Last updated: 7 August 2026
Books To Africa International, trading as Books2Africa ® is a charitable company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales under company number 08528635 and registered charity number 1152599.
Our registered office is:
Books2Africa
Unit 2, Barton Business Park
New Dover Road
Canterbury
Kent CT1 3AA
United Kingdom
Telephone: 01227 392239
Questions about this Privacy Policy or the way we use personal information may be directed to our Data Protection Contact using the contact details published on our Contact Us page.
Books To Africa International is the data controller for personal information described in this policy unless we tell you otherwise.
This Privacy and Data Protection Policy explains how Books2Africa collects, uses, shares, protects and retains personal information when you:
Specific activities may have additional privacy information where appropriate.
Depending on your relationship with us, we may collect:
Identity information — such as your name, title, date of birth where required, organisation and similar identifiers.
Contact information — such as postal address, email address and telephone number.
Donation and Gift Aid information — such as donation history, donation date and value, Gift Aid declaration details, home address required for Gift Aid, and information needed to administer and evidence a Gift Aid claim.
Collection, delivery and booking information — such as collection/drop-off address, booking details, delivery information, instructions and correspondence.
Payment and transaction information — such as transaction value, date, payment status, payment reference and payment provider. Full payment-card details are normally collected and processed by our specialist payment providers rather than stored by Books2Africa itself.
Account and profile information — such as account credentials where an account is offered, preferences, interests and your history of interactions with Books2Africa.
Technical and usage information — such as IP address, browser/device information, security logs, website usage and cookie or similar identifiers.
Communications information — including emails, correspondence, enquiries, feedback, survey responses and records of communications with us.
Marketing information — including your communication preferences, consent where applicable, opt-out status and engagement with our communications.
Application and programme information — where you apply for employment, volunteering, training or another programme, this can include information supplied in your application and information reasonably required to assess or administer it.
Where genuinely necessary, we may process special-category or other sensitive personal information, for example information relevant to accessibility, health, safeguarding or equal-opportunities requirements. We will only do this where an appropriate legal condition applies and with additional safeguards.
We may also create aggregated or anonymised information that no longer identifies an individual.
We may collect information:
We only process personal information where we have a lawful basis.
We may process your information:
To administer donations and charitable support — including collecting donated items, arranging drop-offs and collections, processing monetary donations, issuing acknowledgements and managing donor relationships. Depending on the activity, our lawful basis may be performance of a contract, legitimate interests or legal obligation.
To administer Gift Aid — including maintaining declarations, linking eligible donations to declarations, making or evidencing claims and complying with HMRC requirements. Our lawful basis is principally compliance with legal obligations and our legitimate interests in administering charitable funds properly.
To process purchases, payments, refunds and deliveries — principally to perform a contract with you and meet accounting and legal obligations.
To operate our programmes and services — including applications, volunteering, training, distribution and requests for educational resources. The lawful basis depends on the activity and may include contract, legitimate interests, legal obligation or consent.
To communicate with you — including responding to enquiries and providing service, donation, programme, security or policy information. This may be necessary for a contract, a legal obligation or our legitimate interests.
To operate and secure Books2Africa and our websites — including fraud prevention, cybersecurity, access management, troubleshooting, backups, audits and incident response. We rely on legitimate interests and, where applicable, legal obligations.
For accounting, governance and regulatory purposes — including audit, tax, Gift Aid, regulatory reporting and responding to lawful requests. We rely principally on legal obligations and legitimate interests.
For analytics and improvement — to understand how our services and website are used and improve them. Where cookies or similar technologies require consent, we obtain that consent before using them.
For fundraising and marketing — where permitted by UK GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. Depending on the circumstances, we may rely on consent or a lawful soft opt-in. You can opt out at any time.
Where you make a Gift Aid declaration, we collect and retain the information needed to administer and evidence Gift Aid claims, including your name, home address, declaration information and relevant donation records.
Gift Aid records are retained for the period required by HMRC. Where a declaration relates to continuing donations, it may need to be retained for the duration of the declaration and the applicable statutory period following the last relevant donation.
Gift Aid information is not treated as consent to receive marketing.
We may send fundraising, charitable-purpose or other marketing communications where:
Where we rely on the charitable-purpose soft opt-in, this may include circumstances where you provided your contact information directly to Books2Africa on or after the date that the relevant law took effect while expressing an interest in, offering or providing support for our charitable purposes, you were given a clear opportunity to opt out at that point, and every subsequent communication provides a simple opt-out.
We keep appropriate records of marketing preferences and may retain a minimal suppression record after an opt-out so that we do not contact you again contrary to your wishes.
You can unsubscribe from marketing at any time. Unsubscribing from marketing does not prevent us from sending necessary administrative, transactional, regulatory or security communications.
We use cookies and similar technologies for functions such as website operation, security, preferences, analytics and, where enabled, advertising or social-media functionality.
Non-essential cookies are not placed unless we have obtained the consent required by law. More information is available in our Cookie Policy and Cookie Settings.
Books2Africa uses specialist payment providers such as Stripe, PayPal and, where applicable, CAF or other approved providers.
Books2Africa does not normally receive or store your full payment-card number. Payment providers may process payment credentials, identity information, fraud-prevention information and transaction information under their applicable terms and privacy obligations.
Books2Africa may retain information such as the donor/customer name, transaction amount, date, status and payment reference where required for accounting, Gift Aid, reconciliation, fraud prevention or audit.
We use trusted service providers and other organisations to operate the charity.
Depending on the activity, these may include:
Some providers act as processors on our instructions. Others, particularly payment or regulated service providers, may act as independent controllers for some of their activities.
We do not sell personal information.
We require appropriate contractual, organisational and security protections when third parties process personal information for us.
Some of our service providers or their sub-processors may process information outside the United Kingdom.
Where UK data-protection law requires safeguards for an international transfer, we use an appropriate mechanism such as UK adequacy regulations, the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, the UK Addendum to approved standard contractual clauses, or another lawful safeguard.
We use technical and organisational measures designed to protect personal information against unauthorised access, loss, alteration or disclosure.
Access to personal information is limited according to business need and we maintain processes for detecting, investigating, recording and responding to personal-data breaches.
No internet or information system can be guaranteed to be completely secure. Where a breach occurs, we assess the risk to affected individuals and notify the Information Commissioner’s Office and affected individuals where required by law.
We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, including legal, accounting, tax, regulatory and dispute-resolution requirements.
Our normal approach includes:
Gift Aid declarations and associated records: for the period required by HMRC, including the applicable period after the most recent relevant donation.
Accounting and transaction records: normally six years after the end of the relevant financial year, or longer where required by law, an audit, enquiry or dispute.
Routine website form entries: normally deleted from website form storage within 90 days after successful operational processing where the original website entry is no longer required.
Routine correspondence: normally up to two years after the matter is concluded unless it forms part of another record that must be kept longer.
Marketing records: while communications remain appropriate and lawful; minimal suppression information may be retained as necessary after an opt-out.
Operational programme/booking information: according to the needs of the programme, with identifiable information deleted or anonymised when it is no longer needed.
Where legal proceedings, regulatory enquiries, safeguarding concerns, fraud investigations or other exceptional circumstances apply, information may be retained for longer.
Where information is irreversibly anonymised, we may retain and use it for statistical, research and impact purposes without a fixed personal-data retention period.
Depending on the circumstances, you may have the right to:
These rights are subject to the conditions and exemptions contained in data-protection law.
You do not need to stop using the Books2Africa website in order to exercise a data-protection right.
We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.
Some Books2Africa charitable activities may involve children or young people. Where we intentionally collect their personal information, we apply appropriate safeguards and provide additional information or obtain parental/guardian involvement where required by law and appropriate to the activity.
We would welcome an opportunity to resolve any concern about our handling of personal information directly.
You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK data-protection regulator.
We review this policy periodically and may update it to reflect changes in our services, technology, suppliers, legal obligations or data-protection practices.
Material changes will be highlighted where appropriate.
We try our best to get your order to you as soon as possible. After dispatch, our standard delivery (Royal Mail First Class) typically arrives the next day in the UK (but can take up to 7 days), in 6 days to the EU and 10 days worldwide. It is important to note that delivery times are out of our control, as we do not deliver the goods ourselves.
If the error is ours, we will reprint free of charge. If the error is yours, we will reprint for 25% of the original amount. If we have sent you the wrong size garment, we will absolutely remake it for you in the right size when you return it.
The guidance measurements given next to the shirts are supposed to represent what size person they fit. They are not the actual measurements of the garment itself, which naturally need to be larger than the person they are designed to fit.
Firstly, please ignore the washing instructions in the garment itself. These are for blank garments and not printed ones.
Wash your shirts at 40 degrees or less. Iron on reverse (cool). Do not tumble dry.
Whilst Royal Mail normally deliver all first class post within 1-2 working days, they can on occasion take longer. In the unlikely event that your goods do not arrive, allow 7 days before calling us. We cannot authorise any remakes before this time has passed as Royal Mail have been known to deliver within this time.
However, if you paid to have Express delivery, contact us immediately as we can provide you with the tracking reference to chase it with the carrier.