Privacy & Cookies - Theos Think Tank - Understanding faith. Enriching society.

This page contains our Privacy Policy and our Cookies Policy. The information we collect from you depends on how you use this website.

Privacy Policy

Who are we?

Theos is part of the umbrella charity the British and Foreign Bible Society. The Bible Society consists of several organisations including Bible Society, Bible Society Resources Ltd, Christian Research and Open the Book.

What is personal information?

Personal Information covers any data that enables us to identify you as an individual. This information could include your name, postal address, telephone number and email address.

When you supply information such as your name or email address to us, we are legally obliged by Data Protection Regulations to ensure that we only use this information for the purpose for which it was given, and to ensure that it is kept securely.

How do we use your personal information?

The information you give us will be used to keep you informed of Theos’ research, articles, news and upcoming events.

We may carry out analysis of the personal information we collect about you and add publicly available information to create a profile of your interests so we can contact you in the most appropriate way and with the most relevant information.

Subscribers to Theos email communications

We use your email address to keep you updated with our work in accordance with your email preferences. You can choose to sign up to any or all of the following options:

Regular e–newsletter containing a roundup of our latest research, articles and events, and other news (once or twice a month)
Occasional important updates, e.g. for vacancies, special events and media appearances (less than once a month)
Article alerts updating you each time we publish a new blog (several times a month)

You can change the way we communicate with you by amending your email preferences via the ‘Preferences’ link at the bottom of each email. You can unsubscribe by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of each email.

Purchasers of Theos reports and one–off donors

We will use the personal information you have supplied to us (including name, email address and postal address) to dispatch to you your purchased reports. We will retain your personal information and purchasing / donation history in our database.

Subscribers to the Theos Supporters Programme

We use your email address to keep you updated with our work in accordance with your email preferences (as above). You can edit your preferences by amending your email preferences via the ‘Preferences’ link at the bottom of each email.

We will also use your email address to send you occasional emails specific to Theos Supporters, such as invitations to the annual Theos Associates reception or advanced invitations to the Theos Annual Lecture.

Theos Supporters who have paid their subscription receive free hard copies of all our reports. We will use the personal information you have supplied to us (including name and postal address) to dispatch to you a copy of each newly published report. We will retain your personal information and donation history in our database.

Do we share your personal information?

Theos is part of the umbrella charity the British and Foreign Bible Society, which hosts our database. By sharing your details with Theos, your data may be handled by non–Theos employees of the Bible Society. However, you will not receive any communications from the non–Theos sections of the Bible Society unless you expressly choose to do so via the Bible Society website.

If you support Bible Society and Theos, but want to stop your communications from Bible Society, please contact Bible Society Freephone number 0808 178 4921 to amend your preferences. Please specify that you wish to continue receiving communications from Theos.

Theos never shares your details outside the Bible Society family, except where it is necessary to perform functions on our behalf, such as: fulfilling orders, delivering packages, sending postal mail and email, processing financial transactions. We use Campaign Monitor to send our email updates, Eventbrite to organise our events and send reminder emails to those who have booked, and Paypal to conduct financial transactions. These companies may only use your information to perform these functions and may not use it for any other purposes.

Your information will not be passed to third parties for marketing purposes.

Lawful basis for processing your information

We use different reasons for using your information:

Consent – sometimes we use your information to send you communications, such as emails, because you have given us clear consent to do so.

Contract – we may process your personal data when we need to do this to fulfil a contract with you, e.g. if you have purchased a Theos report or a ticket to one of our events.

Legal Obligation – sometimes we will need to store your information because we have a legal reason to do this, e.g. if you have gift aided donations to us, HMRC require us to keep the information for up to 7 years.

Legitimate Interest – we will process your information when it is in our legitimate interest to do this and when these interests do not override your rights.

How long do we keep your information?

We only keep your information for as long as we need to. We will have a lawful reason to keep your data and when we no longer need it, we will delete it.

Your rights

‘Right to be informed’ means we will be completely clear and transparent about how we plan to use your personal information.

‘Right of access’ means you can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and we will provide it within one month.

‘Right to rectification’ means you can ask us to update or amend the information we hold about you, if it is incorrect.

‘Right to restrict processing’ means you can ask us to change, restrict or stop the way we are using your information.

‘Right to erasure’ (or right to be forgotten) means you can ask us to remove your personal information from our records.

‘Right to object’ means you can object to us using your information for marketing purposes.

‘Right to data portability’ means you can obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes.

‘Right not to be subject to automated decision making’ means if we use automated systems to make a decision about you, you have the right to ask for a person to intervene, that then may change the outcome.

Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, such as Fundraising Regulator or the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), if you are not satisfied with our response to your request, or you feel we are not using your information correctly.

Cookie Policy

How we use cookies

Our website uses cookies to improve your online experience. By using our website, you agree to this policy and you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer or device. It helps with a number of things including:

Allowing our website to work properly
Helping to keep our website secure
Helping us to improve our website by understanding how people are using it
Making the site easier to use by remembering information you have entered
Improving your experience by showing information that is relevant to you

To find out more information about cookies in general go to www.aboutcookies.org

What type of cookies do you use?

First Party:

We use ‘session cookies’ which allow the website to link the actions of a user during a browser session. They are used for a variety of purposes such as remembering what a user has put in their shopping basket as they browse our reports. These session cookies expire after a browser session is closed, so are never stored long term.

Third Party:

We collect information about the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of all our website visitors, using Google Analytics, in order to see how our website is used and monitor site traffic. This helps us to continuously improve and develop the design and content of our site. This information is not personally identifiable information – it is anonymised.

How do I opt–out from cookies?

We recommend that you do not change your cookie settings as this may affect the performance of our website if you block some or all cookies.

However, if you do decide to change them, you can do this through your browser settings. To learn more about changing your cookie settings for the following browsers, these links may help:

You can also opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites.

How to contact us

Details about how to contact us can be found here.

Last revision: 23rd May 2018