Privacy Policy

INTDEV Connect is committed to protecting your data and your privacy. We aim to ensure that any information you give us is held securely and safely.

Please read this policy carefully, along with our Terms and conditions and any other documents referred to in this policy, to understand how we collect, use and store your personal information.

INTDEV Connect holds and processes personal details in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations and the Data Protection Act 2018.

If you have any questions about this policy or how your data is handled, please email: info@intdevconnect.com


Data protection

INTDEV Connect takes data protection very seriously.

As you use our website, get in touch with us, or take part in our campaigns and activities, we collect information. This deepens our understanding of what you are interested in and helps us to improve the quality and relevance of our communications with clients and partners.

INTDEV Connect will never share your information with another organisation for their marketing purposes and we will never sell your information for any reason whatsoever. We know that this is important and want to reassure you that you are always in control of how we use your personal information with regards to our communications and marketing activities.

We do however need to collect and use your personal information for carefully considered and legitimate business purposes, which will help us ensure that INTDEV Connect can deliver its services and contractual obligations efficiently.

This policy will set out what data we collect, how we will use it, what the legal basis for this is, and outline what your rights are in respect of your personal data.


Purposes

The main reason we will use your personal information will be to help us effectively deliver our services, meet our contractual obligations and/or carry out our marketing activities, through your involvement in our campaigns and events.

We will always endeavour to be clear, honest and transparent with you whenever we collect and use your personal data. The overview below summarises the different reasons why we may collect and use your data. We may not use your personal information for all of these purposes, it will depend on the nature of your relationship with us, and how you interact with INTDEV Connect as an organisation:

Marketing: As a business, we have a range of marketing activities designed to generate income and promote our services. We use a range of marketing activities and channels such as direct marketing, advertising (digital) and public relations for marketing and income generation. This may include promoting ongoing campaigns which may be relevant to you, competitions, commercial trading activities, sponsorships and events.

Advertising: We use online advertising to keep prospects, partners and clients aware of our work and ongoing campaigns. You may see INTDEV Connect banners and ads when you are on other websites and apps, such as Social Media. We manage this through a variety of digital marketing networks and ad exchanges. We also use a range of advertising technologies. The banners and ads you see are based on information we hold about you, or your previous interactions with INTDEV Connect (for example the pages you interact with on the INTDEV Connect website) or on INTDEV Connect banners or ads you have previously interacted with. For more information on our use of advertising technologies and Cookies, please see our Cookies Policy.

Delivery of services: Delivery of our core activities may require the recording of our prospects, partners and clients contact details, their interest in our services, records of financial transactions and communications. We may also need to use your personal information for the prevention of fraud and to identify any misuse or abuse of our services.

Interaction with partners: Delivery of our core activities is at times done in partnership with our partner organisations and suppliers who are based around the world. As part of our relationship with these organisations we may collect and store contact details of partner staff and stakeholders, records of financial transactions and communications documents. We may also need to use partner staff and stakeholders’ personal information for the prevention of fraud anti-diversion and anti-money laundering purposes.

Analysis, targeting and segmentation: We will only send you communications that are genuinely interesting and relevant to you. We will make use of information you have given us and your interactions with our services, for predictive modelling of your interests and tailor and personalise our communications to you. This may also involve the use of focus groups to better understand our prospects, partners and clients’ interests.

Research and Profiling: We may collect data to carry out research on our prospective partners and clients. This is in order to improve our communications and ensure that we understand how best to interact with our prospective partners and clients. The primary way in which we do this is through Prospect Research. Information we gather from individuals as part of this process is kept separately from our marketing database and is only used for research purposes.

In some limited circumstances we may combine the personal information you have given us with information available in the public domain to create a profile of your interests and preferences where they are relevant to your potential engagement with INTDEV Connect. Information collected for these purposes may include information about your corporate directorships, shareholdings, published biographical information, employment, and relevant media coverage. We do this to help us better understand your business needs and requirements as they may relate to the services of INTDEV Connect and/or our contractual obligations to you. The use of publicly available sources helps us tailor the delivery of our services and engage you in activities that are most relevant to your areas of interest and influence. We may gather information about you from publicly available sources such as Companies House, Charity Commission, the electoral register and the media to help us fully understand your business needs and requirements. You can opt-out of your personal information being used for profiling or analysis any time by contacting info@intdevconnect.com

Due diligence research: As part of our services, we have a duty to ensure that our grantees selection and fund management activities pose no reputational or financial risks to our clients and partners. We may therefore use publicly available sources to carry out due diligence on relevant grantees, shared capital investors and matched funders to ensure that we are abiding by the law.  For more information on the circumstances this may apply in and the type of information required please contact info@intdevconnect.com.

Staff administration: INTDEV Connect employs staff and volunteers both in the UK and abroad, who play a crucial role in delivering our services. We process the personal information of all our employees and volunteers for recruitment, administration, remuneration, pensions and performance management purposes.


Lawful processing

INTDEV Connect, like all organisations in the UK, needs lawful bases to collect and use your personal data. The law allows for six legitimate purposes which organisations can rely on to legally process people’s personal data. Of these, only three are relevant to us for the type of activities listed above:

  • Information is processed on the basis of an individual’s consent.
  • Information is processed in line with a contractual relationship.
  • Information is processed on it being a legitimate interest for INTDEV Connect to do so.

We will also comply with legal requests where disclosure is required or permitted by law (for example to government bodies, statutory bodies, or law enforcement agencies for tax purposes, where it is in the public interest, or the prevention and detection of crime, subject to appropriate protection in law).

Consent: INTDEV Connect will always ask for your consent to send you marketing by email and WhatsApp.

Should we ever ask you to provide any sensitive personal data about yourself, for example any health condition that may be relevant if you are taking part in a INTDEV Connect event, we will always seek your explicit consent to process this data.

Where you give us consent to process your data we will always keep a clear record of how and when this consent was obtained, and you can withdraw this consent for all channels and activities at any time by contacting info@intdevconnect.com.

Contractual relationships: This purpose primarily relates to how we process the data that we hold in relation to our clients, partners, staff and volunteers.

Legitimate interests: The law allows personal data to be legally collected and used by an organisation if it is necessary for a legitimate business interest of the organisation – as long as its use is fair and balanced and does not unduly impact the rights of the individual concerned.

There are times when it is just not practical to ask a person for consent. In many situations, the best approach for INTDEV Connect and our prospects, clients, partners and volunteers is to process personal data because of our legitimate interests, rather than consent.

If you want to change our use of your personal data for marketing activities, you can do so at any time by contacting info@intdevconnect.com.


What are INTDEV Connect’s legitimate interests?

Governance:

  • Reporting criminal acts and compliance with the legal instructions of law enforcement agencies.
  • Internal and external audit for financial or regulatory compliance purpose.
  • Statutory reporting.

Publicity and income generation:

  • Conventional direct marketing by email, other forms of marketing, publicity or advertisement.
  • Unsolicited commercial or non-commercial messages, including campaigns and income generation.
  • Unsolicited communications to organisations, for example non-profits, grantmakers and bilateral aid agencies, to publicise our appeals and campaigns.
  • Personalisation to tailor and enhance the user experience of our digital communications.
  • Exercise of the right to freedom of expression or information, including in media and the arts.
  • Analysis, targeting and segmentation to develop income generation strategy and improve communication efficiency.
  • Processing for research purposes.
  • Profiling, including the use of publicly available information.

Operational management:

  • Employee and volunteers recording and monitoring for recruitment, safety, performance management or workforce planning purposes.
  • Provision and administration of staff benefits such as pensions.
  • Physical security, IT and network security.
  • Maintenance of suppression lists.
  • Processing for historical, research or statistical purposes.

 Financial management and control

  • Processing of financial transactions and maintaining financial controls.
  • Prevention of fraud, misuse of services, or money laundering.
  • Enforcement of legal claims.

Administrative purposes

  • Responding to any solicited enquiry from any of our clients, partners and stakeholders.
  • Delivery of requested services, products, resources or information packs.
  • Acknowledgement communications and receipts.
  • Maintaining ‘do not contact’ lists

When we use your personal information, we will always consider if it is fair and balanced to do so and whether it would be within your reasonable expectations that we would use your data in this way.

We will balance your rights and our legitimate interests to ensure that the way in which we use your data never goes beyond what you would expect and is not unduly intrusive or unfair.


What information we collect

We collect and use personal information such as names, work title, company directorships, place of work, business address details, as well as other contact information such as email addresses and telephone numbers. We also collect information about the services individuals use on our website, including any marketing preferences given.

We maintain a record of communications that we send to prospects, partners and clients, and will also log any communications that they send to us. If an individual attends an INTDEV Connect event it is possible that photographs or video may be taken, and information on how to opt-out of those photographs or video being used will be emailed. If an individual calls our staff/team, the call may be recorded for quality and training purposes.


Special Category personal information

Under data protection law, certain categories of personal information are recognised as particularly sensitive, including health information, race, religious beliefs, and political opinions (‘special category personal data’). In limited cases, we may collect special category personal data about you.

We would only collect special category personal data if there is a clear reason for doing so, as outlined earlier in this policy, such as where we need this information to ensure that we provide appropriate facilities or enable you to participate in an event (such as a webinar with flashing imagery, where we would need prior knowledge of any relevant medical conditions).

We will only use sensitive information provided to us for the purpose it is provided.


Where does this information come from?

The vast majority of personal data we hold is given to us directly by our prospects, clients and partners, staff and volunteers in the course of their interaction with our services, website, marketing and/or promotional activities.

We may occasionally use third party organisations to provide us with further details of individuals who have expressed an interest in INTDEV Connect and have agreed to receive communications from INTDEV Connect.


Data retention

INTDEV Connect removes personal data from our systems in line with our data retention policy and schedules. The length of time each category of data will be retained will vary on how long we need to process it, the reason it is collected, and in line with any statutory requirements. After this point the data will be deleted.


Data sharing

We will only use your information within INTDEV Connect for the purposes for which it was obtained. INTDEV Connect will not, under any circumstances, share or sell your personal data to any third party for their marketing purposes, and you will not receive marketing from any other companies, charities or other organisations as a result of giving your details to us.


Our Suppliers
We may need to share your information with service providers who help us deliver our services, for instance with our recruitment or programme partners. These “data processors” will only act under our instruction and are subject to pre-contract scrutiny and contractual obligations containing strict data protection clauses. We do not allow these organisations to use your data for their own purposes or disclose it to other third parties without our consent and we will take all reasonable care to ensure that they keep your data secure.


Current and Former Employees
When you leave INTDEV Connect, INTDEV Connect may process your data to respond to requests for employment references.


Where legally required
As noted above, INTDEV Connect will also comply with legal requests where disclosure is required or permitted by law, for example, to government bodies, statutory bodies, or law enforcement agencies for tax purposes, where it is in the public interest, or the prevention and detection of crime, subject to appropriate protection in law.

In some circumstances, INTDEV Connect may transfer your personal data outside the EEA. If it does so, this may occur under the protections of the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses but will otherwise only take place where appropriate standards and safeguards are in place.


Your data protection rights

Where INTDEV Connect is using your personal information on the basis of your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. You also have the right to ask INTDEV Connect to stop using your personal information for marketing purposes. Simply contact us on info@intdevconnect.com and we will amend your contact preferences. The law also gives you a number of other rights in relation to your personal data:

Right to be Informed: You have the right to be told how your personal information will be used. This policy document, and shorter summary statements used on our communications, are intended to be a clear and transparent description of how your data may be used.

Right of Access: You can email us on info@intdevconnect.com, asking what information we hold on you and to request a copy of that information. In accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018, we will comply with your request as soon as we are able, and at most within 30 days once we are satisfied you have rights to see the requested records and we have successfully confirmed your identity.

Right of erasure: You have the right to be forgotten (i.e. to have your personally identifiable data deleted from our systems). In many cases we would recommend that we suppress you from future communications, rather than data deletion.

Right of rectification: If you believe our records are inaccurate you have the right to ask for those records concerning you to be updated.

Right to restrict processing: In certain situations you have the right to ask for processing of your personal data to be restricted because there is some disagreement about its accuracy or legitimate usage.

Right to data portability: Where we are processing your personal data under your consent the law allows you to request data portability from one service provider to another. This right is largely seen as a way for people to transfer their personal data from one service provider to a competitor and is unlikely to be relevant to your relationship with INTDEV Connect.

Right to object: You have an absolute right to stop the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.

Right to object to automated decisions: In a situation where a data controller is using your personal data in a computerised model or algorithm to make decisions ‘that have a legal effect on you’, you have the right to object. This right is more applicable to mortgage or finance situations. INTDEV Connect does not undertake complex computerised decision making that produces legal effects.


Data security

We maintain a high level of physical and electronic security in relation to the collection, storage and disclosure of your information. We take reasonable steps to ensure that any information we hold about you is protected. We use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information given over the internet to protect all personal data as soon as it is possible.

The software scrambles data transmitted between your computer and our server, where it is unscrambled securely. While we make every reasonable effort to ensure that information sent to us is done so securely, we cannot warrant the security of information transmitted to us through the internet. When you transmit information to us via the internet, you do so at your own risk.


Cookies

INTDEV Connect uses cookies. Cookies are small text files on your device (computer, smart phone etc). They are made by your web browser when you visit a website. Every time you go back to that website, your browser will send the cookie file back to the website’s server. Cookies improve your experience of using a website, for example, by remembering your preference settings and by measuring your use of a website to ensure that it meets your needs. Cookies can also be used to show you relevant INTDEV Connect content on social media such as LinkedIn or X – these are known as ‘retargeting’ or ‘advertising’ cookies. For information on the types of cookies we use, how we use them and how you can control your cookie preferences, see INTDEV Connect’s Cookies Policy.


Use of IP addresses

We collect IP addresses to obtain aggregate information on the use of our website. An IP address is a number assigned to your computer by a web server when you’re on the web. When you are on our site, we have a server that logs your computer’s IP address. We only use the information we find out from tracking IP addresses in the aggregate, such as how many users entered a specific area of our site, and not to track a specific IP address to identify an individual user.


Changes to this privacy statement

From time to time, we will make changes to this statement to keep it up to date and relevant. Please make sure you check regularly to see what’s changed. This statement was last updated on 1 Jan 2025.


What to do if you are not happy?

In the first instance, please contact us directly so we can help resolve any problem or query. You can do so by emailing info@intdevconnect.com.

You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) if you have any concerns about Data Protection using their help line 0303 123 1113 or at ico.org.uk