Privacy Policy

Taking care of your personal information

At #CookForIran we know that our platform for raising funds for the people of Iran, really is your platform for raising funds. None of what we do is possible without you. That’s why taking care of the personal information you provide to us is so important. This privacy policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal information – please read it carefully. For the purpose of this Policy, ‘Personal Information’ means information which can identify a living individual.

Occasionally, we may make changes to this policy so do remember to check back from time to time.

If you have any questions on this policy, or wish to change how we use your personal information, please contact cookforiran@gmail.com with subject Privacy Policy.

#CookForIran as referenced in this document includes campaigns and activities shared by cookforiran.com and @cookforiran as well as activities listed as Official Activities by Official Partners on our channels. Please note that this document only covers activities of these platforms.

Going forward and for the purpose of this Privacy Policy we will refer to the activities as #CookForIran. Please note that hashtags can be used by the public and simple use of this hashtag does not affiliate an event, campaign or initiative as an official partner, event or campaign. Please check our website and social channels for official announcements. Please be careful when making donations and ensure all donations are directed to credible charities.

What is #CookForIran?

#CookForIran aims to increase awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Iran through food, a language all people understand and love. Similar to #CookForSyria and #CookForUkraine, this campaign is built around culture, food and community – raising awareness and keeping the movement alive while Iranians find a path forward. We are not a registered charity but all funds raised are donated directly to registered charities that we have vetted. The campaign is entirely volunteer-based with no expenses charged to the end donor unless otherwise noted in the event or initiative details. In some instances, supporters may not be able to donate their time or services in full. If there are costs which are associated with an event or initiative we will clearly note that proceeds are donated and indicate this on event communications. For example, supporters at public supper clubs may not be in a financial circumstance or wish to volunteer. While we will always do our best to maximize funds raised and engage volunteers for events we will also honor and respect supporters who may require payment. In cases where providers are paid, it will be acknowledged in events communications.

If you book an event ticket, it will be done through Eventbrite, Resy or Open Table this is carried out through their ticketing and payments tool. We have a charity discount in place. All funds will be donated to charity partners within 14 days.

How to change the way #CookForIran contacts you

We always want you to be happy with the communication you receive from us. If you want to change how you hear from us, or update your details, simply get in touch with our team at cookforiran@gmail.com

You can also change the way we contact you in the following ways by using the unsubscribe link in a group emails from us

Where you tell us that you no longer want to hear from us for marketing purposes, please be aware that we may still contact you for administration purposes, such as about any donations you make, event tickets you purchase or providing you with information you’ve requested or in helping resolve a query.

How does #CookForIran collect personal information?

Information is critical to ensuring we can achieve our objective. It helps us to operate as efficiently as possible and to make sure our interactions with you are timely, relevant and tailored for you. To do this, we may collect personal information about you in the following ways:

Directly from you

When you interact with us such as when you donate, take a campaign action or attend an event. Sometimes you might be interacting with an organisation working on our behalf. All official partners will be listed on our website.
When you visit our website we may gather information, such as which pages you visit or how long you spend reading a page. This data helps us to improve your online experience, for example by adding new features, or removing elements that make the website difficult to use. We may also use data and insights to help inform the choice of words and images that appear on the site, in order to improve visitors’ response to our campaigns. You can find out more in the section on cookies below.

Indirectly

When you interact with third parties such as when you donate through a third-party website, for example Just Giving, and give your permission for your personal information to be shared with us. Similarly, if you engage with us on social media and messaging services like Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn or Twitter you might give us permission to access personal information from those accounts. The data we are given access to by social media services will vary but will always be in line with the terms of that service.
From other information that is available to the public to help us understand more about you and ensure our communications are tailored to you. To do this, we may use personal information from publicly available sources such as Companies House, or information published in the media, as well as that which is commercially available through third party subscriptions. By understanding more about you, and how you might be interested in supporting us, we can help make our work as cost effective as possible.

Depending on how you interact with us, the personal information that we collect may include your name, postal address, email address, telephone or mobile number, social media name, your contact preferences, bank details, taxpayer status (to understand if we can claim Gift Aid), the date and/or year of your birth, and gender (where this is appropriate, such as when you register for a running event).

We may also collect personal information about the donations you make to us, any actions you take as part of a campaign for us, or events that you register for or participate in, and details from any interactions with our team.

We may also gather personal information that is publicly available to build up a better picture of you and your interests, as well as behavioural data on digital platforms so we can consider how best to ask for your support. To do this we do research, which may include using third-party subscriptions, to help us understand things such as the demographic information associated with your postcode, an estimate of your age, information about directorships and shareholdings, employment and earnings as well as your charitable interests and giving history.

We do this to make sure our communications to you are appropriate and tailored – something we know means a lot to our supporters.

We may sometimes use third party suppliers to support us in this work– to understand more about this please see the section below, “Sharing your personal information”.

How we use your personal information

We will always make sure we have a lawful basis for processing your personal information.

The lawful bases that we might use depending on why and how we are using your personal information, are:

if we have your consent
to enter into, or perform, a contract with you
to comply with a legal duty
for our own (or a third party’s) interests (known as ‘legitimate interests’)
- but we’ll always make sure our interests don’t override your rights (or those of a third-party)
to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another individual
- very occasionally, we may need to process your personal information to protect your vital interests (for example to protect your life) or the vital interests of another individual – for instance we may escalate a safeguarding concern to local authorities urgently where an individual is believed to be at risk of significant harm or we may process personal data in order locate individuals after a humanitarian disaster.

Here are some examples of how we use personal information for different areas of our work:

For administration purposes

To keep a record of your relationship with us.
To contact you with a query about a donation or where you have contacted our team.
To process your donations or other payments and verify financial transactions.
To process event tickets, orders, deliver products and communicate with you about orders such as card and gift purchases or community fundraising materials.
To process an application.

For advocacy and campaigns

To collect pledges of support for campaigns to stand up for people’s/children’s rights, like petition signatures or connecting you with your MP so that you can contact them directly to act.

For direct marketing

To let you know by email, telephone, SMS or post the latest news about our work for children and share with you how else you can help, where we have a lawful basis to do so. These updates may include information on fundraising or campaigning for us, our range of events, cards and gifts including inspired gifts, specific appeals as well as updates on our work with children.
Where we don’t specifically ask for your consent to do this, we believe it is in #CookForIran’s legitimate interest to let our supporters know about the latest news about our work and share with you how else you can help. We only do this where we don’t believe sending these will impact your privacy or cause you harm or distress; however, you can always let our team know if you’d prefer us not to contact you in any of these ways.
To analyse and improve our website, services, products or information we provide to you.
To measure the effectiveness of our marketing communications, for example by telling us if you have opened an email we have sent you.
To reach you and identify other similar people like you on social media who we believe would be interested in #CookForIran, and to show them #CookForIran content.
To verify if the email or postal address we hold about our supporters is correct, using a third party service

You can change how you hear from us at any time simply by getting in touch with our team through email at cookforiran@gmail.com.

For philanthropy and partnerships

To collect supplementary information from the public domain such as from professional networking sites, company websites, news archives, third party paid-for sources, the Charity Commission and Companies House. This additional information we collect enables us to tailor our communications and make the most appropriate requests to supporters who may be able and willing to make a major gift.
To carry out research to identify individuals who have an affinity to our cause but with whom we are not already in touch. We use sources from the public domain, and our volunteer campaign boards and committees, to identify other individuals who may be able to support us or introduce us to others at a major gift level.
To collect the following types of personal information on individuals: job title(s), affiliated organisation(s), previous charity affiliations/donations, education, career history, relationships/networks, relevant interests, and an estimate of a person’s age, all based on publicly available sources.
To conduct due diligence on donations in accordance with our legal and regulatory obligations and risk management policies and procedures. This is to safeguard our reputation and to help us mitigate any associated risk, so if you choose to opt-out of this, we may not be able to process your donation.

For research and analysis

To ask you to participate in surveys or research.
To understand our supporters better and develop audience propositions, this may involve analysing your personal information or combining it with publicly available information in order to create supporter ‘profiles’.
To analyse and report on trends in our supporters’ behaviour that helps us to understand our supporters better, and predict future behaviour, so that we can engage with you in an appropriate and efficient way.

For competitions

To enable you to take part in our competitions
To carry out the administration of the competition

For our website

To send you an email to check and see if there is any help we can give or any problems you encountered, for example when you enter information into a form on our website and start but don’t complete a form, make a donation or complete a purchase.
To reach you with our latest news and information about how you can help support via online adverts on other websites, based on your visit to our website.

To change how we use your information

If you wish to change how we use your personal information please contact our team at cookforiran@gmail.com

How do we keep your personal information safe?

We make sure that appropriate physical, technical and human controls are in place to ensure we take good care of your personal information.

However, the transmission of information over the internet is never completely secure and as a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your personal information, we make every effort to try to ensure its security both on our systems and while in transit between our systems and our partners who work on our behalf.

All team members who have access to your personal information understand the importance of keeping your information safe and secure at all times, are required to follow our internal privacy and security policies, and are given training to support them in this.

We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites, even if you access them by using links from our websites and we recommend that you check the policy of each site you visit.

We ensure that additional controls are in place for financial, sensitive and special categories of personal information (for example information about health or religion), which meet regulatory and legal requirements for managing these types of information.

#CookForIran is an international team so we may transfer personal information submitted by you to #CookForIran to other countries that may be outside the European Economic Area (EEA), or we may need to use a service provider or partner outside the EEA, which may include a country that does not have the same level of data protection as the UK. Where we transfer your personal information outside of the EEA, we ensure safeguards are in place to ensure it remains secure and adequately protected.

How long does #CookForIran keep personal information?

We will only use and store personal information for so long as it is required for the purposes it was collected for and for follow up communications while the campaign activities are live. How long personal information will be stored for depends on the personal information in question and what it is being used for, as well as whether there is any legal or regulatory requirement for retaining the personal information. For instance, we hold personal information relating to:

Supporter transaction and interaction history for five years from the last supporter interaction with #CookForIran. A further 10 years of anonymised data may be retained for analysis purposes. (Supporters are individuals who have had contact with #CookForIran in a capacity which supports our outcomes for children.)
Individuals who have requested we no longer contact them for direct marketing. We will retain minimum personal information indefinitely in order to comply with the request (name, address, contact details and suppression details) but with increased restricted access to that personal information by the team.
Financial data for our management accounts for five years following the current financial year.

How does we manage children's personal information?

We are committed to processing children’s personal information legally and ensuring that children’s rights regarding the use of their personal information are upheld. A child is defined as anyone under 18 years of age. Where consent is required to process children’s personal information, we will ask the person with parental responsibility for the child to provide consent on behalf of the child if the child is under 16 years of age. When a child becomes 18 years of age, we will re-seek consent from the individual or cease processing the personal information. Sometimes we will not seek permission because we believe we have a legitimate interest to process children’s personal information, or occasionally to protect the vital interests of children; in those situations, we will always ensure we have carefully assessed whether our use would be fair and not override the child’s right to privacy.

Sharing your personal information

We may share your personal information with partners, agents or service providers to allow them to perform services on our behalf or to help us understand our supporters more effectively. All official partners will have agreements in place with us and be guided to act in alignment with our values.

Our agreements require them to comply with UK law on data protection and to have systems and processes to protect the security of your personal information. We promise to always keep your details safe and we’ll never sell or swap your personal information with any other organisation.

We may provide your email address or mobile phone number to digital advertising or social media companies who work on our behalf, such as Instagram, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. This is so we can reach you and others like you with our latest news and information about how you can help keep children safe.

We may disclose personal information if required to do so by law or if we believe that such action is necessary to protect and defend the rights, property or personal safety of #CookForIran, our websites or our visitors and for other lawful purposes.

Here are some examples of the organisations with which we may share your data:

Social media partners

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinekdIn

To process Donations

Eventbrite, JustGiving, and with charity partners who will process donations. These are noted on our website.

To process and carry out our activities

Google Workspace, Slack, Eventbrite, and SquareSpace

What are your rights?

You have the right to:

Request a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and to ask us to confirm how we use your personal information (“Access”)
Request that we correct the personal information we hold about you if it is not accurate, complete and up to date (“Rectification”).

Depending on why we have and use your Personal Information you may also have the following rights:

Be informed about what we are doing with your personal information (“Informed”)
Ask us for the personal information we hold about you to be erased from our records (“Erasure”)
Ask us to send another organisation personal information that you have provided to us (“Data Portability”)
Ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information for a period of time (“Restriction”)
Object to the processing of your personal information (such as using it for direct marketing) (“Object”)
Understand and input into a decision made by solely automated means if it has a legal or similarly significant effect on you (“Automated Decision Making”)
Withdraw consent if that is the basis that we are relying on. We will inform you how to do this.

If you would like further information about your rights or wish to exercise them, please contact our team at cookforiran@gmail.com.

If you are requesting a copy of your personal information, please put this in writing (together with proof of your identity) to our team at the email address given above. It is helpful if you explain what particular records you are seeking, but you do not have to say.

We won’t charge an administration fee for considering and/or complying with any requests to exercise your rights unless we believe the request is excessive in nature. If we are unable to fulfill your request for any reason, we will provide you with a reason as to why.

If you are not happy with the way we have handled your personal information and are unable to resolve the issue with us personally, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s independent body set up to uphold information rights.

Our Data Protection Officer can be contacted by writing to Data Protection Officer cookforiran@gmail.com.

How do we use cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your device that help us improve our websites, that help provide you with the best experience when you visit our websites and when we communicate with you, and to deliver #CookForIran adverts relevant to you and your interests when you visit other websites. We may use both 1st party and 3rd party cookies. 1st party cookies are set by us, 3rd party cookies are set by a partner on our behalf.

Cookies and similar technologies (such as web beacons (pixels), device fingerprinting or server logging) help us to:

Personalise the website to your requirements. If, for example, on a previous visit you went to the Syria Emergency page, then we might find this out from your cookie and highlight particular information related to this appeal which you may find interesting, on a second visit.
Avoid asking you to register or complete details twice.
Estimate the number of visitors to our site, including the source and patterns relating to this traffic.
Understand how visitors use the site, and how we can enhance this experience.
Measure the effectiveness of our marketing communications, for example by telling us if you have opened an email we have sent you.
Display relevant advertising to you when you visit other websites.

You are able to set your devices to accept all cookies, to choose the types of cookies you accept, to notify you when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. For instructions on how to do this visit www.aboutcookies.org.uk/managing-cookies.

Please find below a table detailing the types of cookies used on our website.

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Essential Cookies

These cookies are primarily 1st party (controlled by #CookForIran) cookies and are essential in order to enable you to move around our website(s) and use its features. Without these cookies, services like making a donation or signing up to an event, cannot be provided. We do not ask for your permission to set these cookies as we believe that it is in #CookForIran’s legitimate interests to set essential cookies and we do not believe that this affects your privacy rights; however, you can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies; if you do, please remember that some parts of our site may not work.

Functional Cookies

These are 3rd party (controlled by our partners) cookies that allow our website to provide enhanced, more personal, or more effective features, such as embedded videos, live chat or web forms.

Marketing Cookies

These 3rd party (controlled by our partners) cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns. They are usually placed by advertising networks with #CookForIran’s permission. They remember that you have visited our website and this information is shared with other organisations (such as advertisers), so that you may see adverts relating our work or the work of our charity partners on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies, you will not experience our targeted advertising across different websites; you may still see adverts elsewhere online, but these will not be connected to your previous activity on our website

You can also find out more about cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.eu.