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SVP Privacy Statement

1. Introduction

The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul Ireland (SVP), the Data Controller, is registered as a charity in Ireland (charity number CHY 6892). SVP's registered address is SVP House, 91-92 Sean MacDermott Street, Dublin 1, Ireland.

The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul Ireland is referred to as SVP throughout this document.

SVP are committed to protecting any personal information we obtain about you, whether you are just visiting our website or are looking for help, a financial supporter, volunteer, or campaigner.

This Privacy Policy sets out how we obtain, use and protect any personal information you provide to us, whether online, via phone, text, email, in letters or in other correspondence.

This privacy statement explains what information SVP may collect about you, how we may use it and your data protection rights.

2. What information will SVP collect about me and how will it be used?

When you contact SVP to request assistance, make a donation, volunteer, or sign up to any of SVP's campaigns or online content, such as newsletters, or you telephone, email, write to SVP, or engage with SVP via social media channels, we may receive and retain personal information about you.

By submitting your details, you enable SVP (and where applicable any sub-contractors we may use) to raise funds or to provide you with the goods, services, information, activities, or online content you select.

Depending on the purpose of your interaction with us, this can consist of information such as:

Data Purpose(s) Lawful Basis for Processing under the GDPR
Name and contact details such as email address, postal address, telephone, or mobile number
  • We may require your personal data to provide you with our services such as, assistance, resource centres, housing, day-care and holiday schemes.
  • When you apply for a position with SVP
  • When you make an enquiry or raise a complaint
  • To provide you with information about our activities or online content you have agreed to receive
  • For the performance of a contract
  • Consent
  • Legitimate Interest
Family circumstances and income in order to assess needs and assistance required
  • We may require your personal data to provide you with our services such as, assistance, resource centres, housing, day-care and holiday schemes
  • Consent
  • For the performance of a contract
Information relating to special needs, allergies and health conditions where relevant (for example youth clubs)
  • We may require your personal data to provide you with our services such as, assistance, resource centres, housing, day-care and holiday schemes
  • Consent
Bank account details or financial details (Debit or Credit Cards)
  • Fundraising and Donations
  • Consent
CCTV images where CCTV is present at our premises
  • To protect against theft, damage to property and for the safety and security of staff and visitors
  • SVP’s legitimate interest to protect individuals and property

Our legitimate interests include providing postal communications to update donors on how their contributions are used and how they can continue to be involved with the Society. If you do not wish to receive such communications, you can opt out by contacting fundraising@svp.ie

If you are simply browsing our website as an anonymous visitor, SVP may still collect certain information from you, such as your IP addresses (an IP address is a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the internet).

If you enter your contact details in one of our online forms, we may use this information to contact you even if you don't "send" or "submit" the form. We will only do this to see if we can help with any problems, you might be experiencing with the form or with our websites.

The SVP website contains hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties. These third-party websites have their own privacy policies, including policies on their use of cookies, and we urge you to review them. They will govern the use of personal information you submit, or which is collected by cookies whilst visiting these websites. We cannot accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of such third-party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.

3. Will SVP share my personal information with anyone else?

We will only use your information within SVP for the purposes for which it was obtained. SVP will not, under any circumstances, share or sell your personal data with any third party for their own marketing purposes and you will not receive offers from other companies or organisations as a result of giving your details to us.

We have appropriate contracts in place with our third-party providers to ensure that they will only act under our instruction and keep your data secure.

We may share your information with selected third parties including:

  • Outsourced service providers
  • Regulatory bodies where we are obliged to make data available as required. If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms and conditions and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of SVP, our customers, or others.
  • Other companies and organisations with whom we exchange data for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction
  • Advertisers and advertising networks that require the data to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others.
  • Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site.

4. How long will SVP keep my personal data?

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, for example we will keep a record of donations for at least seven years.

If you request that we stop sending you marketing materials, we will keep a record of your contact details and appropriate information to enable us to comply with your request not to be contacted by us.

Legacy income is vital to the running of the charity. We may keep data you provide to us indefinitely, to carry out legacy administration and communicate effectively with the families of people leaving us legacies. This also enables us to identify and analyse the source of legacy income we receive.

Where you contribute material to us, e.g., user generated content or in response to a particular campaign we will generally only keep your content for as long as is reasonably required for the purpose(s) for which it was submitted unless otherwise stated at the point of generation.

5. Storing your personal data

All information you provide to us is stored on secure servers. Any payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL technology.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

6. What is SVP's policy on allowing me to update, correct, or delete my personal information?

Under the GDPR you have the following rights:

  • The right to access the personal data we hold about you.
  • The right to require us to rectify any inaccurate personal data about you.
  • The right to have us erase personal data we hold about you in certain circumstances.
  • The right to object to us processing personal data about you such as processing for direct marketing.
  • The right to request a restriction of the processing of your personal data.
  • Where our processing of your personal data is based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time but any processing that we have carried out before you withdrew your consent remains lawful.
  • You have a right to complain to the Data Protection Commission if you are not satisfied with how we have handled your personal data.

The accuracy of your information is really important to us. We want to ensure that we are able to communicate with you in ways that you are happy with, and to provide you with information that is of interest. If you wish to change how we communicate with you, or update the information we hold, then please contact us:

  • Write to us: National Office, 91-92 Sean MacDermott Street, Dublin 1.
  • Email us: svp.dpo@svp.ie
  • Call us (Mon-Fri 0900-1700): 01 884 8200

You may also opt out of marketing emails at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in any marketing email from SVP.

If you wish to make any data protection related enquiries or requests about your personal data, please contact the Societies designated Data Protection officer on: svp.dpo@svp.ie

7. Offensive or inappropriate content placed on the SVP website

If you post or send offensive, inappropriate, or objectionable content to or anywhere on the SVP website or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on any SVP service, we may use your personal information to stop such behaviour.

Where SVP reasonably believes that you are or may be in breach of any of the laws of Ireland (e.g., because content you have posted may be defamatory), we may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your employer, internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.

8. Cookies

Like many websites, SVP uses cookies in order to provide you with a more personalised web service.

For further information on SVP cookies and how to control your cookie preferences see our Cookie Policy.

9. Changes to SVP's Privacy Policy

This Privacy Statement may be updated from time to time so you may wish to check it each time you submit personal information to SVP. The date of the most recent revisions will appear on this page. If you do not agree to these changes, please do not continue to use the SVP website to submit personal information to SVP. If material changes are made to the Privacy Policy, we will notify you by placing a prominent notice on the website.

Updated October 2022

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