Privacy Policy

1.     INTRODUCTION

The Gideons International in South Africa (hereafter “The Gideons”) respects your privacy and your personal information. This Privacy Policy aims to let you know how The Gideons will treat any personal information that it may have about you and how you can access such personal information held. The Gideons will take all reasonable measures, in accordance with this policy, to protect your personal information and to keep it confidential.

 

2.     DEFINITION

Personal information is “personal information” as defined in terms of section 1 of the Protection of Personal Information Act of 2013 (“POPI Act”). This is information to an identifiable, living natural person or existing juristic person. Please refer to the POPI Act for a detailed definition and various categories of personal information.

 

3.     CATEGORIES OF DATA SUBJECTS AND PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED

The Gideons only collects general personal information (some of which may be publically available) and aims to only collect that personal information which is necessary for it to carry out the ministry’s activities and to provide support services and other facilities to its members and other stakeholders.

 

The Gideons collects the following categories of personal information:

1. Member – such as name, contact details, email, physical and postal addresses, church denomination and name, age, profession and employment status, professional experience, birth date, ethnic group, marital status, spouse name, language preference, banking details for debit orders. Member profiles provide for other information to be provided but this is voluntary information that can be provided at the discretion of the member.
2. Friend of Gideons (individual) – such as name, contact details, email, physical and postal addresses, date of birth, age, banking details for debit orders.
3. Friend of Gideons (organisation) – such as name, contact details, email, physical and postal addresses, date of birth, age, company details, banking details for debit orders.
4. Event appraisals – members and attendees of area, regional or national events will provide feedback for purposes of quality improvement.
5. Suppliers/procurement – such as company name, address and contact details, banking details, VAT number.
6. Partners/ institutions – name of institution, contact details, physical address, contact persons – personal information and details. E.g. schools, principal names, Churches, Pastors names etc.
7. Website – such as general website page analytics and usage information through the use of cookies, and in some instances website user (non-member or general public) name and contact details for access to Gideons services.
8. GideonsGO App – such as general App analytics (limited e.g. down load), and in some instances App (only members) name and contact details for access to Gideons services.
9. Employees – all applicable employee information required to be kept from a labour law perspective and running of the association. Such information relates to internal employees and not members or Friends of Gideons. The treatment of employee information is dealt with in internal HR policies. External parties shall not have access to such employee information.

4.     HOW PERSONAL INFORMATION IS COLLECTED

Your personal information is obtained directly from you either via a hard copy or electronic form, online forms on our website, email communications, electronic surveys, and on occasion telephonically with your permission.

 

Your personal information can also be updated by yourself on a website which can be accessed securely via your unique username and password.

 

 

5.     PURPOSE FOR COLLECTING PERSONAL INFORMATION

The Gideons collects personal information for the following purposes:

1. To provide you with services offered and requested.
2. To enable you to use the resources and other privileges available to members.
3. To understand your specific needs and requirements, and in order to improve The Gideons member benefit, service and experience.
4. To provide you with Gideon’s official communications in relation to the ministry’s events and activities, and keeping you informed of events and developments across the country.
5. To provide you with Gideons related marketing material due to your past interaction and attendance of events.
6. To ensure payment of membership dues and offerings.
7. To ensure payment to suppliers for services procured.
8. For statistical, historical and/or reporting purposes.

The Gideons will always ask for your permission before it uses your personal information for any purpose not disclosed above or unrelated to the activities/ministry operations of The Gideons.

 

6.     RECIPIENTS OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

The personal information collected is used only by The Gideons, its members and its employees in the rendering of the ministry’s purposes and services. Only in instances where the sharing of personal information to recipients outside of The Gideons is necessary in order to fulfil a Gideon obligation or service will such information be provided.

 

7.     PERSONAL INFORMATION SHARED TO THIRD PARTIES

As part of the member services provided to Gideons and Auxiliary, The Gideons may be required to provide third party service providers with minimal Member personal information (such as for example: name, contact detail, physical delivery address) in order to provide such member benefits. Personal information provided to third party service providers for such purposes, will be limited to only that information which is absolutely necessary in order for the member to enjoy such benefit which he/she is entitled to. No further information will be provided and third party service providers are prohibited from using Member or Friends’ detail for any other purpose other than providing the Member benefit or for statistical or historical purposes.

 

Your privacy is important to us. The Gideons will therefore not sell, rent or provide your personal information to unauthorised entities or to third parties for their independent use without consent. The Gideons will release your personal information to a party if it believes that The Gideons is required by law or by a court or statutory body to do so. The Gideons will also disclose your personal information if The Gideons believes that it is necessary to prevent or lessen any unlawful or harmful actions and to protect and defend legitimate business interests, rights or property of The Gideons.

 

8.     PROTECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

The Gideons values the information that you choose to provide to us and will therefore take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from loss, misuse or unauthorised alteration. The Gideons conducts regular security testing of its servers and ensures that its employees are trained around protection of personal information to ensure that your personal information is used correctly and protected.

 

When you use the services or facilities provided by The Gideons like the GideonsGO App, you may be given or provide a unique access number, user name, password and/or personal identification number (“PIN”). You must always keep your user name, password and/or PIN a secret and ensure that you do not disclose it to anyone. The Gideons shall not be held responsible for personal information accessed as a result of you providing someone your Gideons profile username and password.

 

Upon your request The Gideons will provide you with its records of personal information you provided to us. For security reasons, this information will only be sent to you after verifying and authenticating the member/ Friend status properly.

 

If you wish to object to The Gideons processing your personal information, kindly let the National Service Centre know about your objection via e-mail – info@gideonssa.org. Objecting to the processing of your personal information, may result in services being stopped, access or implementation issues or other service and communications inefficiencies or failures.

 

 

9.     STORAGE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION AND RETENTION THEREOF

Personal information is stored on The Gideons servers’ located onsite and in the cloud (which in this case may be hosted outside of South Africa) which is accessed by The Gideons internal employees only. Personal information will only be retained for so long as necessary to carry out the function, services required and/or historical and statistical use by The Gideons.

 

 

Personal information no longer required for the purposes of rendering services to you or after completion of services, will be destroyed. The Gideons undertakes to ensure that personal information shall not be stored for longer than 5 years, unless required to do so by law or other regulatory obligations and for historical/statistical record purposes.  The Gideons however may maintain de-identified information for statistical purposes.

 

 

10.  TRANS-BORDER FLOW OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

Your personal information may be stored on servers located outside of South Africa due to The Gideons’ Online System. The Gideons however undertakes to ensure that service providers used for such cloud servers and/or services are obliged to comply with the highest standards of data protection to ensure the security of your personal information.

 

 

11.  LINKS ON THE GIDEONS WEBSITE OR EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS

The Gideons is not responsible for the content or the privacy policies of websites of other institutions to which it may link you to – mainly for information purposes and access to documents provided by such institutions. The use of other third party websites and content is at your sole discretion. This policy applies solely to information collected by The Gideons.

 

 

12.  PERSONAL INFORMATION HELD BY OR DISCLOSED BY YOU TO THIRD PARTIES

If you disclose any personal information to a third party, such as a business partner or anyone other than The Gideons. You must be aware that The Gideons does not regulate or control how that third party uses your personal information. You should always ensure that you read the privacy policy of any third party.

 

 

13.  CORRECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

It is your responsibility to ensure that the personal information provided to The Gideons is true, correct and accurate at all times. You may update and correct your personal information at any time either yourself via your Gideons Online profile, via email communications to The Gideons, or by telephonically calling the National Service Centre. The Gideons does not vet or check the information provided to it, and thus will not be held responsible for any incorrect, outdated or deleted information it may have and which may be used to provide you with relevant and important communications.

 

 

14.  CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

The Gideons may change this policy at any time. The most current version of this Policy will be displayed on The Gideons website.

 

 

15.  APPLICABLE LAWS

This policy will be governed by the laws off the Republic of South Africa. Specifically, The Gideons undertakes to comply with the provisions of the POPI Act and the Promotion of Access to Information Act No. 2 of 2000 (“PAIA”).

 

 

Status: 2nd version Approved by: The National Cabinet Author: National Secretary Date of approval: 1 Junie 2021 Review date: 1 October 2023