15. Links and third parties

We link our website directly to other sites. This Notice does not cover external websites and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any external websites you visit via links on our website.

16. How to contact us

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about this Notice or about the way in which IRC processes your personal information by contacting us at the following channels: