Privacy Policy

At Viva, we are committed to protecting and respecting your personal data. Compliance with the current data protection legislation underlies everything we do when handling your information.

This is a legal requirement for our UK work as a UK charity but we follow it as a statement of best practise for our international work. We are committed to complying with all international laws on privacy in all we do.

The notice below (together with our data protection policy) explains our policy regarding your privacy, both online and offline. By visiting www.viva.org, using our social media pages (such as Facebook) or by sharing personal information with us, you are accepting the practices described below.

Legally, we have four charities – in the UK, the US, Hong Kong and Uganda – but we work as one global charity.

  • Viva is an operating name of Viva Network. Viva Network is a company limited by guarantee no. 3162776, registered charity no. 1053389 and registered in England at CMS House, Watlington Road, Oxford, OX4 6BZ, UK

  • Viva is an operating name of Viva North America. Viva North America is a registered 501(c)3 organization, registered under employer identification number 84-1541857.

  • Viva is an operating name of Viva Network (Hong Kong) Limited. Viva Network (Hong Kong) Limited is a company limited by guarantee and registered charity with company no.1657942, and registered in Hong Kong SAR at 608 Laford Centre, 838 Lai Chi Kok Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong.

  • Viva is an operating name of Viva Network Africa. Viva Network Africa is a registered Foreign NGO in Uganda, registration number 6016.

If you have any questions regarding this policy or how we use your personal data, please get in touch with us by emailing info@viva.org or phoning +44 (0)1865 811660. You can also write to us at:

  • CMS House, Watlington Road, Oxford, OX4 6BZ, UK

  • 330 County Road 16 1/2, Longmont, CO 80504, USA

  • 8/F, Shun On Commercial Building, 112-114 Des Voeux Road Central, Central, Hong Kong

How do we collect information from you?

  1. Directly – We may collect information about you when you interact directly with us and knowingly provide us with personal information. For example when you contact Viva regarding our activities, send or receive information or make a donation. Some of this may be sensitive data, including but is not limited to your religious beliefs, or physical or mental health.

  2. Anonymous information when visiting our website – This information is non-personal data, such as IP addresses (location of your computer on the internet), pages accessed or files downloaded. This enables us to continue improving your experience of our website. We only capture personal data through our website where we have permission from you to do so.

  3. Third parties – We may also collect your data from third parties such as Virgin Money Giving, Survey Monkey or Eventbrite when you have chosen to engage with Viva and have given us permission to use this information. With your permission, we might also collect data that you have made available on social media platforms (such as Facebook or Twitter).

  4. Public sources – Finally, we may also combine information you provide to us with information available from public sources or records. This could be through using, for example, the UK’s Royal Mail’s postcode finder or the electoral roll, to check the accuracy of the address we hold or from information published in articles, newspapers of blogs. We may also collect data made public for example from the UK’s Companies House or the UK’s Charity Commission. This helps us to gain a better understanding of our supporters and those who engage with us and improves our fundraising methods, resources and programmes.

What personal information do we collect?
We collect your personal and contact details, records of correspondence with us and where you have made a donation information on whether you are a taxpayer and your bank details.

Bank details
If you make a donation online, an event booking or purchase a product from us, your card information is not held by us, but is collected by our third party payment processors who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. The only time we will hold your credit/debit card information is if you phone one of our offices to make a donation or payment or if you post us a paper copy of a donation form with these details. In that case the information is locked securely until processed and then destroyed as soon as the payment is made. Any bank details given to us (for example, to set up a direct debit in the UK) are stored securely by us and our third party processors.

Sensitive data
The UK’s Data Protection Act recognises some information as ‘sensitive personal data’. This includes, but is not limited to information which reveals your religious beliefs, health issues, race or ethnic origin.

Viva is a Christ-centred organisation committed to preserving its Christian ethos. Where necessary we may collect details about your church affiliations and personal faith. Additionally, we may collect details about any health concerns or disability to make sure we give you the best and most appropriate care as a supporter – for example to ensure necessary arrangements if you were to attend an event or to ensure you receive information in large print.

Viva will always treat any sensitive personal data we process with great care and process the information in accordance with the UK’s Data Protection Act.

What is our legal basis for collecting and processing your data?
We use the data we have collected and processed because we have
Consent – sometimes we collect and process your information because you have given us consent to do so. We may use this to send you communications, such as emails, because you have clearly given us agreement to do so.
Contract – we may collect and process your personal data when we need to do this to fulfil a contract with you, e.g. if you have made a donation or purchased something from us.
Legal obligation – sometimes we will need to store your information because we have a legal reason to do this, e.g. in the UK, if you have Gift Aided donations to us, HMRC require us to keep the information for up to 7 years.
Legitimate interest – we will collect and process your information when we can demonstrate a legitimate interest to do this and when these interests do not override your rights. Legitimate interest may be determined by your previous interactions with us or from information that you have publically shared which overlaps with our work.

What information do we collect?
The information we might collect includes your name, address, email address, IP address and information regarding what pages are accessed and when.

If you make a donation online, make an event booking or purchase a product from us, your card information is not held by us, but is collected by our third party payment processors who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. The only time we will hold your credit/debit card information is if you phone the office to make a donation or payment. In that case the information is locked securely until processed and then destroyed as soon as the payment is made.

Any bank details given to us (for example, to set up a direct debit) are stored securely by us and our third party processors.

How do we use that information?
We may use your information to:

  • Process a donation or an order that you have made or in the UK to claim Gift Aid.

  • Provide you with information about our work where you have given consent to receive this or there is legitimate interest to do so. This may include information about campaigns, appeals, events, other fundraising activities, promotions of any associated goods and services.

  • Fundraise in accordance with our internal policies and procedures.

  • Process event bookings.

  • Answer your enquiries or seek your views about a service we provide, through voluntary surveys or research.

  • Process a job application.

  • Contact you where you have been identified as a contact person for an organisation, such as a school or church.

  • Deal with entries in to a competition.

  • Fulfil administration purposes. For example, we may contact you about a donation you have made or event you have expressed an interest in or registered for.

  • Analyse and improve the services we offer.

  • Fulfil contractual obligations we might have with you.

  • Analyse the use of our websites and ensure their content is presented in the most effective manner for you and your device.

  • Fulfil any legal, regulatory or tax compliance.

  • Carry out desk and online research to profile and analyse your personal information to determine whether you could be a potential major donor or to create a profile of your interest and preferences. This will help us target communications in a more focused, efficient and cost-effective way, helping us reduce the chances of supporters and potential supporters receiving inappropriate or irrelevant communications. You can opt-out of use of your personal information for profiling at any time by contacting us at the details set out at the beginning of this Privacy Notice.

Who has access to your information?
We do not sell or rent your information to third parties, nor do we share it with them for marketing purposes.

We will only pass you information to our third party service providers and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process a donation). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes.

The only exception to this rule is if we are required to release your information by law, for example by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.

How do we protect your personal information?
When you give us personal information, we take appropriate physical, electronic and managerial steps to ensure that it is kept secure, accurate and up to date. We limit access to information on a need-to-know basis and take appropriate measures to ensure that our people are aware that such information is only used in accordance with this Privacy Policy and they follow our strict confidentiality policy.

Any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) is encrypted and protected using SSL and other industry standard measures, to provide an additional level of security.

Although we use appropriate security measures once we have received your personal information, the transmission of information over the internet is never completely secure. We do our best to protect personal information, but we cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted to our website or over email, so any transmission is at the user’s own risk.

How long do we keep your information?
We will keep your personal information in respect of financial transactions for as long as the law requires us to for tax or accounting purposes (which in the UK may be up to six years after a particular transaction).

In respect of other personal information, we will retain it for no longer than necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, taking into account guidance issued by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office.

How to update your information or change your marketing preferences?
If you want to update the information we hold for you, or think any information we have about you is incorrect or incomplete, please get in touch.

You also have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us and by what means. If you do not want to receive fundraising communications and/or direct marketing communications from us about the vital work we do for vulnerable children, then please contact us to let us know.

You can get in touch by emailing info@viva.org, phoning +44 (0) 1865 811660 or by writing to at one of the addresses at the start of this policy.

What are your rights?
For individuals in the UK, the UK’s Data Protection Act and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation give you certain rights over your data and how we use it. You can find out more about these rights through the links above. At the time of writing these individuals have the right to:

  • request a copy of the information we hold about you and details of what we do with that information (known as a subject access request)

  • update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong
    change your communication preferences at any time

  • withdraw your consent to use of your personal information where we are relying on consent as the legal ground for processing it

  • ask us to remove your personal information from our records

  • ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information

  • obtain a portable copy of certain personal information where this is processed automatically

  • object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes

  • raise a concern or complaint about the way in which your information is being used
    ask us to explain any automated processing we carry out and the impact of this on you

  • If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please use the contact details at the beginning of this privacy statement. If we are not sure who you are, we may ask for reasonable proof of your identity before providing you with information or carrying out any of the above actions.

Links to other websites
This website may contain links to other websites. Please note that when you click one of these links, you are leaving our website and entering another site. We encourage you to read the privacy policy on other sites as it may differ from our own.

16 or under
We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with any personal information.

Policy reviewed: 10 January 2024icy reviewed: 10 January 2024