Home > Privacy Notice – Communications and Fundraising

Version: EP-FULL-2

Published: 17 January 2023

Introduction

Since our first arrival in Britain in 1221, down through centuries of royal favour, dissolution and exile, to new mission in modern times, the Dominican Friars as a mendicant order have always relied upon friends and benefactors for the support of the brethren and the advancement of our apostolates.

The friars’ relationships with benefactors, friends and supporters are always founded upon respect and trust. With regard to your personal data, we are committed to maintaining your confidence and trust and to ensuring your privacy is respected. Our principles are simple – we will be transparent about what data we are collecting about you, where that data comes from, how we use the information we hold about you, and the choices you can make.

The overarching purpose of collecting and processing your data is to provide you with the best possible experience of being a benefactor, friend or supporter of the friars and their various apostolates, or indeed of being a beneficiary of them. We use your personal data to communicate with you in the ways you want us to, about the things that matter to you, and so that if we communicate with you about fundraising that we do so in an appropriate way.

If at any point you have questions about our privacy notice, or how we are using your data, please get in touch with us using the contact details below:

Development Office, Blackfriars, St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LY
development@english.op.org

The English Province of the Order of Preachers is a charity registered in England and Wales no. 231192 and in Scotland SC039062.

1. About this privacy notice

The purpose of this privacy notice is to explain how The English Province of the Order of Preachers (“we”, “our”, “us”; also referred to as “the Dominican Friars”, “the Province”) hold and use personal data about our contacts (“you”), and how we use it for managing communications and events, for maintaining donor and supporter relations, and for fundraising purposes.

 The English Province of the Order of Preachers’s privacy notices relating to other activities and relationships can be found here: [PENDING]

Please be aware that those of our activities which take place under the aegis of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, a Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford, are covered by separate privacy notices which you can view here: https://www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk/policies/data-protection-and-privacy/

Personal data for our supporters and other contacts are centrally held in a single secure database, so any interactions you have with the various parts of our charity will be held on a single contact record.

2. What we do

The English Province of the Order of Preachers’s Development Office exists to assist the Dominican Friars in serving the needs of our beneficiaries, in maintaining long-lasting relationships with our friends and supporters, and in fundraising to support our mission.

  • We manage practical communications matters such mailing lists, email news, websites, newsletters, fundraising literature, annual reports, and magazines.
  • We ensure that our different circles of contacts are kept up to date with relevant news, event notices, fundraising announcements and progress updates, in accordance with their preferences.
  • We assist in the organisation of certain events, including public talks and conferences, alumni reunions, benefactor events, large celebratory gatherings.
  • We provide strategic guidance on planning for the future development of the Province and its constituent entities and apostolates, and on fundraising and communications strategies to achieve this.
  • We fundraise to ensure that, thanks to the generosity of our donors, The English Province of the Order of Preachers can continue to serve its many beneficiaries and advance its mission.

3. Information we collect

We collect information from you in three ways: directly from you during your ongoing relationship with us; from publicly available sources; and/or from third parties providing us with services or acting on our behalf.

The amount of data we collect and hold depends on the frequency and nature of your interactions and engagement with us. Information may be gathered across the lifetime of our relationship with you and from many different forms of interaction.

We may hold and process the following types of personal data about you:

Biographical information, which may include:

  • name, titles, contact details, date of birth, gender, marital status, spouse, partner and family details
  • for current or past Oxford University students (mostly this applies to Blackfriars alumni, but also in some cases to alumni of other colleges where you also have a relationship with the Dominican Friars):
    • student ID, programme of study, department, college, matriculation or start date, graduation date, degree conferred
    • awards received whilst studying at Oxford (prizes, scholarships, accolades, bursaries); other education history and professional qualifications
    • involvement in sports teams, clubs and societies whilst at Oxford and subsequently
  • employment details (incl. career level), career history, professional activities
  • interests, activities and accolades, incl. honours, life achievements
  • profile pictures which come from publicly accessible sources (where copyright allows)
  • links to your public social media presence e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook, website or blog (i.e. information that you have chosen to put into the public domain: we don’t access private pages).

Details of our ongoing relationship and your engagement with us, which may include:

  • your connections with the constituent (or former) priories/houses of the Province; or with certain other current or previous apostolates undertaken by us (including but not limited to Blackfriars Hall or the Dominican Studium at Blackfriars, the Aquinas Institute or Las Casas Institute, the Torch online homily service, the Rosary Shrine (St Dominic’s, London)).
  • records of your personal interactions with us (e.g. correspondence, notes of meetings or conversations)
  • your communication preferences; mailing lists you have signed up to; records of communications you have received from us, incl. copies of letters, emails or appeal literature sent, and of fundraising activities in which you have been included
  • data obtained through cookies and similar technologies such as pixels, tags, web beacons, and other identifiers. These help us understand how you interact with our email communications, websites, and other online platforms. You will find a link to the relevant cookie policy on each of our websites. Information gathered may include your IP address, estimated geolocation, email opens and links clicked on, responses in the form of donations or event bookings.
  • your attendance (and that of your guests) at certain events organised by us
  • your connections to other individuals or organisations in our database
  • a record of offers of voluntary support you have made, e.g. offers of expertise, advice, professional services, fundraising assistance
  • a record of volunteer work you have undertaken

Information about your giving, which may include:

  • current and past donations and pledges, regular-giving commitments (standing orders, recurring card payments), documentation relating to these gifts, and records of the projects you have supported
  • if you have given it, an indication of your intention to leave a legacy, including copies of Wills or sections of Wills
  • any requests you have made for anonymity in relation to your giving
  • thank-you letters, donor reports provided relating to gifts you have made, correspondence and notes of meetings
  • plans for activities and future interactions
  • records of membership of any societies or groups related to your giving
  • your relationship to friends and patrons groups associated with the constituent priories of the Province, or with Blackfriars Hall and the Studium.
  • your relationship to relevant trusts, foundations and corporations, e.g. membership on board of trustees
  • ‘soft credits’: a record of amounts given by other individuals or organisations with which you are closely connected, e.g. a spouse, a family trust, a major donor whose gift you influenced or solicited.

Information relating to your willingness or financial capacity to support our charitable objectives, which may include:

  • Our understanding of your likely philanthropic interests, and a note of particular projects we think may be of interest to you. This understanding may be provided by you or from information in the public domain
  • Information about your giving to other organisations, and other support that you provide (e.g. volunteering roles, trusteeships), where this information is given to us by you or publicly reported, and where it helps us to understand your interests and capacity to provide support
  • Other information which may give an indication of the scale of any potential philanthropic gift you may be able to give, such as information about earnings and assets, including property, or publicly reported estimates of wealth
  • A rating of your affinity to us, based on an assessment by our staff of your interactions with us and your giving history
  • Any estimate we may make regarding the potential scale of your support on the basis of the above information and your previous giving
  • Personal recommendations, where made by other supporters, that you may be willing and able to provide support

Special categories of personal data, which may include:

  • Health information, including any medical conditions – we may use health information provided by you so we can make reasonable adjustments to improve the service we offer you (e.g. seating or access at an event, dietary requirements, provision of disabled parking, or allocation of accommodation).
  • Race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, political opinions – we do not seek to obtain these special categories of personal data. However, they may sometimes be inferred from other data we hold, for example, your personal titles, relationships, society memberships, job titles, donations to specific causes or interests, or indeed your membership of our mailing lists or connection to one of our priories/houses.

Criminal convictions, offences and allegations of criminal activity, which may include:

  • Publicly available information concerning criminal convictions and offences or allegations of criminal activity, including money laundering or bribery offences, to carry out due diligence on donors or prospective donors in line with our guidelines on the acceptance of gifts.

Please note that any information relating to your pastoral relationship with friars is not accessible by our Development Office. For privacy and safeguarding reasons, we avoid holding information relating to minors.

4. How we use your data

Your personal data are used by us for the following purposes in support of serving the needs of our beneficiaries, in maintaining relationships with our friends and supporters, and in fundraising to support our mission:

For serving our beneficiaries and maintaining relationships

  • To manage our ongoing relationship with you and to provide a record of your interactions and contributions to the life of the Province
  • To offer, publicise and manage events for your benefit and relating to your interests
  • To ensure you are aware of the wider programmes of events, meetings, talks, religious services, pilgrimages, retreats, conferences and seminars taking place across the Province which we believe may be relevant to you and that you may have an interest in attending
  • To keep you up to date with news relating to areas in which you have shown an interest, e.g. by making a donation, joining a particular mailing list, or attending an event
  • To monitor your interactions with our emails so we can understand your engagement with our messages;
  • To monitor anonymously and in aggregate users’ interactions with our websites and emails, so that we can provide the best content and user experience
  • To identify and profile potential volunteers, advisors, and event attendees
  • To accept and process commercial revenue, e.g. for merchandise or event tickets
  • To undertake surveys and market research
  • To create classifications and groupings (through manual or automated analyses) in order to best direct engagement activities
  • To analyse the success of our engagement activities, collect feedback, and manage complaints

For all fundraising and donor stewardship

  • To help ensure that our fundraising efforts are conducted as efficiently as possible, given our limited staff resources, and that our approaches to potential donors are respectful, professional, and made, as far as possible, based on evidence and an understanding of what may interest you
  • To ask you for your support for our fundraising programmes, always mindful of fundraising best practice
  • To accept and process philanthropic revenue
  • To provide acknowledgement, recognition and stewardship of your gift
  • To inform you of the impact of your gift
  • To create classifications and groupings (through manual or automated analyses) in order to best direct fundraising activities
  • To support peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns
  • To inform fundraising, marketing and donor stewardship strategies

For fundraising for major gifts

  • In addition to analysing data shared with us, we may use publicly available information and recommendations from staff and supporters to identify individuals who we believe may have the interest and financial capacity to make a major gift.
  • Where we have reason to think a potential donor may possess an interest and financial capacity to donate, we may research and collate additional information from sources in the public domain, typically concerning a potential donor’s interests in so far as they may coincide with our work, their philanthropic activity, financial capacity and networks in order to substantiate this. We may undertake this research ourselves or use the services of a third-party partner. This new information may be added to the record of a donor or potential donor.
  • Third-party research as described in the previous paragraph will only be undertaken for persons with whom we have an existing relationship and who have been provided with either our full privacy notice or a short version of this with a link to the full version. Research on individuals with whom we have no previous relationship (and for whom we will therefore have no contact details) will be restricted to in-house research using public-domain sources (especially internet searches); at such time as we begin to engage personally with such individuals, and once they have provided us with contact details (email or postal address), then we will provide them with either a full privacy notice or a short version with a link to the full version.
  • Information may be collated into a briefing or profile in order to assist the planning of an approach to a potential donor to discuss that individual’s interest in our work and in supporting it.
  • We may also carry out due diligence on potential donors using publicly available information in order to comply with our policy on the acceptance of gifts, and to fulfil our legal responsibilities.

For operational reporting, management reporting, and governance

  • We may use your personal data for the purposes of operational reporting, to produce management information, and for other relevant purposes relating to the governance of the Province or its constituent entities. We will use only the data required and, unless necessary, we will use anonymised or pseudonymised data.

In our external communications

  • With your permission, we may publish your name in an online directory, in donor listings, as part of a guest list, or we may work with you to create press releases or case studies to be included in our publications or on our websites.

If you do not wish your data to be used in any of the ways listed above, or have any questions, please contact us using the details here:

Development Office, Blackfriars, St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LY
development@english.op.org

5. When and how we share your data

We may, from time to time, need to share your personal data with partner organisations such as the international Order of Preachers, the collegiate University of Oxford (in relation to Blackfriars Hall, Oxford), or the Pontifical University of St Thomas (in relation to the Studium at Blackfriars, Oxford); or with third parties working on our behalf. We will only do this in appropriate circumstances, by secure means, and with the relevant data sharing agreements in place. We do not, and will not, sell your data.

Third parties will only process your personal data on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat your data confidentially and to keep it secure. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes nor to keep your data after the processing is complete. All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies.

Whenever your information is shared, we will always seek to share the minimum amount of information necessary to fulfil the purpose, this includes the use of anonymised or pseudonymised data where that is sufficient.

Your data may be shared in the following ways:

With organisations or individuals affiliated to The English Province of the Order of Preachers

We benefit from a network of organisations and individuals who work closely with or volunteer their support to The English Province of the Order of Preachers. We may share relevant data with them, in appropriate circumstances, in a strictly limited way and by secure means, and with the relevant data sharing agreements in place. These may include:

  • Volunteers offering their expertise by serving on boards or otherwise advising on or assisting with development matters

With third-party organisations engaged by The English Province of the Order of Preachers to provide services:

These include but are not limited to:

  • mailing houses, printers, event organisers or venues
  • organisations providing tools such as relationship- or event-management systems; databases and reporting/analysis tools; alumni networking or crowdfunding platforms; email or survey tools; payment services (e.g. direct debit, online donation processing)
  • organisations assisting with activities such as market research, marketing and communications, organisational effectiveness, strategy and planning, auditing, business intelligence and analysis, customer experience

With partner organisations that may accept gifts in support of The English Province of the Order of Preachers

The following organisations may enable tax-efficient giving to The English Province of the Order of Preachers from outside of the UK. Data may be shared by us with these organisations where it relates specifically to donations you have made, or have pledged to donate via these organisations.

  • Other Provinces of the Order of Preachers
  • The International Dominican Foundation

Within the collegiate University of Oxford, or with the University’s partner organisations that accept gifts in support of the collegiate University

This relates only to alumni, donors or supporters of Blackfriars Hall or the collegiate University of Oxford. Please refer to the privacy notice of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford: https://www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk/privacy/

6. How we protect your data

The English Province of the Order of Preachers takes precautions to safeguard your personal information against loss, theft and misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure and destruction through the use of appropriate administrative, physical and technical security measures.

Database: We store data in an industry-leading database with very strong security measures to prevent unauthorised access.

Credit or Debit Card Payments: Online donations are processed via our third-party payment service providers and your credit or debit card information is not collected or stored by us.

Transfers of your data outside of the United Kingdom – although most of the information we collect, store and process stays within the UK, some information may be transferred to countries outside of the UK. This may occur if, for example, one of our third-party partners’ servers are located in a country outside of the UK.

Transfers outside of the UK will only take place if one of the following applies:

  • the country receiving the data is considered by the UK government to provide an adequate level of data protection (for example, this applies to transfers to countries in the European Economic Area)
  • the organisation receiving the data is covered by an arrangement recognised by the UK government as providing an adequate standard of data protection
  • the transfer is governed by approved standard contractual clauses
  • the transfer has your consent
  • the transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps requested by you prior to entering into that contract
  • the transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract with another person, which is in your interests
  • the transfer is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or of those of other persons, where you or other persons are incapable of giving consent
  • the transfer is necessary for the exercise of legal claims
  • the transfer is necessary for important reasons of public interest

7. How long we keep your data

The English Province of the Order of Preachers considers its relationship with beneficiaries, donors and supporters to be life-long and we will retain much of your data for the duration of this relationship unless you request otherwise. When determining how long we should retain your personal data we take into consideration our legal obligations and tax or accounting rules. If you have pledged a legacy gift, it will be necessary to retain your data until your gift is received, so that we can identify the gift against that pledge. When we no longer need to retain personal information, we ensure it is securely disposed of. We may keep anonymised statistical data indefinitely, but you cannot be identified from such data. We make every effort to update or remove out-of-date information, and where it is apparent that our relationship with you has become discontinued, we will ordinarily archive the record and remove information we do not need to retain.

8. The legal basis for processing your data

We will only use your personal data where the law allows us to do so. Most commonly we rely on the following legal bases for processing your personal data:

  • Where we have a legitimate interest to do so for purposes listed within this privacy notice. Where we use legitimate interest as the basis for our processing we have carefully considered each of the ways we process your data to ensure that we carry out our activities with a focus on the interests of our beneficiaries, donors and supporters, and in the most efficient and effective way.
  • Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you. Information processed for this purpose includes, but is not limited to, the information you provide when you register for an event, or to enable us to process a donation.
  • Where we are required to comply with our legal obligations, such as for: reclamation of Gift Aid on your donations; statutory returns to the Charity Commission or ICO; responses to the Charity Commission or ICO in relation to audits or official investigations.
  • Where your consent is required, for example for sending emails or where special categories of personal data are recorded. You can withdraw your consent at any time and we will stop any processing of your personal data requiring your consent. See: “Your legal rights and choices in connection with your personal data”.

Change of purpose

We will only process your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another related reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your data for an unrelated purpose, we will seek your consent to use it for that new purpose. Please note that we may process your data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

9. Your legal rights and choices in connection with your personal data

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of your data and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
  • Request correction of your data. This enables you to ask us to correct any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you.
  • Request erasure of your data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove your data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
  • Object to processing of your data where we are processing it to meet our public interest tasks or legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your data for direct marketing purposes.
  • Request the restriction of processing of your data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your data, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
  • Request the transfer of your data to another party.

Depending on the circumstances and the nature of your request it may not be possible for us to do what you have asked, for example, where there is a statutory or contractual requirement for us to process your data and it would not be possible to fulfil our legal obligations if we were to stop. However, where you have consented to the processing, you can withdraw your consent at any time by emailing the relevant department. In this event, we will stop the processing as soon as we can. If you choose to withdraw consent it will not invalidate past processing.

If you want to exercise any of the rights described above or are dissatisfied with the way we have used your information, please contact the Data Protection Coordinator at development@english.op.org. We will seek to deal with your request without undue delay, and in any event in accordance with the requirements of the UK GDPR. Please note that we may keep a record of your communications to help us resolve any issues which you raise.

If you remain dissatisfied, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

10. Contact us

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or about your personal data, or if you want to provide updates to your data, make any changes to your communication preferences or exercise any of your rights as outlined above, please contact us at the following address.

Development Office, Blackfriars, St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LY
development@english.op.org

11. Changes to this Privacy Notice

This privacy notice was last updated and published on 17 January 2023.

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time. Any changes to this privacy notice will be posted to this page. You can access past versions of our privacy notices at:

https://www.english.op.org/support-us/data-protection/privacy-notice-previous-versions/