Privacy Policy

Essential Christian is committed to protecting the privacy of your personal data. We will respect any personal data you share with us and keep it safe. We aim to be clear when we collect your personal data and not do anything you wouldn’t reasonably expect.

Your privacy

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will collect, use and store your personal data. We may update this policy from time to time so please check it regularly. If there are significant updates, we will inform those who it may affect.

1. Who we are

Essential Christian is the umbrella charity under which the following entities are included:

Spring Harvest
Essential Christian Leadership
Spring Harvest Store
Essential Christian Resources including EC-GO
Song Solutions including the Essential Christian Songs website
Songs For The Church
Essential Event Management
Big Start Assemblies
Elevation Kids

Essential Christian is a registered charity in the United Kingdom, number 1126997, and registered with the Fundraising Regulator.

We refer to these eight entities collectively as “Essential Christian” throughout this policy, and references to "we" and "us" refer to the Essential Christian entities collectively.

Essential Christian and the entities listed may be data controllers of your personal data. They each have different roles, but some activities they undertake overlap and personal data may be shared internally for certain purposes. Information may be shared between them to facilitate, support and integrate their respective activities. For example, Essential Christian may administer invoices and payments made to Spring Harvest.

The registered address for Essential Christian is 14 Horsted Square, Uckfield, East Sussex, TN22 1QG, United Kingdom.

2. What personal data we collect and the purposes for which we use it

2.1 WHAT PERSONAL DATA DO WE HOLD?

Some examples of the type of information we may collect and hold about you are as follows:

your full name and your title;
birth date or alternatively a relevant age range;
postal address;
telephone number(s);
email address;
records of your correspondence with us;
bank or credit card details (if you purchase something from us or donate to us);
donation and gift aid details (if you donate to us);
information you enter into our websites and digital products and details of how you use those websites and digital products (more details can be found in our Cookie Policy);
dietary, accessibility, and mobility information;
Photographs, film and digital images of individuals.

But we may also collect, hold and process other personal data where it is appropriate and relevant, for example:

details of why you have decided to support/contact us and how you may have heard about us and the work that we do;
details of how you would like to be involved and what you intend to do with the information we provide;
personal data about you that will enable us to be more precise in what we send you or how we approach you;
We will only process sensitive personal data also known as special categories of data (e.g. in relation to your health), with your explicit consent, for reasons of substantial public interests or where necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

2.1.1 Team Members / Volunteers

If you’re a volunteer we may collect extra information about you (such as references, criminal records checks, details of emergency contacts or medical conditions). We will keep this information for legal or contractual reasons, to protect us (including in the event of an insurance or legal claim), and for safeguarding purposes.

2.2. HOW AND WHY WILL WE USE THIS PERSONAL DATA?

2.2.1 We will use your personal data to:

provide you with the information, product or service you have requested from us, including such things as a subscription to EC-GO, attendance of events managed by Essential Christian, including Spring Harvest and specific events that we run, merchandise ordering such as teaching orders, responding to your enquiries and requests, and to tell you about our work and our fundraising;
provide you with other information which we feel may interest you. This may include newsletters, updates, information in relation to fundraising campaigns, voluntary surveys or questionnaires for you to complete, details of relevant volunteering opportunities, and details of any promotions and competitions we are running. We may also send you details of events we think you may be interested in attending;
analyse and understand how people use our websites and digital products so we can improve and personalise the experience for users and reflect your preferences and previous interactions;
keep a record of our relationship with you;
improve how we communicate with you, how we fundraise, and how we operate more generally;
keep in contact with you in the ways that you have requested or agreed to;
administer all aspects of being a partner of Essential Christian;
personalise our services and communications to you (for example, to ensure that they take into account your age, location and previous interactions with Essential Christian);
provide you with information about our official partner events and campaigns, where we are permitted to do so;
notify you about changes to our services;
administer and process payments you make for products, services and charitable donations made to any of our entities; verify your identity where required to use some of our services and benefits;
comply with applicable laws and regulations and requests from statutory agencies including for such purposes as health and safety; the detection and prevention of crime and safeguarding;
carry out any obligations or provide you with any other services, functionality or content which you specifically request or agree to.

2.2.2 For the avoidance of doubt, Essential Christian does not use personal data for automated decision-making which produces legal effects or similarly significantly affects individuals. However, we may use profiling techniques in certain circumstances for the purpose of evaluating personal data to provide you with more targeted advertising and for the purpose of segmenting our database and supporters so that we can communicate with you in the most relevant way possible. In some cases we use cookies to do this. Our Cookie Policy explains in further detail the types of cookies we use to allow us to do this.

2.3. FUNDRAISING

Charitable giving is very important to Essential Christian’s ability to achieve its mission to help individual Christians encounter God, inspire confidence in the good news of Jesus, and transform people, communities and culture in the power of the Holy Spirit. We carry out a wide variety of marketing activities to seek individuals’ support for our work, ranging from appeals for small one-off donations, to large fundraising initiatives for specific projects, such as supporting the ability to hold the Spring Harvest event. We want to ensure that we are contacting you with tailored and appropriate communications, and ensure we direct our resources and fundraising activities as efficiently and effectively as we can. We also want to communicate with you from time to time to thank you for your support and tell you what we have achieved with the help of your donation.

2.4. RESEARCH AND PROFILING USING INFORMATION IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

2.4.1. Throughout our history Essential Christian has relied on gifts of all sizes to support both our recurrent costs and for new projects. In order that our fundraising is appropriate, respectful, efficient and effective, we tailor our approaches to different people in different ways. We use information you have given us, sometimes together with data we collect from publicly available sources, to help us decide how best to do this.

2.4.2. If we do collect such information about you, whether jointly or on our own, we will inform you within one month of collecting this information in order to provide you with an opportunity to opt out of your data being used for these purposes. You can also opt out by emailing us on privacy@essentialchristian.org.

2.4.3. We also have an obligation to ensure we are undertaking appropriate due diligence on potential donors, in accordance with guidelines set out by the Charity Commission and the Fundraising Regulator, and we may collect information from the public domain information for this purpose too.

3. What lawful bases do we rely on to use your personal data?

The legal bases that we rely on for processing your personal data are:

3.1. You have provided your consent to us using your personal data for a specific purpose:

We will ask for your consent to use your personal data to send you marketing emails.
You always have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

3.2. It is necessary in connection with the performance of a contract with you:

Sometimes it is necessary to process your personal data so that we can enter into contractual relationships with you. For example, if you book through Butlin’s to attend the Spring Harvest event, or sign up to use the Big Start Assemblies product, or become a partner of Essential Christian, or join the EC-GO platform, we will require your personal data to enable us to perform our agreement.

3.3. It is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject:

This would include where we have to retain certain records, for example, to manage health and safety, for the detection and prevention of crime, safeguarding obligations, for maintaining suppression lists to ensure we comply with marketing laws, for tax reasons (such as those related to gift aid donations) and undertaking due diligence before accepting certain donations or entering into certain relationships.

3.4. It is within our legitimate interests.

Applicable law allows personal data to be collected and used if it is reasonably necessary for our legitimate interests or a third party’s legitimate interests (as long as the processing is fair, balanced and does not unduly impact individuals’ rights). We will rely on this ground to process your personal data when it is not practical or appropriate to ask for your consent, and where we are confident that this will not impact your rights. This may include where we undertake research on individuals including before we proactively contact them, as set out in Sections 4.2 and 4.3.

Our legitimate interests include raising funds for a wide range of activities to support our charitable objectives. We also have a legitimate interest in publicity and income generation, campaigning and fundraising in order to support these objectives and undertaking due diligence to establish the provenance of donations that are made, or may be made, to us.

Where you have provided your details to us, we may contact you by post and phone for certain marketing and fundraising activities as set out in section 5 below (but we will explain this to you at the point that we collect your details). You can opt out of this activity at any time by emailing us on privacy@essentialchristian.org.

We will also rely on our legitimate interests for the proper administration of Essential Christian, and to manage our operations (for example, maintaining appropriate records and databases, for the detection and prevention of crime and safeguarding all those who access our premises and facilities).

When we process your personal data to achieve such legitimate interests, we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. We will not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you, for example where use would be excessively intrusive (unless, for instance, we are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

Please see section above for the limited legal basis for when we process sensitive personal data.

4. How we collect personal data

We collect information about you:

4.1. WHEN YOU GIVE IT TO US DIRECTLY

You may give us your personal data in order to receive information from us; visit our facilities; buy products or services from us including such things as purchasing, and administering; when you volunteer with us or take part in any of our community programmes (or request information about these); when you donate to us; when you respond to a survey or when you otherwise engage with us on our websites and digital products.

4.2. WHEN A THIRD PARTY PROVIDES US WITH YOUR PERSONAL DATA

Your personal data may be shared with us by third parties in certain circumstances. This may include (but is not limited to) Butlin’s through which the bookings for Spring Harvest are processed, and St Andrews Bookshop who manage and fulfil the Spring Harvest online store.

Where appropriate you should check any Privacy Policy of any third party when you provide your personal data to them in order to understand fully how they will process your personal data. The Butlin’s privacy policy can be seen at www.butlins.com/privacy-and-cookies/, and Spring Harvest Store's (operated by St Andrews Bookshop) privacy policy can be seen at springharveststore.com/privacy-policy/

4.3. WHEN IT IS AVAILABLE PUBLICLY

We may combine personal data you provide to us with personal data available from external publicly available sources such as Companies House and published articles and newspapers. Depending on your privacy settings for social media services, we may also access personal data from those accounts or services. We use this personal data to gain a better understanding of you, and to improve our communications and fundraising approaches (see section 3 above).

4.4. WHEN YOU USE OUR WEBSITES AND DIGITAL PRODUCTS INTERFACES

We may collect personal data about you when you use our websites and digital products. Whenever you input personal data into our website (for example, signing up with EC-GO), we will collect the personal data that you give to us.

We use “cookies” to identify you when you visit our websites and digital products. Amongst other things this helps us to understand our website users and may enable us to improve the website experience for you and/or other users. Please refer to our Cookie Policy for details on how and why we use this data in our cookies policy.

We may collect other personal data from your use of the websites, such as your IP address and access times.

We may link our websites directly to other sites. This privacy policy does not cover external websites and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any external websites you visit.

5. Communications and marketing

5.1 We may contact you by post and telephone, and, where you have provided consent, by e-mail, to let you know about our events and activities (and we may also mention those of third parties, particularly where they are collaborating with us or sponsoring our events) that might be of particular interest to you; retail offers and promotions, or about the work of Essential Christian more generally; and to request donations and provide you with information about and the opportunity to participate in our fundraising activities. We provide the opportunity for you to opt-out from receiving our marketing communications every time we contact you.

You can opt-out from receiving our marketing communications, or update your contact preferences at any time by emailing: privacy@essentialchristian.org.

5.2 PROFILING

We know it is important to our partners to use our resources in a responsible and cost-effective way. To that end, we may use automated profiling and targeting to help us understand our partners and make sure that:

our communications (e.g. emails) and services (e.g. our website) are relevant, personalised and interesting to you;
our services meet the needs of our partners;
we only ask for further support and help from you if it’s appropriate;
we use our resources responsibly and keep our costs down;

If you’ve agreed that we can contact you for marketing purposes, we may also gather additional information about you from external sources, for example: updates to address and contact information made available by Royal Mail. This analysis may be carried out by us or by third party organisations working for us.

If you are a social media user, we will use certain social media tools as part of our relationship with you. These tools include such things as Facebook and Instagram Custom/Lookalike Audiences, Google Customer Match/Similar Audiences, Twitter Tailored/Lookalike Audiences and LinkedIn Matched Audiences.

Through using these tools, we will provide some of your data to the social media platform / organisation to allow them to identify your social media profile with them. The social media platform / organisation will then show you relevant advertisements relating to Essential Christian which we think you will be interested in seeing on your newsfeed.

The social media platform / organisation will also use your profile to identify those with similar characteristics to you who we think may also be interested in finding out more about Essential Christian and the work we do. These identified individuals will then be shown advertisements about Essential Christian on their newsfeed. This activity is governed by the social medial platform’s own privacy policy and terms and conditions, so please do refer to these documents if you require any further information about this activity.

6. Data sharing

We do not sell your information under any circumstances. We may use your personal data with third party fulfilment contractors, such as email communication platforms, but only if they apply an appropriate level of security protection.

We may also, in certain circumstances, receive your details from charitable giving platforms such as Just Giving, in accordance with a particular platform’s privacy policy. For example, where you donate to Essential Christian through an online platform, they may then give us your address so that we can write to you and say thank you. Please do review any such policies before giving your data to these platforms, to ensure that you are happy for your data to be shared in this way.

The Essential Christian subsidiaries may share your personal data between themselves, so if you give your information to Spring Harvest, this may be shared with Essential Christian Leadership for example. Your personal data will only be shared between the entities for the purposes set out in section 2.2 of this policy.

We work with service providers and other third parties who help us to operate and to provide and improve our information, products and services, and we may share information with them for this purpose.

We may provide your email address to digital advertising or social media companies who work on our behalf, such as Facebook and Instagram. This is so we can reach you and others like you with information about how you can support our cause. This data is always provided in an encrypted format and is deleted immediately after use. If you don’t want to see targeted advertising from us on social media, please refer to the instructions provided by the social media site, for example on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google.

Whilst we may allow our staff, consultants and/or external service providers acting on our behalf to access and use your personal data for the activities we have described in this policy (e.g. to provide services or products to you, deliver mailings, to analyse data and to process payments), we only permit them to use it to deliver the relevant information, goods or services, and only if they apply an appropriate level of security protection.

We may need to disclose your personal data upon request to regulatory and government bodies as well as law enforcement agencies. We may also merge or partner with other organisations and in so doing, acquire or transfer personal data but your personal data would continue to be used for the purposes set out above.

The personal data we collect from you may be transferred to, shared and/or otherwise processed by organisations or companies outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). Where your personal data is transferred outside the EEA, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that the recipient implements appropriate measures to protect your personal data (for example, by entering into EU Commission approved standard contractual clauses).

Unfortunately, the transmission of personal data 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 personal data transmitted to or via our websites and digital products; any transmission is at your own risk. If you have any questions about the international data transfer of your personal data, please contact us using the details below in section 12.

7. Children’s data

Those aged under 13 are not permitted to sign up to the EC-GO platform, receive our newsletters, or enter any competitions or prize draws with us. We will not knowingly have any other direct contact with those aged under 13.

Where consent is required to process children’s personal data and the child is under 13 years, where appropriate we shall seek consent from a parent or guardian, or shall ensure such consent is in place before any data is shared with us. We shall only hold personal data about children that is absolutely necessary for the purpose of the event/programme that they are applying for or participating in.

Where a parent or guardian gives consent on behalf of a child, we may contact that child after their 16th birthday, to check if they wish to maintain their relationship with us.

8. How we keep your personal data safe and who has access to it

We are committed to ensuring that there are appropriate technical controls in place to protect your personal data including protection from misuse and unauthorised access. For example our network is protected and routinely tested.

Your information is only accessible by staff, volunteers and contractors who are bound by appropriate policies and procedures to protect your information

9. Your rights

Please note that you may only use/benefit from some of the following rights in limited circumstances. For more information, we suggest that you consult guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/ – or please contact us using the details in section 12 below.

9.1. RIGHT TO RESTRICT PROCESSING

In certain circumstances as outlined in the ICO guidance referred to above, you have a right to require us to stop processing your personal data in a particular way.

9.2. RIGHT TO ERASURE

You have the right to request that your personal data is erased from our records in certain circumstances.

9.3. RIGHT OF ACCESS

You have a right to ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you. If you want to access your personal data, please send proof of your identity along with a description of the personal data you want to see to Data Protection Officer, Essential Christian, 14 Horsted Square, Uckfield, East Sussex, TN22 1QG, or email privacy@essentialchristian.org. Please send a copy of a form of identification containing a photograph (e.g. Passport, Photocard Driving Licence) along with a copy of a utility bill or bank statement etc to help verify your address. Please blank out any financial or other confidential information. If we are unable to verify your identity we will contact you as soon as possible.

Once we have all of the information necessary to respond to your request we will provide your information to you within one month. This timeframe may be extended by up to two months if your request is particularly complex, but we will inform you if this is the case

9.4. RIGHT TO RECTIFICATION

We also want to make sure that your personal data is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if your details change. You may also ask us to correct or remove personal data which is inaccurate.

9.5. RIGHT TO OBJECT

You can also opt-out of receiving all or some of our marketing/ fundraising communications or request that we stop processing personal data about you for certain purposes at any time by contacting us using the details below.

9.6. RIGHT TO DATA PORTABILITY

In certain circumstances you have a right to data portability which means we will provide you (or a third party you nominate) with your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.

10. Complaints

If you are unhappy with the way in which we have handled your personal data please contact us using the details below.

Please let us know if you have any queries or concerns about the way that your personal data is being processed by us by contacting us on the details below. You are also entitled to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office. For further information see the Information Commissioner’s guidance here: ico.org.uk/for-the-public/personal-information.

10.1 AS PART OF OUR COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE, WE WILL:

Treat complaints seriously and deal with them properly;
Resolve complaints promptly and informally whenever possible;
Learn from complaints and take action to improve our service;
Ensure that complaints are treated in confidence;

10.2 WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE A COMPLAINT

It’s always better if you can let us know straight away. Most complaints can be sorted out quickly by a member of our Customer Services team, and our team will welcome the opportunity to do this if at all possible.

You can contact Essential Christian by email, in writing or by telephone.

Email: custcare@essentialchristian.org

Write to:
Customer Services
Essential Christian
14 Horsted Square
Uckfield
East Sussex
TN22 1QG

Tel: 01825 700830

We are open Monday to Friday 9.00am to 5.00pm. We are closed on bank holidays and at weekends.

10.3 WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Should you make your complaint over the phone, we will try to resolve the issue there and then. Similarly, if you complain by email or in writing we will do everything we can to resolve it within 10 working days. If this is not possible, we will explain why and give a new deadline.

10.4 WHAT IF THE COMPLAINT IS NOT RESOLVED?

If you are not happy with our response, then you can get back in touch with us by writing to Essential Christian’s Head of Customer Service. Your complaint will be reviewed by a senior manager, and our response will be sent in writing within 10 working days.

Having received a reply and if you are still unhappy, then you can write to our Chief Operating Officer, who will ensure you receive a response to your case.

Finally, if for any reason your complaint is still unresolved, then please address your complaint to the Chief Executive Officer. If your complaint relates to fundraising activity, you can also contact the Fundraising Regulator.

Please address correspondence for any of these senior staff to:

Essential Christian
14 Horsted Square
Uckfield
East Sussex
TN22 1QG

11. Data retention

We keep personal data for as long as there is a need to keep it in connection with the purposes for which it was collected. We may keep your personal data after a particular matter or exchange has concluded but purely for record keeping purposes and to be able to respond to queries. In some cases, we are also obliged to retain your personal data to comply with legal or statutory obligations (for example, to keep records of contractual or financial matters).

Whilst the specific time periods vary depending on the circumstances, in general we will not keep records that include personal data for more than 10 years after a particular matter or exchange has concluded. In the event that you ask us to stop sending you marketing communications, we will retain certain details, such as your name and email address, but only to ensure that you are not contacted again.

12. Contact

For all enquiries in respect of this privacy policy, please contact via email to: privacy@essentialchristian.org or by post to: Data Protection Officer, Essential Christian, 14 Horsted Square, Uckfield, East Sussex, TN22 1QG.

13. Websites and digital products

In this policy “websites and digital products” refers to all Essential Christian websites, including the primary Essential Christian website found at www.essentialchristian.org, and all our digital products, such as email, applications and digital channels, including social media.

14. Changes to this privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review.

Last updated: 21st November 2023