Privacy Policy

VABT’s general commitment to confidentiality in relation to applications for assistance

The VABT assists members of the Victorian performing arts profession on a private and confidential basis. The nature of this assistance requires the VABT to discuss matters that are personal and private to those we assist. As such, the VABT upholds the strongest commitment to confidentiality. Unless lawfully required, the VABT will never disclose matters discussed or the circumstances experienced leading to an application for assistance.

Similarly, whilst we are happy for those who receive assistance to share publicly (if they wish) that they have been supported by the VABT, it is a condition of assistance that all recipients likewise maintain confidentiality about the specific reason they needed assistance, or the specifics of the assistance provided to them.

VABT PRIVACY POLICY

General

The Victorian Actors’ Benevolent Trust (ABN 92 253 071 535) (‘VABT’, ‘us’, ‘we’, ‘our’) is committed to protecting your privacy and the information you may provide us from time to time. We collect, store and use your personal information in the course of carrying out our activities, including when we provide our services to you.

The information we may collect, the ways in which we use it and the actions we take to ensure its security are outlined in the below ‘Privacy Policy’. By providing your personal information to the VABT, you accept the terms of this Privacy Policy.

The VABT has not opted in to the Privacy Act and is not obliged to do so as a small not-for-profit organisation.

All the same, we have adopted this Privacy Policy to conform as closely as possible to the National Privacy Principles (‘Privacy Principles’).

The VABT operates within the state of Victoria, Australia, and is subject to state laws regarding privacy and the making and keeping of records.

Collection

Through the course of our standard operations, the VABT collects information in a variety of ways including:

• directly from you when you, or someone on your behalf, provide information by telephone, mail, email, in person or via our website, or when you subscribe to any of the services provided by the Victorian Actors’ Benevolent Trust or make a donation. Personal information collected by the Victorian Actors’ Benevolent Trust may include, where provided by you:

  • your contact information, including your name, address, email address, phone number, mobile number

  • your bank account or credit card details

  • a history of your donations, correspondence and other interactions with the Victorian Actor’s Benevolent Trust

• when you visit our website we may make a record of your visit and monitor and log customer traffic patterns, site usage and related site information in order to improve the functionality of this website. Information collected for this purpose includes your name, IP address, the date and time of your visit, pages accessed, documents downloaded and the type of browser used

• if you send use an email message, we will record your email address and such other details that are necessary to respond to any requests contained in your email and any requests specific to your donation or other interaction with us:

  • from credit card providers where we seek authorisation for your payment

  • from our own records of how much you have donated

  • to check against publicly available sources of information

  • from government authorities having the lawful power to collect such information, usually only for statistical purposes.

From time to time, the VABT may also collect sensitive information from you directly, only as necessary to facilitate the provision of financial assistance in line with the VABT’s established purpose of assisting Victorian based professional performing artists, creatives and crew. In these instances you will be asked for this information up-front and only in relation to your application for assistance. Examples of the type of sensitive information that may be collected as part of an application for assistance are: your personal circumstances, gender, employment status, income, expenses, medical history, housing situation, banking details, affiliations and other information, as necessary, to facilitate the provision of financial assistance.

We will not collect personal information that would be unlawful, unnecessary or unrelated to our activities.

Please be aware that if you choose not to provide us with certain personal information that we require, we may not be able to provide the required service.

Usage

The information you provide and we collect is used to facilitate the VABT’s standard operations. This may include:

• to provide a service, including but not limited to:

  • processing donations or purchases and providing receipts

  • assessing, determining eligibility and/or facilitating an application for assistance

• contacting third parties such as professional advisers, service providers, health care professionals and government or community agencies for the express purpose of providing assistance to you

• answering your enquiries

• to enhance or improve the VABT’s operations.

Where reasonably practical, the VABT will endeavour to utilise de-identifying practices. For example, when collating a list of Donors to determine the most convenient suburb to host an upcoming fundraiser, the relevant information (home address) may be extracted and reviewed for this purpose, in isolation and separate from name, phone number or other identifying details.

From time to time, we may also use the information collected to communicate with you, by way of email, mail or phone, about news, updates or other information which may be of interest. You may wish to opt-out of this communication at any time through a dedicated ‘unsubscribe’ link included in email correspondence or by contacting enquiries@vabt.com.au.

Storage and Security

The VABT is committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring your information is secure. As such, the VABT takes all reasonable endeavours, including suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures, to protect the information we collect. The information we collect may be stored electronically or physically.

This website uses a security system designed to protect your details from unauthorised use. Despite the foregoing, the VABT will not be held liable for the consequences of unauthorised access to your personal information. Provision of personal information to the VABT via electronic means, including via this website, is at your own risk. Should you wish, you may provide information or send documents via an alternative means, such as telephone or mail, using the details provided on the Contact Us page of this website.

The VABT may destroy, delete or de-identify any information collected if and as necessary, when requested by you, or at a time deemed by us that the information may no longer be required. Every effort will be made to ensure that destruction or removal of information, either physically or electronically, is as comprehensive, secure and complete as possible within reasonable endeavours.

Credit card and bank account information supplied by you through the payment portal is not held or stored by us and used only by the payment portal for the purposes of the transaction.  On those occasions where you provide VABT with credit card or bank account information, it will be used only for the purpose for which is was supplied and then deleted once that purpose is complete.

The VABT will comply with all reporting requirements according to law to the extent required by law.

Disclosure

The VABT do not sell or rent personal information collected during the course of its operations however, in certain circumstances, it may be necessary for the VABT to disclose information about you or your use of the website. This may include:

• to credit providers for the purposes of processing credit card information

• to organisations for the purposes of credit reporting and fraud checking

• to our accountants, auditors and lawyers

• to service providers engaged or employed by the VABT in order to facilitate the VABT’s standard operations, such as an online mailing list generator

• to government, law enforcement or other organisations where required to do so by law

• contacting third parties such as professional advisers, service providers, health care professionals and government or community agencies for the express purpose of providing assistance to you

• in the case of an emergency or in exceptional circumstances, the Committee of Management may at its discretion authorise the release of the personal information, for the protection of the health or safety of you or third parties

• in order to protect our legal rights

• if we suspect any unlawful activity arising out of your use of this website

• if we obtain your consent.

The VABT does not generally disclose details relating to individual donations. However, in the event that the VABT determines a donation warrants public disclosure or recognition, we reserve the right to disclose the sum of the donation, but we will not disclose any identifying details related to the donation, including but not limited to your name, without first seeking and receiving your consent.

Cross-border Disclosure of Personal Information

The VABT is a member of the Alliance of Australian Performing Arts Benevolent Funds (‘Alliance’). As such, we may act in unison and partnership with other Alliance members in times of coordinated fundraising, marketing or advocacy. From time-to-time, we may be reasonably required to share elements of your personal information with Alliance members. This information will be limited to:

• name

• email address/s

• phone number/s

• residential and/or postal address/s

• age

• gender

• donation history.

Credit card details, banking details, medical history or any of the other types of information the VABT may otherwise collect, as outlined earlier in this Privacy Policy, will not be shared with Alliance members.

Links

We provide links to external websites, partners or service providers.  We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of other external websites. We recommend familiarising yourself with the privacy policy of any website you elect to visit.

Cookies

Cookies are small files of information that save and retrieve information about your visit to our site. We use cookies to help provide you with a better service. Cookies enable us to analyse traffic on our website, and may be used for marketing purposes or for authentication.

If you do not wish information to be gathered on a cookie it is possible to disable the acceptance of cookies by your web browser, via your browser’s settings. In some circumstances this may mean that you will not be able to take full advantage of some parts of the website.

Adoption, Use or Disclosure of Government Related Identifiers

We will not adopt a government related identifier of an individual as its own identifier of the individual unless it is required or authorised by an Australian law or a court order or otherwise authorised under paragraphs 9.2 or 9.3 of the Australian Privacy Principles.

Data Breaches

The VABT is committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring your information is secure. As outlined, the VABT takes all reasonable endeavours, including suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures, to protect the information we collect.

In the unlikely event of a Data Breach we will usually comply with the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme and will tell you if a data breach is likely to cause you serious harm.

Examples of serious harm include:

• identity theft, which can affect your finances and credit report

• financial loss through fraud

• a likely risk of physical harm, such as by an abusive ex-partner

• serious psychological harm

• serious harm to an individual’s reputation

In the unlikely event of a data breach, we will take all reasonable endeavours to determine whether it is likely to result in serious harm, however this may take up to 30 days to assess. We will take all reasonable endeavours to reduce the chance that an individual experiences harm in the event of a data breach. If we are successful, and the data breach is not likely to result in serious harm, we will not usually tell you about the data breach.

Should it be necessary, we may contact you regarding a data breach via an email, SMS message or phone call. The notification will normally include:

• our name and contact details

• the kinds of personal information involved in the breach

• a description of the data breach

• recommendations for the steps you can take in response

In the event we are unable to contact everyone we need to, we will put the data breach notification on our website. We will also, where necessary promote this data breach notification, for example, through social media, news articles or advertisements.

Use of photographic or video images

We recognise that a photo or video of you is an identifier and can therefore be considered personal information. The VABT will only ever post (on social media or this website) or use a photo or video of you with your consent.

If the VABT is taking the photo or video, consent is taken to be given at the time of photography. Should you prefer for your image not to be captured, you can make this known to the VABT representative taking the photo or video at the time, who will not unreasonably refuse.

If the photo or video has been taken by someone else and provided to the VABT, the responsibility to seek consent from those appearing in the image rests with the original photographer or videographer. The VABT will not unreasonably assume that consent has been sought and provided from all individuals to the photographer/videographer.

Should you post a photo or video on social media that we wish to share, ‘re-post’ or otherwise communicate, whether the image features you or not, we will seek your consent.

Irrespective of the above, if at any time you wish for a photo or video that contains your image to be removed from our website, social media or any other place of use within the reasonable control of the VABT, contact enquiries@vabt.com.au and we will not unreasonably refuse to comply.

Changes to this Policy

This Privacy Policy is effective as of 26 September 2020.

In order to ensure this Privacy Policy remains current, changes may be made from time to time without notice.  Further use of this website will constitute acceptance of those changes. We recommend that you return periodically to ensure you are familiar with our current Privacy Policy.

Changes to your Information, General Enquiries and Complaints

Our objective is to ensure that all personal information collected by the VABT is accurate, complete and up-to-date. To assist us in achieving this objective, please contact us if any of your details change.

Further, if you believe that the information we hold is not accurate, complete or up-to-date, if you want to change any information that you have previously provided, or if would like to request that your personal information be deleted from our records, please contact us in writing via enquiries@vabt.com.au.

If you believe that your privacy has been infringed you are entitled to complain. All complaints should initially be in writing and directed to enquiries@vabt.com.au. We will respond to your complaint as soon as possible, within 14 working days, to let you know who is responsible for managing your query. We will try to resolve the complaint within 30 working days. In instances when this is not possible we will contact you to provide an estimate of how long it will take to handle the complaint.

If you believe we have not adequately dealt with your complaint, you have the right to also make a complaint to the relevant Commissioner. For complaints relating to your personal information and privacy, this is the Australian Information Commissioner, www.oaic.gov.au.

If you have any questions or concerns about our Privacy Policy or the use of your personal information, please contact us at enquiries@vabt.com.au