IMPORTANT NEWS FOR OUR DONORS: Beacon CRM incident 

13th august 2026

On 3 August 2026, there was a security incident involving Beacon, the Customer Relationship Management system used by Windmill Hill City Farm to manage our contact data. 

We want to stress that this incident is not unique to Windmill Hill City Farm and affects organisations across the charitable sector that use Beacon’s CRM to hold their data.

 

We’re really sorry to be sharing this news. We know it may be worrying, and we want to be as honest as possible about what happened and what it means for you because it’s important to us.  

What happened? 

Our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is provided by a company called Beacon CRM. Beacon CRM Transform how your charity works Beacon informed us on 3rd August 2026 that they experienced a cyber-security incident in which someone gained unauthorised access to their systems using stolen login details. 

 

Copies of their database backups - which include some of the information we hold about our supporters - were likely copied and downloaded. Beacon's investigation is ongoing, and yesterday on 4th August 2026 they confirmed that copies of their database backups were made and likely downloaded by the unauthorised third-party. 

 

You can read about it here Incident FAQs.

What information was involved?  

Our review at the Farm indicates that the following categories of your personal information may have been involved in this incident:  

  • Name, email and where provided address and phone number.  
  • Donation amounts and dates.
  • Gift aid status

Please be assured, the information that may have been accessed does not include bank account details or card numbers. There is no evidence that any payment details from payment processors have been compromised.     

What are the potential risks?  

As personal information held within Beacon was accessed without authorisation, this could increase the risk of:  

 

  • Unsolicited communications or phishing attempts.  
  • Attempts by third parties to impersonate legitimate organisations (pretending to be us).  
  • Misuse of personal information in other fraudulent activities.  

We have no evidence that your information has been misused. We do encourage you to stay vigilant and take extra care when responding to unexpected emails, phone calls or messages. 

Windmill Hill City Farm has taken the following actions
  • Launched an immediate investigation of the incident.  
  • Reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).  
  • Reviewed affected data and made an assessment of the potential impacts.  
  • Informed our supporters effected directly. 

Questions and Concerns

If you have any further questions, please contact us on info@windmillhillcityfarm.org.uk and we will do our best to help. You can also read our Data Protection, Information Management and Confidentiality Policy.

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