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Privacy Policy

Belong To LGBTQ+ Youth Ireland respects your privacy and is committed to ensuring its protection. We assure you that any identifiable data that you provide when using our services, including face to face and online, will be used only in accordance with this privacy policy.

Belong To LGBTQ+ Youth Ireland’s registered address is Parliament House, 13 Parliament Street, Dublin 2, D02 P658, Ireland.

We are a registered charity in Ireland under charity number 20059798. Our dedicated Data Protection Team can be contacted at the above address or contacted on the following number 01 670 6223 or emailed at privacy@belongto.org

This privacy notice explains how and when we use and share your information when you visit our sites in compliance with GDPR and was last updated May 2023.

Your Rights – Your Information

You have the right to access any personal information that we process about you and to request information about:

  • What personal data we hold about you
  • The purposes of the processing
  • The categories of personal data concerned
  • The recipients to whom the personal data has/will be disclosed
  • How long we intend to store your personal data for
  • If we did not collect the data directly from you, information about the source

If you believe that we hold any incomplete or inaccurate data about you, you have the right to ask us to correct and/or complete the information and we will strive to update/correct it as quickly as possible; unless there is a valid reason for not doing so, at which point you will be notified.

You also have the right to request erasure of your personal data or to restrict how we use it in accordance with data protection laws, as well as to object to any direct marketing from us and to be informed about any automated decision-making that we use.

If we receive a request from you to exercise any of the above rights, we may ask you to verify your identity before acting on the relevant request; this is to ensure that your data is protected and kept secure.

To access a copy of your data (making a subject access request), please contact our dedicated Data Protection Team either by email on privacy@belongto.org or by phone on 01 670 6223.

Your Rights – Restrictions

You are not obligated to provide your personal information to us; however, as this information is required for us to provide you with our support services, event information, and communications, we will not be able to offer you these services without it. You may restrict the collection or use of your personal information by selecting “No” on our website in the Marketing/Email Consent field, indicating that you do not want your information to be used for direct marketing.

If you have previously consented to us using your information for marketing purposes, you may contact us at any time at privacy@belongto.org or on 01 670 6223 should you change your mind.

Your Rights – Complaint

We only process your personal information in compliance with this privacy notice and in accordance with the relevant data protection laws. If, however, you wish to raise a complaint regarding the processing of your personal data or are unsatisfied with how we have handled your information, you have the right to lodge a complaint with us and the supervisory authority. 

First instance, Data Protection Team privacy@belongto.org or by calling 01 670 6223.

If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint, you have a right to submit a complaint to:

Data Protection Commission, 21 Fitzwilliam Square South, Dublin 2, D02 RD28, Ireland

Telephone:           01 7650100 / 1800 437 737

Webform:           https://forms.dataprotection.ie/contact

Website:             www.dataprotection.ie

Your Data – How We Collect 

We collect data when you subscribe to our newsletter and communications, send a query, make a request for help or support, register for a training, attend an event, avail of one of our services, or make a donation. We will never collect any unnecessary personal data from you and do not process your information in any way, other than already specified in this notice. You may also visit and browse our website without going through any registration process.

Your Data – What We Collect 

We process your personal information firstly to provide you with information or service you have requested from us, either in person, or online. We also use your information in our marketing campaigns, and to meet our legal, statutory and contractual obligations. 

This information may include name, age, email address, telephone number, home address.

Non-personal information such as demographic data regarding your IP addresses is collected from our website visitors on a cumulative basis. This type of anonymous statistical data cannot be used to identify or contact you.

Your Data – Legal Basis for Processing 

We process all personal data lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner. We take a personalised approach to communications and adhere to the relevant GDPR articles in relation to processing your data. This is necessary and proportionate and carried out in the least intrusive way to achieve our desired goal of serving our customers as efficiently and effectively as possible.

We will only use your personal information if:

  • We have asked you and have a record of your express consent for us to do so;
  • We have a ‘Legitimate Interest’ to do so in order to support our charitable purposes. Our use will be fair and balanced and never unduly have an impact on your rights.
  • We have a contract with you that we can only fulfil by using your personal information, e.g. to send you an item that you have requested or if you have signed up to participate in an event;
  • We have a legal obligation to obtain information about you, e.g. we are required by law to keep records of donations that we receive for 7 years according to Revenue.

We will not unduly prioritise our interests as a charity over your interests as an individual. We will always balance our interests with your rights. We will only use personal information in a way and for a purpose that you would reasonably expect. We promise to always be open and honest with you about your information and how it is used.

Your Data – What we do with your information

We collect and process your data so we can provide the best service to you. When we process your information, we may use it for one or all of the following purposes:

  • To provide you with the product/service you have requested
  • To contact you in relation to the product/service you have requested
  • To send promotional emails and post about new offers or services which we think may be of benefit to you
  • To deliver targeted advertising on other platforms and networks
  • To connect with you on social media using Facebook Custom Audiences
  • To customise the website in accordance with your preferences
  • To respond to any communications we may receive from you
  • For internal record keeping
  • To monitor the demographics of individuals accessing support or services from Belong To
  • To review and evaluate our services in order to improve them and ensure they continue to meet the needs of people seeking support from us
  • To understand the issues affecting the lives of LGBTQ+ young people and use information on the key presenting issues in our advocacy campaigns and lobbying efforts
  • To comply with our statutory and regulatory obligations.

Your Data – Special Category 

By the very nature of our organisation, much of the data collected by us is considered special category (sensitive) data and is handled accordingly. 

On occasion, you may divulge personal sensitive information to us, or we may request information from you, such as dietary requirements for an event. 

Where we collect sensitive personal data, we will only request the information required for the specified purpose and will always ask for your explicit consent. You can modify or remove consent at any time, which we will act on immediately, unless there is a legitimate interest or legal reason for not doing so.

Your Data – Photos, Video, and Audio

We may from time to time host events with photographers and videographers present. We encourage photos, video, and audio recordings for posterity, marketing, advocacy and promotion.  If you wish to have a copy of the photograph, please contact us. 

If at any time you do not wish your photograph to be kept or promoted, please let us know at privacy@belongto.org

Profiling 

Belong To does not carry out automatic decision-making; however, we do use data to systematically analyse (profile) personal data we hold on our database. We do this for the purposes of effective communication and service provision, to ensure cost-effectiveness and relevance of our communication to you and the services we provide. You may be identified through this analysis for a specific communication campaign or offer of service. However, you will be informed about this as soon as possible, but at the latest when we contact you as a result of such profiling by reference to this privacy statement.

We may sometimes use geo-demographic and/or other personal information (including special category data) which may include identification of individuals’ capacity to give, through a process called ‘wealth screening’, using publicly available information sources. We may also carry out our own research into our supporters, again using publicly available information or information that you provide us with. This allows us to tailor our fundraising and marketing activities to make them as appropriate as possible for our supporters and reflect their interests as closely as possible.

We may sometimes use geo-demographic and/ or other personal information (including special category data) which may include identification of individuals’ health or wellbeing status, through a process of systematic review of our database. We may also carry out our own research into our service users, using publicly available information or information that you provide us with. This allows us to tailor our programmes and services to best reflect the needs and interests of those accessing our services as closely as possible.

If you would prefer us not to process your personal data for the purpose of wealth screening, we will respect your wishes.

If you do not wish to be subject to such profiling or wealth screening or wish to update your contact preferences, please contact us by email on privacy@belongto.org or call us on 01 670 6223.

Your Data – Retention

We only keep personal information for as long as is necessary and we have strict review and retention policies in place to meet our obligations. Where you have consented to us using your details for communications and marketing, we will keep such data until you notify us otherwise and/or withdraw your consent.

Your Data – Disclosure

We do not share or disclose any of your personal information without your consent, other than for the purposes specified in this notice or where there is a legal requirement. 

We use third-parties to provide services and business functions. All processors acting on our behalf only process your data in accordance with instructions from us and comply fully with this privacy notice, the data protection laws and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures. 

We do have external links on our website to third party sites, which are visibly defined as such throughout the website. We are not responsible for the content or privacy policies of these other websites.

Our website hosting provider is Blacknight, who are based in the EU. Their Privacy Policy is here: https://www.blacknight.com/legal/privacy/

We use both Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce to provide IT services including email, databases, and data storage to the organisation. We use Campaign Monitor to send our regular newsletters and marketing communications. Payments made through our website are processed by Stripe. All financial transactions are processed using Sage. All these companies are compliant with the GDPR and all data stored on these systems is securely held in line with GDPR. Your data will be processed by one or more of these companies if you email Belong To, submit a request through our website, call us, attend one of our services/ groups, or make a donation.

Our IT support services provider is PC Technix Limited, trading as IT.ie.

In the event of a merger, receivership, liquidation we reserve the right to transfer all or largely all our company’s assets, including your personal information, to a third party as long as the third party only uses your personal information for the purposes for which you provided it to us and only if the third party agrees to follow the terms of this Privacy Policy. You will be contacted in the event of any such transfer and given the option to withdraw your consent.

Your Data – Cookies

Our website uses cookies. A cookie is a small piece of text which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive.

Since May 26th, 2012, websites operating in the EU must implement the EU e-Privacy Directive. Under this law [European Communities (Electronic Communications Networks and Services) (Privacy and Electronic Communications) Regulations 2011], websites are required to get visitors’ informed consent before placing a cookie on their machine.

Our website contains a pop-up which seeks users’ informed consent to accept cookies being placed on their device.

Not accepting cookies may prevent you from experiencing all that our website can offer.

When you agree for it to be placed on the hard drive, the cookie may save your personal preferences, so you do not have to constantly re-enter them, or to provide you with preferential content. The cookie will identify itself as being from belongto.org and may be accessed by anyone you share the device you accessed our website with.

As part of our marketing strategy, we use third party vendors Google Remarketing and Facebook Pixel Campaigns to show our ads on sites across the Internet. These vendors use cookies to serve ads based on your past visits to our website, affiliated websites, and social media channels. You can opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting Google’s Ads Settings: https://adssettings.google.com/

If you don’t want Facebook to use information based on your activity on websites or apps off Facebook for the purpose of showing you ads, you can opt out in your account’s ad settings. For more information, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/help/568137493302217

We use Google Analytics on our website to track website visitors in order to build a profile of who visits our site so that we can understand user behaviour, the demographics and geographic distribution of the users of the site with a view to improving its content to meet the needs of users. The information generated by these cookies, such as time, place, and frequency of your visits to our site, including your IP address, is transmitted to Google’s location in the US and stored there.

You can opt-out of participating in our analytical tracking through a browser addon developed by Google which will prevent your information from being sent to Google Analytics. You can learn more about the opt-out browser add-on and how to install it at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/

When you display a page that has an embedded video, a connection will be made to the YouTube server and the content will appear on the Belong To website via a communication to your browser. Further information about data protection by YouTube is provided by Google under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Making a donation by Credit Card (Stripe)

For payments made through our website, we use Stripe. Stripe is a service from Stripe, Inc, 185 Berry Street, Suite 550, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA. Your data will be sent to a server operated by Stripe, Inc in the United States.

You can find more information about Stripe and their privacy policy here: https://stripe.com/privacy 

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. In order to safeguard your information, we will make any such transfers in strict compliance with data protection legislation and all appropriate contractual arrangements will be in place to ensure compliance. By submitting your personal data for such purposes, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. Belong To will take all reasonable steps necessary to ensure that your personal data is processed securely and in accordance with this Privacy Statement.

All information you provide to us is stored on secure servers. Any payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL technology. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Unfortunately, subject to the previous paragraphs, 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 via our site; any transmission is ultimately at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access to, or unlawful processing or disclosure of, such data.

Your Data – Security

We take your privacy seriously and we take every reasonable measure and precaution to protect and secure your personal information and privacy.

We work hard to protect you and your information from unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction.

We are committed to ensuring that your data is secure; however, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you send to us via the internet as no internet data transmission can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.

In order to prevent unauthorised access, we have taken all reasonable physical, electronic and managerial steps to protect your personal information, through encryption, anonymisation and authentication.

Your Privacy – Amendments

Should any modifications to this privacy policy be undertaken, a clearly visible notification will be placed on the website and we will make contact with all individuals in accordance with their preferences so that all individuals are fully aware of what data we collect, how that data is used, and if and why it is disclosed.

If we ever decide to use personal information in a considerably different manner to that described in this privacy policy, or otherwise stated to you when you agreed to provide your details, we will inform you by email and you will consequently be able to choose whether or not to permit us to use your information in the amended manner.