Privacy and Cookie Policy


At Plum Village UK (registered as The Community of Interbeing UK) we are committed to protecting the privacy of your personal data. Any personal data that you share with us will be kept safe and secure. We want to be clear about how and when we collect data from you and how and why we use it. This Privacy and Cookie Policy explains in detail the types of data we may collect about you and how we will use and store your personal data.

We would suggest that you read this Privacy Policy carefully to ensure that you are well informed about and understand our practices. We may from time to time update this notice, so please do take the time to check it regularly. If we are in regular contact with you, and there are significant updates, we will inform you.

1. Who is Plum Village UK?

Plum Village UK is name used for The Community of Interbeing UK which is a registered charity in England and Wales (registered charity number 1096680) and a company limited by guarantee in England and Wales (registered company number 4623280).
The registered office address is: Sunnyside House, South View Terrace, Yatton, Bristol BS49 4AH.

2. What Personal Data Do We Collect?

The type of personal information that we could collect about you includes:

    • Name & Title
    • Gender
    • Date of birth
    • Postal address
    • Phone number
    • Email address
    • Social Media profiles
    • IP Address
    • Financial details relevant to donations
    • Status as a UK taxpayer (we use this for Gift Aid administration only)
    • How you heard about us
    • Details about the campaigns that you choose to support
    • Details of your donations or other ways you support us e.g. volunteering, leaving a gift in your Will
    • Photographs or digital images (e.g. in photos taken at Plum Village UK events)
    • How we communicate with you and any preferences you may have
    • Details of any contact that we may have with you

3. How and Why Do We Use Your Personal Data?

  • We use your data for the following purposes:
  • To respond to any correspondence you enter into with us.
  • To manage and process your donations and/or any other way you support us, to keep a record of our relationship.
  • To keep you updated on the work that we are doing and tell you how your donations are being used.
  • To ensure we act on any requests you make about how we do/don’t contact you.
  • For marketing and fundraising purposes (see Section 6 for more details).
  • Where you sign a petition or otherwise take action, your details maybe sent on to the campaign target, or an email be sent on your behalf, as indicated when you take action.
  • To help us analyse and understand our audience. This allows us to make improvements to our campaigning and fundraising and our service to supporters.
  • To allow us to verify your identity if we are required to do so, to be able to comply with laws and regulations, to protect our organisation and your personal data from fraudulent activities.
  • For legacy administration purposes (where you are involved, for example as an Executor, in the administration of an Estate that includes a bequest to The Community of Interbeing). For more information click here.
  • In certain circumstances we may use publicly available information, and on occasion use third party services (for example, wealth screening), to help us identify those who may be able to help us financially. We use this information so that we can contact relevant people in the most appropriate way.
  • To comply with our legal obligations and to share data with law enforcement agencies if required to do so.

4. What are the Legal Bases that We Use to Process Your Personal Data?

Consent: We use consent to send you details on fundraising and campaigning by email and text. As is your right, you can withdraw your consent at any time. All our fundraising and campaigning emails include an unsubscribe link.

Performance of a Contract: We would need to process your information if you enter into a contract with us – for example, to provide your goods or services when you purchase a book or register for a course.

Legal Obligation: We need to retain and use certain records to uphold the law, for tax purposes such as Gift Aid administration, to satisfy legal, regulatory and compliance obligations.

Legitimate Interest: We may collect and use data where this is reasonably necessary for our legitimate interests. Such processing will be fair, balanced and will not unduly impact on your rights as an individual. For example, there may be times when it is not practical or appropriate to ask for your consent and where we are confident this will not impact on your rights.

Our legitimate interests include fundraising to support our charitable objectives. These objectives are to support mindfulness practice in the UK in the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. In support of these legitimate interests we may collect or process personal data in the following ways:

  • For administration and governance activities related to the COI;
  • To record and respond to any correspondence you enter into with us;
  • To send you campaigning and fundraising materials by post (you can opt-out of these communications at any time);
  • To contact, by email or phone, some very specific audiences relevant to our work
  • To record and act on your campaigning and fundraising communication preferences;
  • To administer donations and other ways you support us, and update you on how your donations are used;
  • To thank you for your donations;
  • For research and analysis to help us understand our audience, improve our campaigning, fundraising and service to supporters,
  • In certain circumstances, to undertake research on individuals before we proactively contact them;
  • To administer Estates and gifts in Wills where The COI is an Executor or beneficiary;
  • To better our efforts against fraud.

5. When and How Do We Collect Your Data?

We collect your data when you contact us directly, or interact with us via a third party, to:

  • Make an enquiry to us
  • Sign up to receive emails
  • Take part in a campaign
  • Make a donation
  • Make a purchase from us (e.g. book or bell)
  • Enquire about or advise us of a gift left in your Will
  • Engage with us on social media
  • Volunteer for us by fundraising or campaigning
  • Attend an event
  • Connect with us online

In certain circumstances, we will conduct our own research and gather information that is available within the public domain. There is a certain amount of publicly available information from sources such as social media, published articles and news channels. We would use this information to improve our communications and fundraising approaches.

When you are engaging with the COI through a third party, please also check their Privacy Policy.

6. Marketing and Fundraising

As a charity we communicate with individuals to encourage participation in our events and to raise money to fund our work. We send marketing and fundraising communications in a variety of ways:

BY EMAIL, SMS & PHONE: We will only communicate for marketing fundraising purposes via these channels if you have given us your consent for us to do so. As is your right you can withdraw your consent for any method of communication at any time. All our marketing and fundraising emails include an unsubscribe link, and you can also contact us via the details in part 1 above.

BY POST: We send marketing and fundraising information in the post on the basis of our legitimate interests. You will not receive mail from us if you have specifically requested not to. We try to understand your preferences in advance of sending out any communications by providing opt-in forms at the time that you subscribe to any of our membership or mailing lists. If you ever receive a mail from us and would prefer NOT to receive communications from us in the post, you can let us know by contacting us directly on hello@plumvillage.uk. Please note your preferences may not be updated immediately as we rely on volunteers to update our lists, but we will aim to process your request as soon as we can and within 28 days.  You may unsubscribe yourself immediately from our marketing database by using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of all of our marketing emails.

BY SOCIAL MEDIAL ADVERTSING: If you are a social media user, we may use tools provided by the leading social media platforms, such as Facebook, to reach individuals likely to benefit from our events.

In order to improve the performance of our social media campaigns, we use conversion tracking to measure the outcome and improve the return on investment of Facebook Ads, for example, by reporting on the actions that audiences take after viewing those ads. We add a tracking pixel or cookie to our website and then track these conversions back to ads we are running on Facebook. No personal information is contained in or collected as a result of using pixels. To opt out of remarketing pixels and technologies, visit Facebook’s ad preferences page here.

7. How Long Do we Keep Your Data?

Your data is retained for as long as is necessary for the purpose that it was collected for. We are obliged to keep certain data to fulfil certain legal obligations and matters of record keeping e.g. financial records which we are required to keep for 6 years. Any data that is retained is minimised to ensure that we are keeping only that which is required. We will securely delete all data when it is no longer required.

8. Sharing Your Data

We will not sell or swap your personal data; and it is COI’s policy never to pass on your personal details to other organisations for their use, except when we have your express permission to do so or when the law requires it.

At COI we work with contracted suppliers and where applicable we will share your information. Your data will only be used under our explicit instructions and only for the purposes we specify, to carry out necessary operations for us, such as sending letters or processing financial transactions. All of our suppliers are trusted and have signed agreements with us, each of them agreeing to respect the security of your personal data. We review the policies and procedures of all third party suppliers to ensure we are satisfied with the level of their compliance with data protection laws, and that their systems are secure. In the event that we stop using a supplier, any of your data that they hold will be securely deleted.

There may be a need to disclose your personal data upon request to regulatory and government bodies as well as law enforcement agencies.

9. Your Rights

We want to ensure that your rights are upheld when we use and store the information you give to us.

Accessing the information that we hold on you – Subject Access Request

You can request a copy of the information that we have on you. This will be free of charge in most cases. Please let us have details of the personal data you want to see and proof of your identity. You can send an email to hello@plumvillage.uk

Correcting the information that we hold on you

If your personal information is out of date or is incorrect, we will correct it for you on request.

Erasing your personal data from our records

Simply let us know and we will delete your details from our database. This will mean that all records of you will be erased. Please note, for legal reasons we may be required to keep certain information e.g. in the case of financial details, where we are duty bound to keep these on file for 6 years.

Opting-out of all marketing and fundraising communications

We will stop all campaigning and fundraising communications, or communications via a specific channel, on request. If you have given us consent you can withdraw your consent at any time. We aim to update your record within 28 days.

Restricting the processing that we do

If you do not wish your information to be used for the purposes of screening or profiling, let us know. We aim to update your record within 28 days.
Using your information elsewhere

Concerns

If you feel that your data is not being managed in an appropriate manner, you can raise a concern with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can also find general information from the ICO here: https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public

10. How We Keep Your Data Safe?

As an organisation we are committed to keeping your data safe. Your personal data is stored in databases secured with strong passwords and we regularly monitor our systems for vulnerabilities. Access to your data is closely monitored; it is only accessible by staff, volunteers and contractors who are bound by appropriate policies and procedures to protect your information.

We will review the policies and procedures of any third parties that we deal with, and ensure they are compliant with data protection laws.

11. Cookies

The European Union’s cookies law which requires all websites which use cookies must declare which cookies they use and offer visitors the opportunity to opt out of cookies.

If you don’t know what cookies are, or want to know more about the law, we suggest you visit this link http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies.aspx

Summary

The Community of Interbeing UK “the CoI” is a UK charity registered charity number1096680 and our company number is  4623280.  We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

We set out below our privacy policies and in particular:

  • What personally identifiable information is collected
  • Which organisation is collecting this information
  • How this information is used
  • Our policy on sharing this information
  • How we protect your information
  • How you can block cookies

The CoI does not actively track you as an individual.

If you send us an email via the contact form, your name, email address and message will be emailed to us (as you would expect). This information is kept private. We will store this information and use it so that we are able to respond to your email.

Our website uses cookies to check that the website is working, to be sure visitors can find what they need on the website, and to help us improve your experience of using the site.

We do not use 3rd Party / Tracking / Advertising cookies.

The cookies we use are detailed below:

Cookie Law Compliance    On every page of this site you will see a message alerting you of our privacy and cookie policy. If you choose to accept our policy we will use a cookie to remember this setting. You can revoke this permission at any time. User data is all anonymous.
Google Analytics    We use this to track how you found our site and whether you were able to find the information you were looking for. User data is all anonymous.
WordPress    This website uses WordPress as a Content Management System. It uses a “session cookie” which is essential for the website to work properly. User data is all anonymous.

All this information is anonymous and does not identify you as an individual.

What if I don’t want cookies?

Some people don’t like the idea of cookies, although in general they are harmless and only intended to improve user experience. To prevent cookies being set on your computer you can change your browser settings. Information on how to achieve this in a variety of browsers can be found at http://www.aboutcookies.org/.

Users are warned that rejecting all cookies from websites may in some cases limit their functionality and in a small number of cases may cause sites to become unusable.

How to contact us

Please use the contact form on this site to contact us.