Privacy statement

Compassion Australia - Online privacy policy

Commitments

  • Compassion Australia respects and honours our supporters and sponsored children, their right to be treated courteously, fairly and have their privacy protected. Compassion is committed to complying with the National Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act of 1988.
  • Personal information is given in good faith by sponsors and donors and will only be used to maintain or enhance their relationship with Compassion and sponsored children. Only supporters' names are given to sponsored children.
  • Similarly, Compassion will protect the rights of sponsored children and their families, providing only such information deemed necessary and appropriate to maintain the relationship between children and their sponsors.
  • Compassion will monitor and restrict the amount and frequency of educational and marketing material sent to supporters and allow supporters to remove their name from mailing lists.
  • As an advocate for the world's poorest children, Compassion will inform and educate supporters about child poverty, our response and encourage them to pray for the children, write to them, and provide financial support.

Collection, use and management of information

  • Personal information is only collected when necessary and is supplied with consent.
  • Individuals or groups can, for instance, make an anonymous donation or enquiry.
  • Prospective sponsors can visit our web site anonymously.
  • Marketing surveys for the purposes of improving customer service, for example, can be completed anonymously.
  • Personal details are required to link a sponsor with a child, to process and post a receipt, magazine or letter, send new or updated child information, establish periodic payments, and maintain the relationship between supporters and Compassion.
  • Each sponsor and donor is given a unique supporter number under which personal details are kept. This number and other details are used to verify an individual's identity when they make contact.

Protecting your information

  • Compassion has put in place procedural, physical and electronic means to safeguard the personal information of our supporters.
  • Compassion has also verified the security and privacy provisions of other organisations with whom we provide information about supporters. These include our bank and mailhouse.
  • Compassion will not rent, exchange or sell mailing lists of our supporters to other organisations.
  • Supporters' information is kept both in hard copy and electronic forms. In either case, Compassion has documented procedures to safeguard this information. Safeguards include storing copies of the information off-site.
  • Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Encryption is used when collecting or transferring credit card information via the internet, ensuring a secure environment for the transfer of your confidential data from your browser to our financial institution using the latest encryption technology from eSec Limited.

Correcting your information

  • Compassion is committed to allowing supporters to see and correct information that is shown to be incorrect or outdated.
  • Compassion staff will clearly identify themselves when making contact with sponsors, and all letters and marketing materials will contain Compassion's logo and contact details.

Want to know more?

Compassion's Privacy Officer Keith Pond is available to answer specific questions or provide more information about our privacy policy. He can be contacted at:

Compassion Australia, Box 1 Hunter Region Mail Centre 2310
1800 224 453 or at compassion@compassion.com.au