Privacy Policy

About this Policy

This Privacy Policy (Policy)  applies to Mary’s Meals Australia (ABN 40617836889) (Mary’s Meals, us, we our) of 84 Showground Rd, Castle Hill, NSW, 2154, Australia, and describes how Mary’s Meals collects, handles and protects your personal information, and your rights, as required by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act), which includes the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

We are a charity dedicated to providing life-changing school meals to children in some of the world's poorest communities. Our mission is to enable people to offer their money, goods, skills, time, or prayer, and through this involvement, provide the most effective help to those suffering the effects of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest communities. We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. 

This Policy explains the types of personal information that we usually collect and about whom, why we collect and use this information, who we usually disclose it to, how we store and keep it secure and your rights in relation to your personal information, including how to make a privacy complaint and how we deal with complaints.

We may make changes to this Policy from time to time.  If we do so, we will post the changes on our website at www.marysmeals.org.au and they will apply from the time we post them. You should check back from time to time to see any updates or changes to this policy, as it applies to how we deal with your personal information. 

This Privacy Policy was last updated on February 2025.

Contents of this Policy

Scope of this Privacy Policy

Your right to anonymity and pseudonymity

The personal information we collect

How we collect your personal information

Collection of information through our website – Cookies and Analytics

Why we collect, hold and use your personal information

Direct marketing and related communications

Disclosures of your personal information

Overseas disclosures of personal information

Storage and retention of personal information

Your privacy rights – access and correction of your personal information

Complaints and contacting us

Scope of this Privacy Policy

This policy applies to our handling of ‘personal information’ which is defined in the Privacy Act as any information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable to us.

Your right to anonymity and pseudonymity

Where it is lawful and practicable to do so, you can choose not to identify yourself when interacting with us or to use a pseudonym. In certain circumstances we usually need your name, contact information and other details to provide services to you or to receive your support or help, or to process a job application.

Personal information that we collect

We only collect personal information that is reasonably necessary for us to perform our activities to achieve our purposes, and that helps us engage with you. 

The types of personal information we collect depends on who you are. We collect and hold personal information about our supporters, potential supporters, including website visitors and donors (together supporters), employees, volunteers and job candidates.

The safety of children is very important to us. We do not knowingly collect the personal information of those who are under 16 years old without the consent of their parent or guardian. If you are under 16 please call us on (+61 )0479 034 547 for further information.

Supporters 

The personal information we usually collect about our supporters may include:

• identifying information (such as your name and date of birth);
• contact details (such as your postal address, phone numbers (home, work and mobiles as applicable), email address(es));
• financial and donation information (such as bank account details for setting up regular direct debits, credit card details for processing credit card payments, employer details for processing a payroll gift  and other information on donations made);
• technical information about your visits to our website (such as internet protocol (IP) addresses, login information, browser type and version, pages accessed, files downloaded, full Uniform Resource Locators, (URLs), clickstream to, through and from the website (including date and time), products viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages and page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks and mouse-overs);
• marketing preferences about if and how you would like to be contacted.
• information given when using our website, including personal preferences on how you use our website; and
• any other information you share with us including records of correspondence between you and ourselves (whether by telephone, e-mail or otherwise), information you provide when you fill out a form online, complete a survey, submit an application, when you make an enquiry or a complaint.

Employees, volunteers and job candidates

The personal information we usually collect about our volunteers and job candidates may include:

• employment history, and qualifications;
• academic records, references and medical information;
• personal and alternative contact details;
• banking details; and
• criminal record history.

Once you become an employee, your information is held in an employee record.

How we collect your personal information

We collect the personal information from you directly where we can including:

• when you visit and interact with us on our website (www.marysmeals.org.au);
• from online forms, applications, communications and other documents, you provide to us; and
• when you otherwise interact with us, such as when you call us.

In some circumstances and where legally permitted including with your consent, we collect some personal information from other sources or a third party, for example where it is not practical or reasonable to collect it from you directly. This may include information from:

• referees provided by you in support of an application for a Mary’s Meal position (either as an employee, associate or volunteer); and
• publicly available sources, such as social media subject to the settings.

Collection of information through our website – Cookies and Analytics

We use cookies on our website. A cookie is a small text file that the website may place on your device to store information. Our website uses cookies to distinguish a supporter from other users of the website and to help us to provide supporters with a good experience when you browse our website. 

Cookies also allow us to improve our website.  For detailed information on the cookies we use and why we use them see our Cookie Policy: https://www.marysmeals.org.au/policies-and-sitelinks/cookie-policy

We also use web-based analytics for online behavioural advertising. Online behavioural advertising or interest-based advertising tailor ads to your interests by analysing your browsing habits. By grouping users with similar interests, advertisers can serve more relevant ads to you. This is known as retargeting, where ads are shown based on the online content you’ve recently viewed. Third-party vendors show our advertisements on websites across the Internet. This is done using:

• [insert – e.g ‘Google Analytics see Google Privacy Policy here for more details about how Google uses information from sites or apps that use Google Analytics’]

Why we collect, hold and use your personal information 

We collect your personal information to use and share for the main purposes of carrying out our purposes to deliver our meals through our engagement with our supporters who help us do that. This includes :

• providing supporters with the products, services and information that they ask us for;
• facilitate and enable supporters to make donations to Mary’s Meals;
• sending marketing information to our supporters, including to notify you about Mary’s Meals  activities, campaigns and newsletters, including direct marketing from Mary’s Meals (where you have consented);
• keeping records of donations made and actions taken by our supporters;
• recruiting, onboarding and supporting volunteers;
• recording campaigning activities by supporters;
• performing our obligations under any contracts that we enter into with supporters;
• managing our website
• internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
• to gather and aggregate information for statistical, prudential, actuarial, reporting and research purposes
• complying with our legal obligations and assisting government and law enforcement agencies or regulators.

Direct marketing and relating communications

We may also use and disclose your personal information to send you communications about campaigns and events, unless you tell us not to. We may, with your consent, contact you from time to time (by email or phone) to tell you about things we believe may be of interest to you. 

You can opt out of receiving direct marketing from us at any time by using the unsubscribe information provided or clicking on the opt-out link in the electronic marketing communication you receive, by telling us when we call or letting us know at any time by contacting us using the contact details below. You agree that even if you opt out of receiving information about future events or marketing material, we will still send you essential information that we are required to send you relating to the services we provide.

Disclosure of personal information 

In certain circumstances, we need to disclose your personal information to third parties, to assist us in providing our services, or if required to meet our legal and regulatory obligations. Third parties may include:

• partners whom we have carefully selected to carry out work on our behalf, such as service providers and sub-contractors (for example, IT services providers, payment processing providers and providers of technical, payment and delivery services) to perform any contract we enter into with them.  The kind of work we may ask them to do includes processing, packaging, mailing and delivering purchases, answering questions about us and any services we provide, carrying out research or analysis to assist us in our mission and processing credit card payments. We only choose partners we trust and only share any personal information with them where they have undertaken to keep your personal information secure.  We do not allow these partners to use your personal information for their own purposes or disclose it to other third parties and we will take all reasonable care to ensure that such partners keep your data secure.

We may also disclose your personal information to others where:

• we are required or authorised by applicable laws to do so (such as requests made by government agencies or regulators);
• you would reasonably expect us to disclose the information for the relevant purpose;
• you have requested us to do so or expressly consented to the disclosure, or we may reasonably infer your consent from the circumstances; or
• we are otherwise permitted to disclose the information under an exception in applicable privacy laws.

Overseas disclosures of personal information

The personal information that we collect from you may be transferred to and/or stored in locations outside of Australia, and may include Europe. It may also be processed by staff operating outside the Australia who work for one of our suppliers (e.g. IT service providers) – in these instances, we carefully select suppliers with whom we have appropriate contractual arrangements in place to safeguard your personal information. This includes staff involved in, among other things, providing support services and processing payment details.  

Storage and retention of personal information

We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that the personal information we collect and hold is handled and stored securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and all applicable laws.

All information that you provide to us is stored on our secure servers and/or on the servers of our suppliers who we have engaged to host various IT systems for us in the locations referred to above. Any payment transactions will be encrypted using TLS 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 this password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our website; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received personal information, we will use strict procedures and security measures to prevent unauthorised access as far as possible.

We will keep your information only for as long as we engage with you in any of the above ways, and only as long as we need it:

    (a)  to administer their relationship with us;

    (b)  to comply with the law; or 

    (c)  to ensure we do not communicate with supporters who have asked us not to. 

To assist us in this process we will review on a regular basis the personal information that we collect and hold to ensure that it is only kept for an appropriate length of time.

If you have made a donation or a recurring donor we will hold your membership information for a period of seven years after your last point of contact. 

For individuals that are only supporters (and are not also donors) we will destroy most of your personal information if you opt–out from receiving updates, but we may retain some very basic information for the purposes of our suppression list to ensure that we do not contact you again.

Your privacy rights – access and correction of your personal information

You have certain rights in respect of the personal information that we hold about you. To exercise any of the rights set out below, please contact us using the contact details set out in the “Contact and complaints” section of this Privacy Policy below. We will respond to your requests within a reasonable time and may need to verify your identity:  

• Access. On request, we will confirm what personal information we hold about you, and, provide you with access to and/or a copy of the personal information.    
• Rectification. On request, we will amend any inaccurate or incomplete personal information (including by providing a supplementary statement) that we hold about you.
• Erasure. On request we will erase (delete) your personal information without undue delay in certain circumstances, (for example, if your personal information is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected or may otherwise be permitted to be used or required by law to be kept).  
• Restriction. We will restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances (for example, among other things, if you believe that their personal information held by us is inaccurate), if requested by you to do so.  
• Data portability. We will respect  your right to receive personal information about you that you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and to transmit such personal information to another data controller without hindrance from us in certain circumstances.  
• Right to object. We will respect your general rights to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.  
• Right to object to marketing. We will respect your rights regarding use and disclosure of your personal information for direct marketing purposes. In particular, we will not begin or we will cease processing any personal information of individuals for direct marketing purposes if at any time individuals ask us not to do so.  Individuals can stop targeted advertising messages on third party sites by amending their preferences by emailing info@marysmeals.org and can ask us where we sourced any personal information we used for direct marketing
• Automated individual decision-making, including profiling. Where requested, we will not make decisions based on automated processing, including profiling and we will ensure that you can always obtain a review by one of our staff members of any automated decisions and are able to express your point of view and contest any such decisions.  We will not make any automated decisions based on sensitive personal information unless we have obtained your explicit consent to do so, or this is otherwise necessary for substantial public interest reasons based on applicable law.

We will process all personal information in line with your rights in each case to the extent required by and in accordance with applicable law only (including, without limitation, in accordance with any applicable time limits and requirements regarding fees and charges).  

You can exercise their rights by contacting us using the contact details set out below in the “Contacts and complaints” section of this Privacy Policy.

Contact and complaints

If you wish to contact us with a privacy enquiry or concern, to exercise your rights, or you wish to complain about the way we have handled your personal information, or you wish to obtain a copy of this policy, you can contact us in the following ways:

• By email: marysmeals@info.org.au
• By phone: 0479 034 547
• By post: 84 Showground Rd, Castle Hill, NSW, 2154, Australia