Privacy statement

The information below describes how The Salvation Army manages your personal information in accordance with the law and your rights. It does not cover every situation so please read notices on forms, web pages or other points where you give us information about yourself. These will describe the specific uses we make of the information, the reasons and legal basis for holding it as well as your rights. The term Salvation Army is used to cover several corporate bodies.

Information we may hold about you and why

This could include:

  • in general, information you give us when you fill in forms, subscribe to our services, (such as publications, sponsorship, or to attend events) and email newsletters.
  • to support you when you use any of our services for example, at our lifehouses (hostels), centres and corps (churches).
  • when you apply for a job or to volunteer with us, including to process applications and to monitor recruitment statistics. If you come to work for us we will retain it to administer your employment including your pension.
  • information relevant to being a Salvation Army officer, chaplain, or member at one of our corps (churches). To support you in your spiritual life.
  • to manage feedback and complaints.
  • when you apply for officer training to assess your suitability and support your training.
  • information we hold about you to support our fundraising operations.
  • to ensure the security of our premises and protect our people from possible criminal behaviour.
  • to protect individuals where current or potential future safeguarding concerns may arise.

Fundraising

We may use your information in our legitimate interests to support our charitable work, or where we contact you by electronic means, with your consent, to:

  • process any donations you make.  
  • send you information about The Salvation Army and its work and how you can support us. We may do this by post, or where we have your permission text, email, or telephone.  With your consent, we may serve you targeted adverts on social media.
  • help manage our correspondence with you by sharing your information with our contractors working on our behalf to process donations and send communications.
  • build a picture of our supporters and help identify other similar potential donors on Facebook, using personal data such as email addresses in ‘hashed’ – or unidentifiable - format to allow the identification of similar audiences who may be interested in supporting us. This will also ensure that you don’t receive unnecessary advertising. Facebook users can control what adverts they see (click this link for further information).
  • to inform our work with a data agency who can help us better understand our supporters and make decisions based on their past interactions with The Salvation Army.    
  • to suggest suitable amounts for one-off online donations based on analysis of publicly available data related to your location, browser type and device, and website activity and donations history. This information is only ever used anonymously and in ways that cannot identify any individual.
  • ascertain whether you might like to support us if you are a personal charitable trust or foundation or interested in philanthropic giving. We may use publicly available information about you to do this (for example websites or social media). We will always contact you first to see if you are happy to receive fundraising messages.
  • respond to you by telephone, if you tell us you would like us to do so by using the text-to-call-back service that is offered as part of our larger appeals.

We may also use your information from publicly available sources in our legitimate interests, to seek funding in support of our charitable work, to:

  • identify the appropriate type and level of financial support we ask you for, allowing us to tailor our fundraising communications sensitively and respectfully. To do so, we may undertake our own in-house research or use third party specialist partners who provide us with insights and wealth indicators gathered from such sources (for example, from Companies House, company websites, press reports and media platforms, such as LinkedIn). Any outcomes of our work with third party agents are confidential to The Salvation Army. If you do not want us to use your data in this way, please let us know by contacting our Supporter Care Team. 

The Fundraising Department engages contractors who process personal data on our behalf under contract and these include the companies listed below (See also Who do we share your personal information with).

  • Signal Agency Ltd and GD Laser - to print and send letters to supporters. 
  • Woods Valldata  Group, GD Laser and Mosaic - to print and send letters to supporters.
  • Care2 – provision of an online campaigning and petitioning platform. 
  • Sagacity Solutions Ltd - the supply of marketing services and data analytics.
  • dotdigital - provision of an email platform so we can send email to supporters.                   
  • Angel - provision of call centre services.
  • Westwood Forster – support and maintenance of our supporter database.
  • Fundraise Up and iRaiser - provision of online donation services. (Read about our use of Fundraise Up).
  • Pulsar - a subscription service that allows us to gain insight and track sentiment across social media, based on information freely shared online.

Information we collect on the website: Including the IP address of your computer, to:

  • help keep our site safe and secure.
  • help us diagnose faults with the website.
  • ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer. See cookies.
  • understand how users make use of our website and what aspects of our work people are interested in supporting. To help us do this we use Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, One Trust and similar technologies. One Trust allows you to exercise your right to manage cookies. Information is collected anonymously and you will not be identified by it.
  • we use the Conversion API with your consent to connect to our website to share marketing data in a hashed (unidentified) format.
  • we also use Hotjar to help us analyse traffic and behaviour on our website. Hotjar may also occasionally survey website users on our behalf. All information is processed anonymously, and you cannot be identified. 

Who do we share your personal information with?

We may share your personal information:

  • with our contractors who carry out work on our behalf, and with whom we have a contract setting out their responsibilities for security and compliance We employ many contractors across the range of The Salvation Army’s operations. Some are listed under Fundraising. Details of further contractors are available on request.
  • where we are under a legal obligation to disclose or share your information.
  • in some circumstances we may disclose information or undertake monitoring of potentially criminal behaviour under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

Transferring information abroad

Your personal information may be transferred to, and stored and processed outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). We will ensure that measures are in place to ensure that it is managed in compliance with Data Protection Law.

How long do we keep your information?

As long as necessary for the purpose/s it was collected for. This will vary depending on the type of information, legal requirements or other justifications permitted by Data Protection Law. We have an Information Retention Policy which sets out retention periods. Privacy notices on individual forms and websites will give the retention period or criteria used. We may keep information indefinitely for safeguarding reasons where we believe there is a potential risk to individuals. If you opt-out from fundraising communications we keep your information only to ensure we don’t inadvertently contact you. We keep information about Salvation Army officers and their careers for historical and research purposes.

Does the law allow this?

Data Protection law (including the retained EU law version of the General Data Protection Regulation or “UK GDPR” and the Data Protection Act 2018), sets out the principles we must adhere to and a range of legal bases which organisations can rely on to lawfully process personal data for different purposes. Forms, webpages or other places where you submit information will describe how the particular use complies with the law. If you have any queries, please contact the Head of Privacy and Data Protection Officer. In general, some of the main legal bases we use are:

Targeted fundraising and marketing communications (non-electronic) – legitimate interests

Targeted fundraising and marketing communication (email) – consent 

Homeless services and support for vulnerable individuals (either under contract to a local authority as a data processor or directly as a data controller) including safeguarding needs – substantial public interest 

Support for victims of Anti- Trafficking and Modern Slavery as a data processor under contract to The Home Office – substantial public interest 

Personal data of corps members - legitimate interests 

Personal data of employees – performance of a contract 

Personal data of Salvation Army Officers– legitimate interests 

Personal data kept for historical or research reasons – substantial public interest 

Where we believe someone’s life is a risk – vital interests 

Where we share personal data with other organisations other than described  in this statement or another  privacy notice, we may rely on a legal obligation or seek your consent. We may also share your data with law enforcement agencies for the prevention or detection of crime 

We do not make decisions about individuals via automated means.

Your Rights

You have the right to:

  • ask us not to process your personal information for fundraising or our marketing of The Salvation Army. If you wish to do this, please contact the Supporter Care Team. (We will change your record as soon as we receive your request, but due to the way some communications are prepared, this can take up to two weeks to come into effect.)
  • see copies of information held about you. Please send your request in writing to Head of Privacy and Data Protection You may wish to use this form. Please include copies of two forms of ID. We will respond as soon as possible and not longer than one month from receipt.   
  • ask us to amend, update or delete your information in some circumstances or withdraw consent to our processing of your information for particular purposes by contacting the Head of Privacy and Data Protection.

If you are unhappy with the way we are managing your personal information please contact the Head of Privacy and Data Protection. If you are still unhappy you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Who to contact

For queries about this privacy statement or any other data protection issues, please contact the Head of Privacy and Data Protection, data.protection@salvationarmy.org.uk or by post at The Salvation Army, 1 Champion Park, London SE5 8FJ.

For fundraising queries contact the Supporter Care Team on 020 7367 4800; email fr@salvationarmy.org.uk or by post, The Salvation Army, 1 Champion Park, London SE5 8FJ;

Other contacts

Information Commissioner’s Office (UK)  

Wycliffe House
Water Lane Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF

or if you are in the Republic of Ireland,

Data Protection Commissioner

Canal House
Station Road
Portarlington R32 AP23 Co. Laois

Who we are

The Salvation Army Trustee Company acting jointly in its capacity as trustee of either The Salvation Army Trust (Central Funds) or The Salvation Army Social Work Trust. Depending on the use of your data, either of these Trusts may be responsible. Our registered office is at 1 Champion Park, London SE5 8FJ and for the Republic of Ireland, The Salvation Army (Republic of Ireland) 114 Marlborough Street, Dublin 1. 

 

Updated November 2023