Our Privacy notice

Contents

• How we collect personal information

• The personal information we collect

• Why we collect your personal information

• The legal basis for processing your personal information

• Credit and debit card payment information

• Marketing permissions

• Fundraising

• Sponsorship rate

• Who we share your information with

• How long we keep your data

• Your information rights and choices

• Reporting concerns or compliments

• Changes to this privacy notice

• Cookies

How we collect personal information

We collect personal information in the following ways:

Directly from you or family members acting on your behalf when you:

• Make the generous decision to:

• become a sponsor and bring hope to a child living in poverty;

• support community-focussed or ministry-wide interventions such as Compassion Communities, Compassion Interventions, Gifts of Compassion or appeals;

• give either a one-off or regular donation

• Register for a myCompassion account;

• Visit our website. Please see our Cookies section for more information;

• Sign up to join and become part of our incredible family of volunteers;

• Register to take part in our exciting challenges, free interactive events or to visit our Compassion projects overseas;

• Request for resources to share about Compassion;

• Contact us with an enquiry;

• Complete a survey;

• Are a church leader and/or have a key role in a church working in partnership with Compassion UK;

• Act as a Compassion Ambassador advocating for children in poverty;

• Register to host a Compassion event;

• Apply for a job to join our great team.

From other sources:

• Compassion Partners: If you register to sponsor a child through one of our global Compassion partners but you live in the UK or Ireland, your personal information is shared with Compassion UK so that we can administer your sponsorship and provide you with supporter care.;.

• Third parties: External registers such as Royal Mail’s postcode finder or National Change of Address update; the electoral roll, and the ReAD Group’s Gone Away Suppression (GAS) and Bereavement Register (TBR) files, which include information sourced from credit reference agencies such as Experian. Regulatory authorities such as Charity Commission and Companies House; Publicly available sources such as newspapers and articles; Research organisations using publicly available sources; social media for information that can be viewed publicly, based on your privacy settings. Our use of LinkedIn is limited to information about your career, education and interests. Will writing service providers who notify us when a supporter has pledged to leave a gift to Compassion in their Will. Please read more about how we use this information in the Fundraising section.

• Digital advertising platforms: When you submit your details through lead generation forms on platforms such as Meta, we receive the personal information you provide (e.g. name, email address) directly from those platforms

The personal information we collect

• Personal identifiers such as your title, name and year of birth or full date of birth where relevant;

• Contact details including postal address, post code, email and telephone number. This may include details of family members or friends when you are sponsoring jointly as part of a group;

• Payment and banking details to process donations;

• Taxpayer information (for Gift Aid purposes);;

• The church or event location where you registered to sponsor a child which may reveal your church affiliation and where relevant linking your sponsorship to a Compassion UK church partnership;

• Letters you write to the child you sponsor;

• Records of your contact with us.

Special categories data

Under data protection law, some personal information is recognised as ‘special categories data’. This includes, but is not limited to, information which reveals your religious beliefs, health issues, race or ethnic origin.

Compassion UK is a Christ-centred organisation committed to preserving its Christian ethos. Where necessary and consented to, we may collect details about your church affiliations and personal faith.

Additionally, we collect details about any health concerns or disability to make the necessary arrangements for travel overseas, participation in a Compassion Challenge or where you have disclosed this, so we can meet any additional customer service requirements.

We also receive prayer requests and the information may reveal information about your health. As a Compassion family, we share and pray for these needs at our internal group prayer sessions.

Compassion UK will always treat any special categories data we process with greater care and process the information in accordance with all applicable data protection laws.

Why we collect your personal information

Child Sponsorship: We collect and use your contact details to send you service updates about the child you sponsor. This will include:

• Child letters;

• Birthday notifications so that you can send a birthday greeting and/or gift;

• Christmas greeting reminder so that your message can be printed and hand-delivered in time ;

• Relevant life events affecting the child.

Child sponsorship will generally last until the child you sponsor finishes their education or vocational training, which is usually between the ages of 18 and 22, depending on the country and personal circumstances. If the child leaves the programme earlier for any reasons, we will promptly notify you. Where possible, we will give you the opportunity to write a final letter.

We will also offer you the opportunity to sponsor another child to continue your sponsorship commitment. If you do not wish to sponsor another child, please get in touch by the deadline stated in our communications about the departure of the current child you sponsor (usually three weeks, longer during holiday periods). If we do not hear from you within this time, we will reallocate your sponsorship to another child and notify you of the change. If we are unable to contact you, such as when we have an undeliverable postal address, no valid phone number, or an outdated email address, your donations will be re-allocated to our Unsponsored Child Fund, which supports children waiting for a sponsor. Please note that once reallocated, the funds are non-refundable, but you can choose to end your sponsorship or recurring donations at any time. If you have further questions, please get in touch with our friendly team at 01932 836490 or by email at info@compassionuk.org

Compassion Communities: We collect and use your contact details to send you updates about the communities you are helping to transform. This will include:

• Periodic updates on how funds are being used across different communities;

• Stories or reports illustrating the impact of locally led initiatives;

• Notifications about significant programme changes or developments relevant to your support.

• To process the monthly sponsorship payment and any other donations.

• To reclaim tax on Gift Aid donations, if applicable.

• To verify minimum age for regular donations.

• To enable us to better engage with the needs and interests of our supporters based on their life stage.

• To provide online access to information about the child you sponsor and the opportunity to write and receive letters electronically.

• When you visit our website, we may gather information about which pages you visit to help us improve and provide you with the best service.

• To determine and improve the effectiveness of our website and marketing campaigns.

• To deliver interactive Compassion Experience events.

• To organise and coordinate Compassion Challenges such as running, cycling and mountain biking.

• To create and steward effective partnerships with UK Churches and with Compassion Ambassadors.

• To keep you informed about our work. Please see more details in the Marketing Permissions section.

• To enable us to contact you with relevant and the most appropriate information. Please see more details in the Fundraising section.

• To manage and coordinate our volunteers.

• For compliance with employment law and other statutory requirements.

The legal basis for processing your personal information

Compassion UK will rely on the following legal bases to process your personal information:

1. Legitimate Interest 
   We will process your information for a purpose you would reasonably expect. We will have pre-determined that it is necessary to process your information for this purpose and balanced this with your rights and interests. For example, when you become a sponsor, we use your name and contact details to administrate the sponsorship experience.

2. Consent 
   We give you the choice and control over our processing activities where relevant. For example, we ask for your permission to send you marketing information by email or text.

3. Contract 
   If you have a contract with Compassion UK for example as an employee or you haven’t got a contract but need to provide your information as a first step (e.g. apply for a job with us) we rely on the legal basis that the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract.

4. Legal Obligation 
   In some cases, we are required to process your personal information where there is a legal requirement. For example, it is a legal obligation to disclose employee salaries to HMRC. Additionally, we process your name, house name or number, post code and donation history for Gift Aid purposes as required by HMRC.

Credit and debit card payment information

When you make a donation to us online or over the phone, Compassion UK ensures that this is done securely and in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. All credit or debit card details are entered directly into the Barclaycard Merchant Services and never recorded or stored in any of our systems on completion of your transaction. Remember; don’t send an email with any credit or debit card details.

Marketing permissions

We love sharing news about how your support is changing the lives of children, families and communities in the name of Jesus. This includes sending you information about our work, news, appeals, campaigns, events, information on volunteering and prayer requests.

Email and text marketing: 
We will ask for your permission to contact you by email or text for marketing purposes.

Postal marketing: 
From time to time we may send you information about our work unless you have told us you would prefer not to receive this information by post. If you have registered with the Mail Preference Service (MPS), we will only send you marketing communication by post if you have given us permission to do so.

Telephone marketing: 
We may call to update you on the vital work we are doing. If you have registered your number with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), we will only make marketing calls to you if you have given us permission to do so. Compassion UK is committed to respecting your choice to receive marketing information. You can update your permission and contact preferences at any time by:

• Logging onto your myCompassion account

• Calling our friendly team on 01932 836 490

• Emailing info@compassionuk.org

• Clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link included in each email communication we send

Fundraising

We collect information about your interactions with us and other general publicly available information about you to fundraise more effectively and steward our resources with integrity and excellence.

Child Sponsorship

Our work would not be possible without the commitment of our supporters as partners in our ministry, who have taken a stand against child poverty. We analyse your interactions with us to understand your interest and ability to support a child for the full length of the sponsorship programme, sponsor another child (if the child you sponsor leaves the programme earlier) or sponsor additional children.

Compassion Interventions

Compassion UK delivers vital interventions beyond the needs addressed through child sponsorship. This includes supporting vulnerable pregnant mothers and their infants, providing safe water and sanitation facilities, malaria nets, life-saving surgery, helping families to secure a more stable income, vocational skills training, HIV and AIDS education, testing and prevention, and child protection. We research our supporters (typically after their first year of sponsorship) to understand their interest and ability to support our non-sponsorship interventions, as well as their potential interest in long term or future giving opportunities. This helps us to personalise our funding requests and tailor our communications appropriately.:

You can opt out at any time by getting in touch with our friendly team at 01932 836490 or by email at info@compassionuk.org

Sponsorship rate

We are passionate about ensuring we are good stewards of the resources God has given us. To help us meet the rising costs of the programme, Compassion UK may increase the child sponsorship rate after completing intensive scrutiny, to ensure that we are making a difference in the lives of the children we serve. We will notify you of any changes to the sponsorship rate before processing.

Who we share your information with

Compassion UK is a global partner of Compassion International which works in 29 countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA). We will only share personal information which is either consented to, necessary to fulfil the sponsorship experience or to coordinate visits to our overseas child development programmes. Compassion International is committed to ensuring that its overseas national offices have adequate levels of data protection safeguards when processing your personal information.

We may also share your personal information with trusted suppliers where it is necessary to provide products you have requested from us (such as child letters) or where they are contracted to develop or maintain our systems.

We monitor information security compliance and have written contracts which obligate our partners or suppliers to process your personal information only on our instructions and in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws.

Compassion UK and any of its affiliate entities may be under duty to disclose your personal information where required in order to comply with any legal obligation.

How long we keep your data

Compassion UK will only keep your personal information for the period it is required and in accordance with our data retention schedule. For example, for accounting purposes and to administer Gift Aid declarations we keep a record of your name, house name or number, post code, donations history and Gift Aid declaration for seven years.

Where some information is required for a specific, pre-determined purpose, for example, when your sponsorship comes to an end, we keep digital copies of letters you have written to the child you sponsor for up to seven years after the child graduates from the Compassion programme. We retain these because formerly sponsored children sometimes contact us as adults to request copies of letters they received. If you have indicated that you do not wish to hear from us in the future, we will keep the minimum information necessary to ensure we avoid contacting you any further.

In the event that you exercise your right to erasure, we will ensure you are informed about what data we are legally required to retain and for how long.

Your information rights and choices

Under data protection law, you have the right:

• To request to obtain copies of the personal information Compassion UK holds about you. You can make a request verbally or in writing. If you make you request verbally, we will ask that you also follow up in writing so that we can have a record of your request.

• To correct or update your personal information processed by Compassion UK which you think is inaccurate or incomplete.

• To ask Compassion UK to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

• To ask Compassion UK to restrict or limit the way we use your personal information.

• To object to the use of your personal information in certain circumstances where Compassion UK has no legitimate reason for continued use.

• To object to the use of your personal information for marketing purposes.

• To ask Compassion UK to transfer the information you have given us from one organisation to another or give it to you.

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) gives you the right:

• To choose whether or not to receive marketing communication from us by email, text or telephone. Please see the Marketing Permissions section for more information about how to change or update your contact permissions and preferences.

• To know about the cookies Compassion UK uses, so that you can decide whether to give us permission to store a cookie on your device. Please see the Cookies section for more information.

For more information about your information rights visit www.ico.org.uk

Reporting concerns or compliments

Please contact our Data Protection Officer if you wish to raise a concern about Compassion UK’s handling of your personal information, or compliment what you think we have done well.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office about how we manage your data.

Change to this privacy notice

Compassion UK will review our privacy notice regularly. The terms of this notice may be updated at any time for example, in the event of changes in law and how we operate. Please do check our website from time to time. If there are any significant changes in the way we process your personal information, we will provide a prominent notice on our website or send a notification. This notice was last updated in February 2026.

Thank you from everyone at Compassion for your amazing support.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. Compassion UK uses cookies to enable our website to function effectively, to improve your experience and to determine and improve the effectiveness of our website and marketing campaigns.

Here is a brief overview of the types of cookies we use on the Compassion UK websites, which consist of four categories:

• CMS cookies – our Compassion UK website is created in a CMS (Content Management System) called WordPress, which places a small number of standard WordPress cookies on your computer as you use it. Other Compassion websites (for example, Compassion Challenges, Compassion Experience, Compassion Explorers) are created in different CMS systems and they can create cookies too. Additional cookies will be placed on your computer if you are an editor on one or more of these CMS systems (for example if you are a Compassion UK staff member or an IT contractor).

• Cookies to improve your experience – we use a small number of cookies on our website to help you get the best experience. For example, we place a cookie on your computer when you first log-in to myCompassion, to save you logging in the future. This cookie is removed when you log out of myCompassion. Similarly, the first time you load the Compassion UK homepage, you will see a notice at top of the page about cookies. We place a cookie on your computer when you press ‘X’, so that you don’t see this notice in future. We also embed YouTube and Vimeo films on our website regularly. We are unable to prevent these sites, or external domains, from collecting information on your usage of this embedded content. If you are not logged in to these external services then they will not know who you are but are likely to gather anonymous usage information for example, number of views, plays, loads etc.

• Analytics – Examples include Google Analytics or Crazy Egg. Google Analytics cookies collect information about how visitors use a website and help us to continually improve our blog. For instance, which pages visitors go to most often and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies you. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. Compassion UK uses this data to help us to understand: which pages people visit on the site, which internet browsers are being used, what is popular on our website, which pages on the website are visited before people donate or sponsor a child. Crazy Egg is a website design tool we use to measure the way visitors to our site interact with specific pages. We use cookies to see where users click on the page so that we can make it easier for our supporters to find the information they are looking for.

• Paid advertising (Google, Facebook and Bing) – we use cookies from trusted third parties to measure the effectiveness of paid advertising to ensure the money we spend is used effectively. They also enable us to either service advertisements to or exclude people who have visited our websites. Cookies from Google, Bing and Facebook allow us to track traffic to our website to tell us if our marketing campaigns are successful, and ensure we are spending our advertising budgets as efficiently as possible.

How to manage your cookie settings

Many web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Safari, will allow some control over cookies through their settings. To manage your cookie settings, please refer to your browser software. For more information about cookies and how to delete them, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org