Privacy statement

We are an international humanitarian organisation that strives for a world free from poverty, fear and oppression. Our work would be impossible without the compassion and generosity of our donors and supporters. We are committed to protecting the privacy of our supporters, staff and anyone else who entrusts their personal information to us. We always endeavour to protect your personal information through compliance with the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, Data Protection Act 2018, the UK General Data Protection Regulation, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, and other relevant laws and regulations.

Concern Worldwide (UK) is the Data Controller of personal data processed under this Privacy Statement and is a registered charity - registered charity numbers 1092236 (England and Wales) and SC038107 (Scotland) - and a charitable company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales under company number 4323646.

If you engage with our retail shops in Northern Ireland, Concern Worldwide (Northern Ireland) is the Data Controller - registered charity number NIC108592, registered company number NI019332. 

This Privacy Statement explains how both Concern Worldwide (UK) and Concern Worldwide (Northern Ireland) collect, store, use and protect personal information.  All references to Concern Worldwide (UK) include Concern Worldwide (Northern Ireland).

Our contact details are:

Supporter Care
Concern Worldwide (UK)
47 Frederick Street
Belfast BT1 2LW
Email: [email protected]
Freephone: 0800 032 4001

Concern Worldwide (UK) has a Data Protection Officer who is contactable by post to the address above or by email: [email protected]

If you contact us regarding an event, activity, campaign, to request information, make a donation or use our website, you may provide some personal information to us. For example, you may provide your name, postal address, email address, telephone number, credit card or debit card information. All personal information is protected by secure systems and processes. These are specifically designed to protect the information at all times and prevent the loss, misuse, unauthorised access or disclosure, alteration or destruction of information. For example, we use a specialist payment gateway provider to enable online donations to be made securely by card, Apple Pay and PayPal. This helps to ensure any personal and financial information is fully protected and kept private.

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the UK. It may also be processed by staff operating outside the UK who work for us or for one of our service providers.

To safeguard your information, we will ensure any such transfers are in strict compliance with data protection legislation, with all appropriate transfer mechanisms in place. This includes Concern Worldwide (UK) having an appropriate contractual arrangement in place with those entities who store personal data outside of the UK, and where the country is not considered to have adequate data protection laws in place. 

All information you provide to us is stored securely. 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 website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

We are committed to the highest fundraising standards, including with respect to your privacy, as set out in our Supporter Promise. 

We may process personal information in a number of ways, such as:

• to process donations, purchases and Gift Aid
• to provide any information or services you request from us
• to identify ways to improve our services and day-to-day operations
• to keep you updated with our work, fundraising appeals and events (unless you ask us not to)
• to enhance, tailor and personalise our communications for your benefit
• to create an automated profile about you based on information you have given us, such as donation history and postcode, to assist in informing our marketing (unless you ask us not to)
• to improve the performance of our website and improve the experience of website visitors
• to deliver relevant online advertising

Concern Worldwide (UK) obtains and processes personal data fairly and lawfully, in an open and transparent manner. This is a brief explanation of what each lawful basis means:

• Consent: We must ensure this is freely given and well informed and you may withdraw consent at any time as easily as you gave it. For example, if you give us permission to keep you updated by email regarding our work, fundraising campaigns and events.
• Legitimate Interest: Where Concern Worldwide (UK) has carried out a balancing test and we are satisfied that the legitimate interests we wish to pursue are not overridden by your own rights or interests, for example, to tailor our communications including creating a profile of you as a supporter as described below, or to contact you by post. Our legitimate interest at Concern Worldwide (UK) is to maximise support for our humanitarian and development work.  
• Legal Obligation: The processing is necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation such as retaining payment information for compliance with financial and tax legislation.
• Contract: It is necessary to fulfil a contract or agreement we have with you.
• Vital Interest: Processing is necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another individual.
• Public Interest: The purpose of the processing is for the public interest or where we have official authority vested in us.

Concern Worldwide (UK) will only keep data in a form that permits personal identification for the duration necessary to fulfil our legal obligations and operational objectives. Once the respective retention period has elapsed, Concern Worldwide (UK) undertakes to anonymise, destroy or erase this data.

We believe that it is important to keep our partners and supporters updated about how your generous support is making a difference to our vital work tackling hunger and how you can help save more lives through campaigning and appeals - unless you ask us not to, in which case we will respect your wishes. When you provide your contact details to us, we will normally ask if you agree to these communications and which communication channels you do and don’t wish us to use. You can change your preferences at any time by emailing us at [email protected], calling free on 0800 032 4001 or writing to Supporter Care, Concern Worldwide (UK), 47 Frederick Street, Belfast BT1 2LW. We also provide the opportunity to ‘unsubscribe’ in all of our campaigning and fundraising mailings and emails.

To ensure our communications are as relevant and interesting as possible, we often tailor their content based upon our supporters’ characteristics and behaviours. This also enables us to manage our fundraising and marketing activity in the most cost-effective and efficient ways, so we can keep our costs as low as possible and maximise support for humanitarian projects. This activity essentially creates a marketing profile about our supporters. We may, for example:

• send someone who has given a single donation a different mailing from one we send to someone who gives regularly by direct debit
• use supplementary information from reputable third parties to help us understand more about our supporters
• verify existing contact information e.g. postal address, to check that it is still correct and update our records if necessary
• use geo-demographic information to understand more about our supporters and their interests
• use publicly available information to understand more about a small number of our donors or people that we believe may be interested in supporting our work

These legitimate activities enable 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. 

If you would prefer that we don’t use your information in this way, we will respect your wishes by opting you out of any marketing profile we have created. Please let us know if you wish to opt out by emailing us at [email protected], calling free on 0800 032 4001 or writing to Supporter Care, Concern Worldwide (UK), 47 Frederick Street, Belfast BT1 2LW.

Access

You have the right to be informed about any personal data that we hold which relates to you, including how we acquired such data and the purposes for which it is being used. This right requires that you will be given a copy of your personal data which you may have supplied to us via our website or in other correspondence and interactions. 

Correction of data

You have the right to have inaccurate personal data corrected. If you discover that we hold inaccurate personal data about you, you have the right to instruct us to correct that information. If you inform us of any changes to your personal information, we will update our records accordingly. 

Erasure / Right to be Forgotten 

In certain circumstances, you have the ‘Right to be Forgotten’. This means that you can request that Concern Worldwide (UK) removes any and all references to you from our records and systems. We will comply with all such requests in a timely manner, as required by the UK General Data Protection Regulation, unless operational or legal obligations require us to retain such data for a particular purpose or period of time.

Object to / Restrict Processing 

You have the right, at all times, to object to the processing of your personal data which you find intrusive, excessive or unwarranted. Concern Worldwide (UK) will respect your right to do so but may need to continue such processing where required do to so by law or within the terms of an existing contractual arrangement.

To exercise any of your rights, your request should be made in writing to the email or postal address above or verbally by calling us on the freephone number above. If necessary to deal with your request, we may ask you to provide us with a copy of your passport or driving licence and a recent utility bill to verify your name and address. No fee is required for this service. Your request will be dealt with as soon as possible and we will respond to you within one month from the date on which your request was received.

If you feel Concern Worldwide (UK) has infringed any of its obligations under privacy law while processing your personal data or failed to deal with your request in relation to your data appropriately, please let us know and we will do everything we can to rectify the situation.

Our Complaints Policy provides effective ways to raise a complaint with us and ensures that in response we take appropriate and timely action. You can send your complaint to the Complaints Coordinator through the following channels:

• Using our online contact form: https://www.concern.org.uk/complaint-form
• By phone – Freephone 0800 032 4001
• By post – marked ‘Private & Confidential’ to: Complaints Coordinator, Concern Worldwide (UK), 17 Frederick Street, Belfast, BT1 2LW 

Please be sure to include sufficient details to assist us with investigating the complaint, such as your name, phone number and/or email address so that we can contact you, details of the infringement and approximate date if known.

You can expect your complaint to be acknowledged within 2 working days, other than in exceptional circumstances, and to hear further from us within 30 days of receipt of your complaint.

If you feel your data protection rights and freedoms have been infringed, and you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint, you can also lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who can be contacted in writing at The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow SK9 5AF, online at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ or by calling 003 123 1113.

Concern Worldwide (UK)’s websites use website analytics, including Google Analytics, which provides aggregated information about visitors to the website, for example, the number of visitors in a day, which parts of our website are most popular and if there are any trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country. This helps us to understand how people interact with our websites so that we can continually improve them. We also have an active presence on social media e.g. Facebook, and use analytical tools to monitor the performance of our social media posts, for example, the number of likes and shares, as well as audience information. This helps us to improve our activity on social media. 

We may, on some occasions, wish to advertise on social media or other websites. When we do this, we may wish to use the information you provide us with to target our digital and social media advertising. This enables us to improve efficiency and keep our costs down. For example, this may include securely providing contact details such as your name and email address to digital advertising networks or social media companies such as Facebook. We may use your information to enable us to display advertising to you, or to potential supporters who have similar characteristics to you. Any information we share with social media companies will be sent in an encrypted format and will not be used for their own marketing purposes.

If you prefer that we don’t use your information in this way, we will respect your wishes. Please let us know by emailing us at [email protected], calling free on 0800 032 4001 or writing to Supporter Care, Concern Worldwide (UK), 47 Frederick Street, Belfast BT1 2LW.

Our websites and sub-domains use cookies and similar technologies to:

• provide users with the best possible digital experience
• improve our website’s functionality and security
• understand more about who visits our websites, where they come from, and how they donate
• and to assist us in spreading news about Concern’s work through digital marketing activities

To find out about cookies and similar technologies please visit our Cookie Policy which includes a detailed list of all cookies placed on devices via our website, and a list of vendors placing those cookies including links to their privacy statements, in our Cookies Declaration.

If you want to reject or opt out of cookies that you may previously have opted into, please click on ‘Change your consent’ or ‘Withdraw your consent’ in our Cookie Policy.

This Privacy Statement is subject to change at any time and any changes will be posted on this page without prior notification.

This Privacy Statement was last updated in August 2025.