Privacy notice

We are an Irish registered charity (Charity Reg No. 20032289) and are also registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office. Our contact details are: The Donkey Sanctuary (Ireland) Company Limited by Guarantee, Liscarroll, Mallow, Co.Cork, Ireland, telephone: +353 (0)22 48398. Whenever we collect personal data, we will always have clear marketing preference questions and information on how you can choose if and when we contact you. The Donkey Sanctuary will never sell your data. 

If you don’t want to hear from us, that’s fine. You can update your communication preferences by either writing to The Fundraising Team, The Donkey Sanctuary (Ireland) Ltd, Liscarroll, Mallow, Co.Cork or calling our team on +353 (0)22 48398 or emailing [email protected] 

If you have any questions or concerns about how we handle your personal data you can contact The Donkey Sanctuary by either writing to The Data Compliance Officer, The Donkey Sanctuary, Sidmouth, EX10 ONU or by emailing [email protected] 

We also have a sister company Donkey World Limited (company number 04452098) whose registered office is at Donkey World Limited, The Donkey Sanctuary, Sidmouth, EX10 0NU. Donkey World Limited processes personal data on behalf of The Donkey Sanctuary. All profits are remitted back to The Donkey Sanctuary.

When you share personal data with us directly

We collect personal data about you if you fill in forms on our website or correspond with us by phone or email. Personal data that we process could include details such as your name, postal address, phone number, email address, date of birth, IP address or banking details. We collect this for a variety of reasons, such as responding to your enquiry, providing a service or processing your donation. If you give us personal information about a third party – if you’re buying a donkey adoption as a gift for a friend, for example – we’ll also let them know how we plan to use it (to send them their newsletters, for example) and we’ll give them the option of not receiving communications in the future.

When you use our website

Like most websites, we use ‘cookies’ to help us make our website – and the way you use it – as relevant and interesting to you as possible. Cookies mean that a website will remember that you have visited our site. Our website contains forms that you can complete. We only ask for the information we need in order to provide you with the services, products or information you have asked for. Forms submitted online are automatically turned into an email and sent directly to a member of staff. If you would prefer, you can print out and post us the form.

Publicly available information

On occasion, we may use publicly available information to gain a better understanding of our supporters to improve our fundraising methods, products and services. This may include information found in places such as Companies House and information that has been published in articles or newspapers. When we receive information from other sources, we rely on those sources having the appropriate provisions in place telling you how they collect data and who they may share it with. We carefully check our sources to ensure that we only receive your information when it is lawful for us to do so.

When you support us via a third party

In some cases, your information may be shared with us by another organisation, for example fundraising sites like Just Giving. These independent third parties will only do so when you have indicated that you wish to support The Donkey Sanctuary and have given your consent.

When you have given permission to another organisation to share your information

You may have given permission for a company or other organisation to share your data with third parties. This could be when you buy a product, register for an online competition, complete a survey or sign up with a comparison site.

When you have given permission using social media

Depending on your settings or the privacy policies for social media and messaging services like Facebook, WhatsApp or Twitter, you might give us permission to access information from those accounts or services.

We will collect, store and use the personal data you provide to us in order to carry out the activities relevant to the provision of our services to you We may use the personal information held about you in the following ways:

• To provide you with information, which you have requested, about ways to support The Donkey Sanctuary, our services and campaigns.
• To provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us, such as rehoming a donkey.
• To be used as part of our efforts to prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our website.
• To analyse and report on the number and nature of contacts with the organisation.
• To carry out research on the demographics, interests and behaviour of our users and supporters to help us gain a better understanding of them and to enable us to improve our services. This research may be carried out internally by our employees or we may ask another company to do this work for us.
• To provide your, or permit third parties to which you have consented, to send you information that we think may be of interest to you.

Legitimate business purposes

We must have a legal basis for processing your personal data. We consider that we have a legal basis where:

1. You have given us consent to do so for the specific purposes which we have told you about.
2. It is necessary for us to do so to enable us to provide you with the services that you have requested from us – for example, billing you or contacting you about the donations.
3. Provide you with information that we think may be of interest to you if you have agreed to receive it, or the law otherwise permits or requires it.

Where we process your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interests, these are our (or our third party’s) interests in providing our services to you in an efficient and secure manner.

Marketing communications

We’d like to ensure that you know about the progress we are making and to ask for donations or other support (such as adding your voice to a campaign or giving your time, for example). Occasionally, we may include information from partner organisations or organisations who support us in these communications – for example, those working with us to improve the welfare of donkeys. If you prefer not to receive any marketing communications from us, you can change your preferences and unsubscribe at any time by either writing to The Fundraising Team, The Donkey Sanctuary, Liscarroll, Mallow, Co.Cork or calling our team on + 353 (0) 22 48398 or email [email protected] If you choose not to receive this information we will be unable to keep you informed of new products, services and promotions that may interest you.

We may make use of additional information, including information about where you live, when it is available from external sources to help us create a profile of your interests and preferences. This enables us to ensure communications are relevant and timely and provide an enhanced experience for our supporters. It also helps us understand the background of our supporters so that we can make appropriate requests to those who may consider making a donation again, enabling us to raise funds sooner, more cost effectively and proportionately than we otherwise would. 

We may use third party suppliers to undertake these activities on our behalf and share your information with them to the extent required. Such information is compiled (either by us or our suppliers) using publicly available data e.g. addresses, information available from public registers, such as listed Directorships, information from the electoral roll and media coverage.

We make sure that there are appropriate controls in place to protect your personal details in accordance with current data protection legislation. We undertake regular reviews of those who have access to information that we hold to ensure that your information is only accessible by appropriately trained Donkey Sanctuary staff, volunteers and contractors. We may share your personal data with third-party service providers who assist us with administering the provision of our services to you including:

• with business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors;
• to The Office of the Revenue Commissioners in relation to Gift Aid when your consent has been obtained;
• with analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our website
;
• with our regulator, the Charity Commission, and the Fundraising Regulator in order to comply with our regulatory obligations and to help resolve complaints or other issues;
• with agents we engage to perform functions on our behalf including fulfilling order deliveries, sending customer communications, analysing data, providing marketing assistance, processing payments and providing customer service. They have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes. 
Where we use external companies to collect or process personal data on our behalf as described above, we carry out comprehensive checks before we work with them.

We may want to use some of the information provided, including gender or age or to publicise The Donkey Sanctuary’s work. We will only make this information publicly available if we have your explicit and informed consent (or your parent or guardian if you are under 16) and we will always seek such consent prior to using your information publicly.


The information that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (EEA). By submitting your information, you agree to such transfer, storing or processing by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us, or one of our suppliers. Such staff may be engaged in, among other things, the fulfilment of your order, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services. We will keep your personal data for no longer than necessary for the purposes we have set out above. We will retain your information for as long as needed in order to provide the relevant goods or services to you or perform any contract we have with you and for period afterwards in order to deal with any queries or maintain your communications preferences. Any third parties that we engage will keep your data stored on their systems for as long as is necessary to provide the relevant services to you or us. If we end our relationship with any third-party providers, we will make sure that they securely delete or return your personal data to us.

You have a number of rights in relation to your personal data. There are circumstances in which your rights may not apply. You have the right to request that we:

• Provide you with a copy of the information we hold about you.
• Update any of your personal information if it is inaccurate or out of date.
• Delete the personal data we hold about you - if we are providing services to you and you ask us to delete personal data we hold about you then we may be unable to continue providing those services to you.
• Restrict the way in which we process your personal data.
• Stop processing your data if you have valid objections to such processing.
• Transfer your personal data to a third party.

For more information on your rights and how to use them, or if you would like to make any of the requests set out above, please contact us using the details provided below. We will respond to all such requests within the time period required by law. Even if you consented to the processing of your personal data for marketing purposes you have the right to ask us to stop processing your personal data. You can exercise this right at any time by contacting us using the details provided in this section below. If you have any questions or concerns about how we handle your personal data you can contact the Donkey Sanctuary by either writing to The Data Compliance Officer, The Donkey Sanctuary, Sidmouth, EX10 0NU or email [email protected].

Read our easy to understand guide to our privacy notice for young people here.