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Privacy and cookies

At Farm Africa we are committed to protecting your privacy online. This statement explains how we will treat your personal data, which is that information that can identify you.

By signing up to our events or newsletters, or by supporting us as a donor, you accept this privacy policy and authorise Farm Africa to collect, store and process your information in the ways explained here: 

Who we are

We are an international organisation working to build a prosperous rural Africa.  We help farmers to increase their harvests, build their incomes and sustain natural resources.

Farm Africa Limited is registered in England and Wales as a charity no. 326901 and a company limited by guarantee no. 01926828. Its registered office is 3 - 5 Bleeding Heart Yard, Off Greville Street, London, EC1N 8SJ, United Kingdom. Farm Africa operates across the eastern African countries and has offices in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

The General Data Protection Regulation 2018 governs Farm Africa's processing of personal data. We are registered as data controllers with the Information Commissioner for the United Kingdom. This policy applies to all the pages hosted on this website.

If you have any questions about this policy, please contact us:

By post:

Farm Africa

3 - 5 Bleeding Heart Yard

Off Greville Street

London

EC1N 8SJ

By phone:

+44 (0) 20 7430 0440

+44 (0) 20 7430 0460

 By email:

info@farmafrica.org

How we collect information

When you contact us to request information about our work or activities, register as a supporter or fundraiser, send or receive information, buy an e-card from our shop, or make a donation to us (either directly or through third parties like JustGiving, Virgin Money Giving and payroll giving services) we are collecting the information you send us. This information can be collected through various channels (email, website, telephone or post).

What information we collect and why

We collect the following information:

Personal information

Personal information is anything that enables us to identify you as an individual. When you supply personal information to us, we are legally obliged by the General Data Protection Regulation 2018 to ensure that the information you have provided is only used for the purpose for which it was intended, and to ensure that the data is kept securely. Personal information may include:

  • name
  • email address
  • postal address
  • home telephone number
  • mobile telephone number
  • your date of birth

Financial information

We collect financial information when you make a donation, sign up for an event, or buy e-cards on our website. We use secure UK credit card payment and electronic commerce systems to ensure the safety of online transactions. Financial information may include:

  • bank account or payment card details
  • your tax payer status (so that we can claim Gift Aid on your donation)

 We collect this information for the following purposes:

  • to keep in touch with you about our work and how you can support Farm Africa
  • to process your donations or other transactions
  • to claim Gift Aid on your donations
  • to maintain a secure relational database that acts as the central record of personal data for volunteers and supporters
  • to keep a record of your relationship with Farm Africa
  • to inform you of any administrative matters regarding your transaction or an event you are participating in or volunteering at
  • for recruitment and volunteering purposes

Lawful basis for processing your information

We will only collect and use your personal information when there is a lawful basis to do so. In some cases, we will only use your personal information where we have your consent or when we need to share essential information with you (for example, because you have signed up for an event).

However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your personal information and one of those is called 'legitimate interests'. This means there is a legitimate interest for Farm Africa to process your information to help us achieve our vision of a prosperous rural Africa. Your rights and interests will always be considered our priority when processing information on this basis.

An example of where we have a legitimate interest to process your personal information is when we contact you about our work and fundraising activities via post, if you have previously provided us with your postal address.

How we keep your information secure

The information you submit via our website is kept secure in our hosting servers, which are located in safe data centres in the UK. We use dedicated servers, controlled directly by our website provider. The server backups we use are stored on the Amazon cloud in the EU. Our development servers and any local backups are stored in the offices of our website provider in Norwich, UK.

We use secure protocol https:// to ensure financial and personal information are as secure as possible when using every website browser.

We make every effort to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. In addition, we always use a secure connection when collecting personal financial information from you. However, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100 percent secure.

Your personal data is stored internally on secure platforms so we can record our relationship with you and provide the best supporter experience. Our relational database uses advanced system level security settings which ensures the security, consistency and confidentiality of the personal data we hold about you.

Sharing your information

We will use your personal information internally in order to support you. We will never sell or share your personal information for marketing purposes with other organisations. We may however share your personal information with trusted third parties to process it on our behalf. These third parties are bound by data protection laws to keep your data safe and secure.

If you are taking part in an event in one of the counties we operate in, your personal information may be passed to the local office for emergency contact purposes. When this happens, we ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your data and keep it secure. If we cannot guarantee that appropriate safeguards exist we will ask for your explicit consent and inform you of any risks before we transfer your personal data.

We may also need to disclose your information if required to do so by law.

How long we keep your information for

We won’t retain your personal data for longer than necessary in relation to the purposes for which it was originally collected, or for which it was further processed. For instance, we are required by law to store all records of Gift Aid transactions for at least 6 years.

Marketing

We will only contact you about our work and fundraising activities by email, phone or SMS if you have given us consent to do so. 

However, if you have given us your postal address, we may also contact you about our work and fundraising activities by mail unless you would prefer not to hear from us in that way.

You have the right to withdraw consent or change your preferences at any time by calling our Supporter Services team on 020 7430 0440, emailing info@farmafrica.org or writing to us at Farm Africa, 3 - 5 Bleeding Heart Yard, Off Greville Street, London, EC1N 8SJ.

Your rights

You have a number of rights regarding the personal information we hold about you (explained in more detail below).  If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us:

Farm Africa

3 - 5 Bleeding Heart Yard

Off Greville Street

London

EC1N 8SJ

Tel: +44 20 7430 0440 or email us at info@farmafrica.org

  •  Right to be informed

You have the right to be told how your personal information will be used. This privacy policy is intended to be a transparent description of how your data may be used.

  • Right of access

You have the right to obtain confirmation from us that we are processing your personal data and a copy of the personal data we hold about you. You can make this request free of charge, verbally or in writing.

  • Right to object

You have the right to object to the processing of personal data in certain circumstances.  For instance, you have the absolute right to object to the processing of your data for direct marketing purposes and a right to object where we are relying on legitimate interest.

  • Right to rectification

You have the right to have inaccurate personal data we hold about you rectified or completed if it is incomplete.

  • Right to erasure

You have the right to have the personal data we hold erased if it is no longer necessary for the purpose we originally collected or processed it for, you withdraw consent or where there is no lawful basis for us to keep it.

  • Right to data portability

You have the right to receive a copy of the personal data you have provided in a structured and commonly used format to manage and reuse for your own purpose or to have this data transmitted to a third party where technically feasible.

  • Right to restrict processing

You have the right to restrict the processing of your personal data where you have contested its accuracy or have requested it to be erased.

  • Rights related to automated decision making including profiling

Individuals have the right not to be subject to a decision when it is based on automated processing with no human intervention which produces a legal effect or similar significant impact.

We do not currently carry out any automated decision making.

Please be aware that some of the above rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to grant every request. You can visit the Information Commissioner’s Office for further information about this regulation at ico.org.uk

Cookies

Like most websites, we use cookies to help us provide you with the best experience when you visit our site, for example:

  • To monitor our site is used so we can improve any problem areas
  • To allow you to donate and/or buy e-cards
  • To make sure that any investments in online advertising are as cost-effective as possible

What are cookies?

Cookies are pieces of information which may be sent to your computer by Farm Africa when you access certain areas of our website. These may be stored on your computer's hard drive to allow us to recognise you as a user when you next visit. They are not software – they can’t be programmed or carry computer viruses.

Can cookies be managed?

Yes, all browsers allow you to control which cookies you accept and which you delete. You will usually find these settings under the ‘Preferences’ or ‘Tools’ menu of your browser. Keep in mind that disabling cookies may stop you from fully using all our website services. For more information about cookies, please see www.allaboutcookies.org.

 How do we use cookies?

We use cookies on these areas of our website:

  • Cookie acceptance

When you visit this site for the first time a message about cookies appears at the bottom of the screen, if you select ‘continue’ an acceptance cookie will be stored on your machine, otherwise the message will always appear. Once the cookie is set the message will disappear.

  • When you make a donation

We use cookies to track how donors come to our site. For example, we use approach codes in our internet addresses (URLs) to show us whether a donation came from:

  • a corporate partner
  • a particular online marketing campaign
  • a link shared on Twitter

If you click a link we’re tracking, a session cookie will be dropped on your machine. This lets us know whether you make a donation within 24 hours.

  • Your credit/debit card information

If you use your credit or debit card to donate to us, your payment is processed by either our secure third party payment provider, RSM 2000 or our secure Barclaycard platform. This is done in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Security Standard (PDF). View RSM 2000’s privacy policy to find out more about how they deal with privacy. View Barclaycard’s privacy policy here.

  • Farm Africa e-cards

If you donate to us through Farm Africa e-cards, we’ll use cookies to remember what you’ve selected until you check out. We also use cookies to remember the information you type into our forms, until you finish and submit the form.

What cookies do we use?

  • Google Analytics cookies: we use Google Analytics to collect information about how visitors use our site, to help us improve the site. These cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited on our site. Find out how to reject or delete Google Analytics cookies
  • MailChimp cookies: we use MailChimp as our email marketing platform. MailChimp uses cookies to measure the success of the emails we send, so we know what subject lines and stories people liked the most. Although we receive this information with a person's individual email address, we don’t share this information. Find out more about MailChimp’s cookies’ policy
  • Facebook advertising: these cookies help us to serve adverts on Facebook based on past visits to our website, using non-personally identifiable information. Find out more about Facebook cookie policy and Facebook data policy
  • YouTube cookies: to showcase our work, we sometimes embed video content from YouTube. When you visit a page with an embedded video, you may be presented with cookies from YouTube. Farm Africa does not control the dissemination of these cookies. You should check the YouTube website for more information about these.
  • Add This’ buttons: on some pages, you can use ‘share’ buttons to easily share articles about Farm Africa’s work with your friends through a number of social networks. These sites may set a cookie when you are also logged in to their service. Farm Africa does not control the dissemination of these cookies and you should check the relevant third party website for more information about these. The Add This ‘share’ button uses the following cookies. To prevent advertising cookies being placed on your computer, Add This can place an opt-out cookie on your computer.
  • Hotjar: we use heat mapping functionality in order to understand our visitors’ behaviour on the website and to be able to offer a good online experience. Hotjar does not track or record visitors which have cookies disabled. To learn more about Hotjar’s privacy policy: https://www.hotjar.com/privacy

 If you have any further questions about cookies, please contact us.

How to make a complaint

If you have any specific questions about how we process your data which are not answered here or you would like to make a complaint about how we have managed your data then please contact us:

By post:

Farm Africa

3 - 5 Bleeding Heart Yard

Off Greville Street

London

EC1N 8SJ

 By phone:

+44 (0) 20 7430 0440

+44 (0) 20 7430 0460

 By email:

info@farmafrica.org

We operate in accordance with all relevant UK data protection laws. If you would like to find out more about these laws and how you could be affected beyond what is mentioned in this privacy policy, please visit the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Changes to our privacy policy

We may change this privacy policy periodically so please check back when you can.  We will notify you of any significant changes.

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