We collect personal information about supporters, volunteers, employees, contractors, visitors to our field programs and others. We collect this information when it is necessary for our business purposes.

Most often, we collect personal information about our supporters. Typically, we would ask for your: name, address, telephone number(s), email address(es), payment card information and date of birth.
 
On occasion, we might also collect images of you or stories about you, for example, if you have visited your sponsored child or attended one of our events.

We collect most personal information directly from you, for example:

• in forms or coupons filled out either online or in hard copy
• face to face
• via email
• via online surveys
• via social media messages or conversations
• during telephone conversations
• in voice or image recordings

Examples of when we might collect your personal information from others are:

• from parents/guardians/carers of children (or those who lack mental capacity)
• when we purchase marketing lists  

Where we collect your personal information from someone else, we will take reasonable steps to let you know how we obtained this information.
 
Sometimes we will ask you for more detailed or sensitive information, which will only be collected with your consent, for example:

• when you apply for a criminal record check to enable you to visit your sponsored child
• about your associations with churches or your political and philosophical beliefs and values

If you choose not to provide us with certain personal information, we may not be able to meet your expectations. For example, we can’t issue a tax receipt or send you information about your sponsored child if we don’t have your name and address.

We will only collect and store your payment card information in compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

We might use your information for the following purposes:

• for the immediate reason for which you have given it: for example, to enable us to process your request (eg. gift, payment, registration, subscription, change of details) including issuing you with a receipt
• to maintain contact with you about our work: report back to you about our work in the field, encourage you to learn about and act on poverty and justice issues, or let you know about other opportunities to give financially or what our partner organisations are doing (unless you have specifically asked us not to)
• any other purpose related to our work

Where we tell you about opportunities with partner organisations, we do not disclose your personal information to them. If you respond to that organisation directly and give them your details, they may contact you.

You can elect not to receive further information from us by contacting us. Please allow 28 days for your request to be processed.

If we have contacted you by email or text message, you can use the unsubscribe function in that email or text message to notify us that you do not want to receive further information in that way.

If we use personal information in ways other than as stated in this policy, we will ensure we comply with the requirements of Privacy law.

We don’t disclose your personal information to other organisations except for our core business purposes; importantly, we don’t rent, sell or exchange our supporter information.

You can expect that information about you might be given to:

• (if you are a child sponsor) the World Vision office in the country where your sponsored child lives, so that your sponsored child can respond to any correspondence you may send
• providers of services to us, for example: banking, payment card data processing, mail delivery and sorting (including electronic), telecommunications, information technology, information storage, market analysis or research, website usage analysis, legal, audit or accounting  

We take reasonable steps to make sure that our agreements with service providers include appropriate privacy and confidentiality obligations.
 
Occasionally we may use overseas facilities or contractors to process or back-up information or to provide other services. As a result, we may transfer your personal information to our overseas facilities or contractors for these purposes. However, any transfer of information does not change our commitment to safeguard your privacy.

We can sometimes be legally required to disclose your information, for example, to government departments where you request a criminal record check to enable you to visit your sponsored child.
We sometimes share non-personal, de-identified and aggregated information, for example, with research organisations such as universities.

As a child-focused organisation, we are committed to the wellbeing of all children and young people.  Determining the decision-making capabilities of a young person can be complex. Where practicable, we will take reasonable steps to confirm consent with a parent or guardian in relation to personal information about someone who is under 18.

For further information about how we aim to protect children, please see our Child Protection Standards.

In line with our commitment to value people and our obligations under the ACFID Code of Conduct, we expect you to help us by treating information about people in our field programs in accordance with our values and the ACFID Code of Conduct requirement to “act in ways that respect the dignity, uniqueness and intrinsic worth of every person”.
 
An important example of this is our commitment to honour the consent given by parents or community leaders for use of child and community images from our programs in the field. Sometimes this consent is quite limited, for example, to display such images on our website only.
 
Please refer to our Website Rules for guidance on how you can use images from our website and our Child Protection Standards for further guidance on use of child images.

We will take all reasonable steps to keep information we hold about you secure (whether electronic or in hard copy) and to keep this information accurate and up to date. This includes complying with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which covers security of payment card information.  Our employees and service providers are also required to keep personal and payment card information confidential and secure.

It is our policy to:

• permanently de-identify personal information where reasonable and possible
• destroy personal information once there is no longer a legal or business need for us to retain it.

You can access your information by asking us. Occasionally we may need to say no, for example, where granting you access would infringe someone else’s privacy.

When you request access, we will ask you to provide some form of identification (such as a driver's licence or passport) so we can make sure that you are the person to whom the information relates. In some cases we may also ask you to pay a reasonable fee to cover the cost of access.

If at any time you want to know what personal information we hold about you, please contact us, addressing your request to the Privacy Officer.

If you believe that information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date, or if you have concerns about how we are handling your personal information, please contact us and we will try to resolve those concerns.
 
If you wish to have your personal information deleted, please contact us and we will take reasonable steps to delete it unless we need to keep it for legal, auditing or internal risk management reasons).

If we become aware of any ongoing concerns or problems concerning our privacy practices, we will take these issues seriously and work to address these concerns. If you have any further queries relating to our privacy policy, or you have a problem or complaint, please contact us, addressing your question or concern to the Privacy Officer.

We may make changes to this policy from time to time without notice. Any changes will be reflected on this page.

This policy was last updated in August 2011.