Privacy policy | Compassion

Compassion respects your privacy and holds the personal information you have entrusted to us securely in accordance with the EU Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

How do we collect personal information from you?

You share personal information with us when you:

Make the decision to sponsor a child
Make a donation
Visit our website
Sign up to become a volunteer
Contact us with an enquiry
Complete a survey
Are a church leader and/or have a key role in a church working in partnership with Compassion
Act as a Compassion Ambassador
Apply for a job at Compassion

We collect personal information from you from other sources when you:

What personal information do we collect?

Personal identifiers such as your name and date of birth
Contact details including postal address, post code, email and telephone number
Financial information such as your bank details
Letters you write to your sponsored child
Records of your contact with us

Sensitive personal data

The Data Protection Regulation recognizes some information as ‘sensitive personal data’. This includes, but is not limited to, information which reveals your religious beliefs or health issues.

Compassion has a Christian foundation. Where necessary and consented to, we may collect details about your church affiliation.

Additionally, we collect details about any health concerns or disability to make the necessary arrangements for travel overseas or where you have disclosed this so we can meet any additional customer service requirements.

Compassion will always treat any sensitive personal data we process with great care and process the information in accordance with the Data Protection Regulation.

Why do we collect your personal information?

For the administration of the child sponsorship programme. The benefits of becoming a sponsor include: sending you information about your sponsored child; their registered project; other relevant life events; child letters; responding to your queries and acknowledging the gifts you give. The sponsorship experience also includes receiving notifications about your sponsored child’s birthday so that you can send a birthday card and/or gift for your child. We also issue a reminder to send a Christmas card and a contribution to the Christmas Fund. There are instances where a sponsored child departs the program for a number of reasons. We will promptly notify you and ask that you consider sponsoring another child who we will link you with.
To process the monthly sponsorship payment and any other donations.
To verify that you are over 18 and if not, obtain permission from your parent/guardian to process your information or accept any regular donations.
To provide the opportunity to write and receive letters you’re your sponsored child electronically.
To inform you about your ministry. Please see the Information section below.
To enable us to contact you concerning our non-sponsorship activities. Please see more details in the Fundraising section below.
To manage and coordinate our volunteers.
For compliance with employment law and other statutory requirements.
When you visit our website, we may gather information about which pages you visit to help us improve and provide you with the best service.

The legal basis for processing your personal information

Compassion will rely on the following legal bases to process your personal information:

Legitimate Interest - We will process your information for a purpose you would reasonably expect. We will have pre-determined that it is necessary to process your information for this purpose and balanced this with your rights and interests. For example, when you become a sponsor, we use your name and contact details to administrate the sponsorship experience.
Consent - We give you the choice and control over our processing activities where relevant. For example, we ask for your permission to send you marketing information by email or text.
Contract - If you have a contract with Compassion, for example as an employee or you haven’t got a contract but need to provide your information as a first step (e.g. apply for a job with us) we rely on the legal basis that the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract.
Legal Obligation - In some cases, we are required to process your personal information where there is a legal requirement.

Information

We want to share with you news about how your support is changing the lives of children, families and communities in the name of Jesus. This includes sending you information about our work, news, appeals, campaigns, events, information on volunteering and prayer requests. We might send these different information types via postal mail, email or text messages, or by phone.

Fundraising

Compassion contributes to vital interventions beyond the needs addressed through child sponsorship. This includes the survival of vulnerable pregnant mothers and their infants, providing safe water and sanitation facilities, malaria nets, life-saving surgery, helping families to secure a more stable income, vocational skills training, HIV and AIDS education, testing and prevention and child protection.

Fundraising is essential for Compassion to make a lasting difference in the lives of children in need. We might contact you to offer you to contribute to any of Compassion’s efforts in addition to your individual sponsorship.

Sponsorship rate

At Compassion, we want to ensure that we are good stewards of the resources God has given us. To help us meet the rising costs of the program, Compassion may change the child sponsorship rate. We will notify you of any changes to the sponsorship rate before processing.

With whom do we share your personal information?

Compassion is a part of Compassion International which works in 25 developing countries outside the European Union. We will only share personal information which is either consented to, necessary to fulfil the sponsorship experience or to coordinate visits to our overseas child development programs. Compassion International is committed to ensuring that its overseas national offices have adequate levels of data protection safeguards when processing your personal information.

We share your personal information with our partner Compassion Nordic offices, as we have joint administration services, such as accounting and sponsor/donor services.

We may also share your personal information with trusted third parties where it is necessary to provide products you have requested from us (such as child letters) or where they are contracted to develop or maintain our systems.

We monitor information security compliance so your personal information is processed on our instructions and in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws.

How long do we keep your data?

Compassion will only keep your personal information for as long as it is required and in accordance with statutory requirements. We will not keep your data:

If you have been inactive as a sponsor or a donor for more than 3 years.
If you request not to hear from us anymore.

Your information rights and choices

The Data Protection Regulation gives you the right:

To request in writing and securely obtain copies of the personal information Compassion holds about you.
To correct or update your personal information processed by Compassion.
To request Compassion to stop using your personal information for marketing purposes or for any other purpose where there is no legal requirement for continued processing.

Compassion respects your choice regarding information about fundraising. You can revoke your consent at any time by:

Calling us at +46 8-236200
Email us at info@compassion.se
Clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link included in each email communication we send.

Changes to this privacy notice

Compassion will review this privacy notice regularly. The terms of the notice may be updated at any time, for example in the event of changes in law and how we operate. Please do check our website from time to time. If there are any significant changes in the way we process your personal information, we will provide a notice on our website or send a notification.

This notice was last updated in May 2018.

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