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Privacy policy.

Our privacy statement

On this page:

Guide Dogs Victoria (ABN 68 004 621 461) (we or us) respects your privacy and the trust you place in us when providing your personal information. We are committed to protecting that personal information and this privacy policy explains how we do that.

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General

What we collect: We collect your name, contact details, payment information, health information (if relevant to our services) and how you interact with us — including online and at events.

Why we collect it: To provide services, conduct fund-raising campaigns, process donations, improve what we do, meet legal obligations, keep you informed, manage staff and volunteers and to improve our operations.

Donor insights: We use trusted third-party tools to help us understand who might support us and improve our fundraising effectiveness. You can opt out at any time.

Who we share with: We may share your personal information with service providers (like cloud-hosting providers), some of whom are overseas (e.g. in the US and Singapore). We take steps to keep your personal information safe.

Your rights: You can ask to see, correct, or delete your personal information. You can also complain if you’re unhappy with how we handle your personal information. Please contact us using our details set out below.

Want more detail? This snapshot isn’t exhaustive. Please read on for further information.

We encourage you to check our privacy policy on our website as it will change from time to time. We will post any changes on this page.

Our privacy policy sets out how we collect, use, disclose and manage your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and Victorian privacy legislation, including the Health Records Act 2001 (Vic) and the Health Privacy Principles (HPPs) (collectively Privacy Laws).

By providing your personal information to us, you consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this privacy policy and any other arrangements that apply between us.

Personal Information

What is Personal Information?
Personal information includes information or an opinion about an individual who is reasonably identifiable.

Sensitive information is a subset of personal information and includes information or an opinion about an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, memberships, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, health information, criminal record or genetic information.

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Why do we collect personal information?
Some examples of why we collect, hold and use personal information include:
• to send information that has been requested by clients or support recipients;
• to offer, promote and provide our services;
• to manage employees, contractors, volunteers, and the services they provide;
• to conduct analysis to improve our services, communications and fundraising strategies;
• to process donations and issue receipts;
• to communicate with you, referrers, donors, clients and stakeholders;
• to support the provision of client services and meet legislative requirements as a registered

National Disability and Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP) service provider;
• to seek additional support to help fund the services we provide for our clients;
• to enable you to access and use our website and related services; and
• to comply with our legal and regulatory requirements.

We receive minimal government funding and depend on financial support from the community to provide our services. This means it is necessary to conduct fundraising activities.
We may collect information for statistical purposes about services provided and demographic data, so we can tailor the information we provide to you and our donors.

We collect financial information (such as credit card information) in order to receive payment for donations and/or orders for our products.

We may provide aggregated and de-identified statistical information to our sponsors and government departments without identifying any individuals. De-identified data may also be used to meet regulatory and funding requirements or for the purposes of research, internal reporting and improvement of services, including improving fundraising. We may collect information about potential donors, sponsors or members from information that is publicly available to help us develop our fundraising, donor, sponsorship and membership programs.

We use predictive data modelling tools from our third party suppliers to support our fundraising efforts e.g. to analyse past interactions with us, improve our marketing, communications and fundraising strategies and to help us identify donors. These tools may use predictive data modelling to generate a donor score which may be used to target fundraising communications.

You may opt out of predictive data modelling at any time by contacting us using our contact details set out below . If you opt out, we will take steps to ensure that any scores previously generated using your data are no longer used in connection with your record, and we will not update or regenerate donor scores using your data. Your data will be excluded from future predictive data modelling processes.

We may use your personal information for a secondary purpose that is related to the purpose for which it was collected (or directly related, in the case of sensitive information), where you would reasonably expect us to do so. We may also use or disclose your personal information where required or authorised by law, or with your consent.

Types of Information

We collect a range of personal information to assist us to fulfil our mission. This personal information may include:

  • name, address, contact details such as email and phone number;
  • age or date of birth;
  • payment and donation details;
  • health information (as a form of sensitive information) where reasonably necessary for our services and either provided with your consent or as permitted by law (e.g. information about your eye condition, disability, medical and mobility needs) and/or as provided to us by your referrers;
  • Medicare number, My Aged Care ID and NDIS number;
  • interaction history with us (e.g. event attendance, support services);
  • predictive data modelling data from our third-party analytics suppliers;
  • credit card or banking information;
  • your device ID, device type, geo-location information, computer and connection information, statistics on page views, traffic to and from the website, ad data, IP address and standard web log information;
  • details of the products and services we have provided to you or that you have enquired about, including any additional information necessary to deliver those services and respond to your enquiries;
  • any additional information relating to you that you provide to us directly through our website or indirectly through your use of our website;
  • information you provide to us through surveys; and
  • any other personal information that may be required in order to facilitate your dealings with us; and information about employees, volunteers and contractors including qualifications, work history, emergency contact details and referee information.

Collection of Personal Information

We collect personal information:

  • directly from you (e.g. through donations, forms, calls, emails, website interactions);
  • from publicly available sources; and
  • from third parties (e.g. referrals to us, with your consent, or publicly accessible data).

Where lawful and practicable, individuals have the option of not identifying themselves or using a pseudonym when dealing with us. If you wish to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym when dealing with us, we will attempt to fulfil your request. However, it may not be practicable to assist, provide services or respond to you depending on your request.

Marketing and Personal Information

We and/or our carefully selected partners may send you direct marketing communications and information about our services with your consent (which may be express or inferred e.g. by your prior engagement with us). This may take the form of emails, SMS, mail or other forms of communication, in accordance with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) and Privacy Laws.

You may opt-out of receiving marketing materials from us at any time by contacting us using the details set out below or by using the opt-out facilities provided (e.g. an unsubscribe link).

 

We may disclose personal information to:
• our employees, contractors, professional advisors, agents and partners;
• referrers, referring organisations or other service providers (including health professionals), where necessary to coordinate or provide care or services and where permitted by law or with your consent;
• third party service providers e.g. parties providing our client relationship management platform (Salesforce) and other platforms for data hosting, IT support, services for event registration, surveys, mail (e.g. Mailchimp) and analytics (Google Analytics) and third party predictive data modelling services (such as Dataro);
• government departments such as the Commonwealth’s Department of Social Services (DSS) and the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DoHDA) to meet our legal obligations as a CHSP service provider;
• payment processors and gateway providers (e.g. Windcave) and financial institutions; and
• other persons, including government agencies, regulatory bodies and law enforcement agencies, or as required, authorised or permitted by law or with your consent.

Some of our technology service providers are located outside of Australia (e.g. payment gateway, cloud hosting and analytics services), including the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Singapore. Where practicable, we take reasonable steps to ensure that these overseas recipients handle personal information in a manner consistent with the APPs, including through contractual safeguards.

In some cases, however, these overseas providers may not be subject to privacy laws that offer the same level of protection as our Privacy Laws. We may not be able to ensure those recipients comply with the Privacy Laws, including the APPs. By providing your personal information to us, you consent to us disclosing it to overseas recipients for the purposes described in this privacy policy.
As a CHSP service provider, we must report to DoHDA on the delivery of our CHSP services via the Data Exchange, an IT system hosted by DSS. DSS, on behalf of DoHDA, collects information (including information about the services you received and an encrypted version of your My Aged Care ID) from us and stores this information as a de-identified record in the Data Exchange.
With the exception of your My Aged Care ID, DSS de-identifies and aggregates any personal information that is stored on the Data Exchange to produce information for policy development, grants program administration, research and evaluation purposes, and this will not include information that identifies or re-identifies you.

For more information about how DSS, on behalf of DoHDA. will manage your personal information, including how you can request access to or correct your personal information or make a privacy complaint, see DSS’s privacy policy available at https://www.dss.gov.au/using-our-website/privacy-policy.

Protection of Personal Information

We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or improper disclosure. We use a number of physical, administrative, personnel and technical measures to protect your personal information. This includes a network system firewall that is designed to protect information held within our computer network by preventing unauthorised access. Our data management systems and procedures ensure that personal information is handled in a way that is consistent with our privacy policy.

If personal information is no longer necessary for the purpose it was provided or we are no longer legally required to retain it, reasonable steps are taken to de-identify, archive or destroy the information. We retain personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes described in this privacy policy or as required by law. After this period, we take reasonable steps to de-identify or securely destroy the information.

We store information using a secure electronic document management system, for personnel and invoicing related records. Security and access protocols are maintained in order to implement reasonable steps to ensure that personal information is protected from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification and disclosure. Internal access controls and protocols ensure that only authorised employees can access personal information in circumstances where they are required to do so in the performance of their duties. IT systems allow electronic file access to be tracked and audited to ensure only authorised access to personal information has occurred.
We adopt governance mechanisms to help ensure the appropriate management of personal information. This includes maintaining a designated privacy officer role, our internal policies and procedures, audit programs, employee communications and training programs. We are committed to conducting a Privacy Impact Assessment for any new project where personal information will be handled or where a significant change to information handling procedures is proposed.

E-payment security on our website is achieved through encryption and system design. Additionally, the third party payment gateway is PCI-DSS compliant and does not store complete credit card details. Communication with your bank is real time and the complete credit card number is deleted once the communication to the bank has been completed.

If you do not wish to disclose your credit card details over the internet, you can phone us freecall within Australia on 1800 804 805.

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Your Access to Your Personal Information

We take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information (including health records) which we collect, use or disclose is accurate, complete and up to date.

You have the right to access the personal information we hold about you, including donor scores or derived fields. If your personal information (including health records) we hold is not accurate, you can ask us to modify our records.

If you wish to access your personal information or consider that the personal information which we hold about you is not accurate, and wish to correct that personal information, then please contact us as set out below . We will respond within a reasonable timeframe, usually within 30 days.

We may refuse your request to access or modify our records in limited circumstances as permitted by law. If that is the case, we will write to you stating clearly why we believe that the personal information we hold should not be accessed or amended.

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We use cookies and similar technologies to improve our website performance, to analyse user behaviour and to deliver personalised content.

You can withdraw consent for the use of cookies at any time by adjusting browser settings or using the opt-out tools. We may also use third-party cookies for analytics (such as Google Analytics) and advertising purposes. These cookies are subject to the privacy policies of the respective third-party providers.

Our website contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those websites and their operators. Their privacy practices may differ substantially from ours. We therefore encourage you to read their privacy policies before using those websites.

Contact Us

If you:

  • have any questions, concerns or comments about our privacy policy or the way we handle your personal information; or
  • wish to access or correct your personal information; or
  • wish to make a complaint,

then please contact us using the details below:

Privacy Officer
Guide Dogs Victoria
2-6 Chandler Highway, Kew VIC 3101
P 1800 804 805

Email: feedback@guidedogsvictoria.com.au

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at www.oaic.gov.au or 1300 363 992.

If you are in Victoria and your complaint relates to health information and/or your health records, you may also contact the Health Complaints Commissioner at www.hcc.vic.gov.au.

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