The Otis Foundation is strongly committed to protecting your privacy when you interact with us. This includes any interactions on our website, at our retreats, when you make a donation or attend one of our events.

Your privacy is important to us at Otis and we treat all information provided to us by you as confidential. We will only ever disclose your personal information when required by law or with your written consent. In providing services to you, we want to be transparent about the collection and use of your personal information.

The purpose of this policy is to explain:

• What kinds of personal information we collect and store
• How we collect and store the personal information
• Why we collect personal information and in what circumstances we will disclose the information
• How you can access details of the personal information we hold and if necessary correct the personal information
• How to contact us to discuss any breach of this policy or the use of your personal information.

Collection and Use of Personal Information

• Otis collects information about you in the following circumstances:
• where we are providing a product or service that you have requested. For example, if you book to attend one of our functions or book with us to use one of our retreats
• where the law requires us to collect your personal information
• where you have applied for a position with us, are employed by us or are completing work experience or other related work with us
• where you have provided the information to us through correspondence either written, verbal or electronic. For example, if you have any questions about our organisation or what we do
• where we would like to improve our service to you, for example through the use and collection of data for statistical purposes or by the use of electronic tools like cookies
• as part of our database and for any other purpose related to any of the above.

Generally speaking, there are two types of information we collect:

1. Information that you specifically give to us. This includes your name, address and your email address; and
2. Other information obtained from your use of our products and services, including our website.

While in some circumstances you may not need to provide us with personal information, or you may use a pseudonym to interact with us, there are circumstances when dealing with us that you must provide your personal information to us. 

For example, we are unable to book you into one of our retreats or process a booking for one of our events without your personal information. We will endeavour to ensure that any personal information obtained is complete, accurate, up to date and relevant.

We may also provide you with information regarding upcoming fundraising campaigns or events. If for whatever reason you no longer wish to receive this information please email, telephone or write to us (details below) and we will remove you from our marketing database.

Electronic Data we Collect

Otis automatically collects information to track user numbers and frequency of visitors to our website.

We use this information to help us identify what our users want from our online services and to help us identify what is unnecessary on our site. This data is predominantly collected using cookies. Most information is effectively anonymous; however, if you do not want this type of information recorded most personal browsers give you the option to disable cookies.

Storage of Personal Information

Information collected by us is stored electronically on secured servers. These systems are backed up daily.

If you are a previous guest of Otis, have attended one of our events or if you have agreed to receive marketing material from us, your personal details are also stored on our mailing lists.

Length of Time we keep Information

If your personal information has been provided to us for the purpose of using our retreats, booking a function with us or donating to Otis, your information will be stored electronically for a period of 7 years from the last date you interacted with us.

If necessary, information will be stored on a longer basis at the discretion of Otis.

In addition to the above, we generally keep user data on our server or in our archives for as long as we reasonably need it, for taxation, insurance purposes or legal issues.

We may alter this practice according to changing requirements. For example, we may delete some data, if needed, to free up storage space. We may keep other data for longer periods if the law requires it. In addition, information posted in a public forum could stay in the public domain indefinitely.

 Disclosure of Personal Information

We do not sell personal information to third parties.

We may disclose personal information to our staff and to third parties involved in the provision of our services. Some of the third parties we will disclose your personal information to include; property owners, real estate agents, the police or other government agencies (where required by law).

We may also disclose personal information to trusted third parties who we engage to process your personal information for us.

Personal information may also be disclosed to protect our legal rights, or in circumstances where the information relates to actual or threatened harm, a threat to life, health or safety or in circumstances where we have a good faith belief that such action is necessary to:

• conform to the requirements of law or comply with government orders, court orders, or any legal process served on us; or
• to protect and defend our property or other rights, the users of our website or the public; or
• in circumstances where our staff have knowledge of criminal activity;
• where collection and disclosure is authorised or required by law (in such circumstances we will only disclose the minimum personal information required by such law).
• We may disclose personal information to other companies and organisations if we are concerned that there is a risk of fraud.

We will not disclose information to international organisations unless you have provided your written consent for the disclosure of your personal information or we are required to disclose the information by law.

We will use all reasonable efforts to make you aware of the disclosure of your personal information contrary to the terms outlined in this Privacy Policy. For example, in such circumstances where it is unreasonable or impractical to obtain your consent prior to disclosing your personal information.

Where necessary we will keep a written record of any circumstances where we disclose your personal information.

Accessing your Personal Information

You have a right to request access to personal information held by Otis about you.

You also have the right to request correction of any personal information that we hold.

To seek access or corrections of your personal information please contact us as follows:

Email: marketing@otisfoundation.org.au

Telephone: (03) 5444 1185

Mail: PO Box 1191, Bendigo VIC 3552

Use of Your Personal Information to Contact You

We will never intentionally send you unwanted electronic commercial material, however, we may send you information that we feel may be of interest to you.

If you do not want to receive any further material from us or if you want to limit the material provided to you, you can do so by:

Email: marketing@otisfoundation.org.au

Telephone: (03) 5444 1185 mail:

Mail: PO Box 1191, Bendigo VIC 3552

We may also send you correspondence from time to time regarding a service you have used or an event you have attended.

Protection of Information We Collect

We use secure web services based on 128 bit SSL encryption to collect your information and we store certain kinds of data in encrypted form.

We follow reasonable technical and management practices to help protect the confidentiality, security and integrity of data stored on our system. While no computer system is completely secure, we believe the measures implemented by us reduce the likelihood of security problems to a level appropriate to the type of data involved. Data at Otis is protected by only allowing authorised access to data, strong passwords, up to date AntiVirus software and Firewalled internet connections. Email communications also utilise 128 bit SSL encryption.

We encourage you to be vigilant about the protection of your own information when using digital services, such as social media. While we will endeavour to ensure that any relationships we have with third parties include an appropriate level of protection for your privacy, we will be limited in our ability to control any electronic platform operated by a third party, this includes but is not limited to Twitter and Facebook.

Credit Card Information

Your credit card information is only stored and transmitted in electronic form.

We do not hold or have access to your personal banking details once a transaction has taken place.

Our credit card payments are currently processed using the Bendigo Bank secure payment site. The Bendigo Bank provides a compliant gateway service that is used to securely process payments. For more information, you can read the Bendigo Bank Privacy Policy.

Third Party Websites

Our website may contain links to third party websites.

We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of these websites even if you access those sites using links from us. Your use of these third party websites is entirely at your own risk and we recommend that you check the privacy and security policy of each website you visit. Clicking on a third party link will take you to a third party’s website. We make no representation or warranty as to the effectiveness, quality, legitimacy or data protections of any third party website.

Privacy Complaints and Enquiries

We want to ensure that we keep your personal information confidential and will do our best to do this, however, if you do have any questions or complaints regarding our use, collection or storage of your personal information, please feel free to contact us to discuss these issues:

Email: marketing@otisfoundation.org.au

Mail: PO Box 1191, Bendigo VIC 3552

We will endeavour to respond to your query, comment or complaint within 30 days of receipt of your correspondence.

If you are unhappy with our response or if we do not provide a response within 30 days you can make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (“OAIC”).

The OAIC can be contacted by telephone on 1300 363 992 or at www.oaic.gov.au