Privacy Policy

What We Collect and Why

When You Donate

To process your donation and send your tax receipt, we collect:

• Name and mailing address — Required by the IRS for donations of $250 or more
• Email address — To send your tax receipt electronically
• Donation amount and date — For your tax records

That's it. We don't ask for phone numbers, employer information, or anything else beyond what's necessary.

When You Visit Our Website

Like most websites, our web servers automatically log basic technical information:

• IP address and browser type
• Pages visited and time of visit

We use this only for security monitoring and troubleshooting. We don't use third-party analytics services, and we don't place tracking cookies on your device.

How We Protect Your Information

We take data security seriously:

• Encryption at rest — Your stored information is protected with strong encryption
• Encryption in transit — All data sent to and from our site uses TLS encryption (the lock icon in your browser)
• Minimal retention — We keep donor records only as long as required by law (7 years for IRS purposes)
• Limited access — Only essential staff members can access donor information

For wire transfer donations that require us to store banking information, we apply additional encryption safeguards.

Payment Processing

We use Stripe to securely process credit card and bank account donations. Stripe is a PCI-DSS Level 1 certified payment processor—the highest level of certification in the payments industry.

When you enter your payment information:

• Your card number goes directly to Stripe's secure servers
• We never see or store your full card number
• Stripe handles all payment security and fraud prevention

Stripe has its own privacy practices. You can read Stripe's Privacy Policy to learn how they handle payment data.

What We Report to the IRS

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (status pending), we have certain reporting obligations. Here's exactly what that means for you:

For Most Donors

If your total annual donations are under $5,000, your identity is never reported to anyone. You receive a tax receipt for your records, and that's it.

For Larger Donations

If you donate $5,000 or more in a year (or 2% of our total contributions, whichever is greater), we're required to report your name and address to the IRS on Schedule B of our Form 990.

Unlike political contributions, charitable donations to organizations like ours are not part of any public registry or searchable database.

Your Rights

You have control over your information:

• Access — Request a copy of the personal information we have about you
• Correction — Ask us to correct any inaccurate information
• Deletion — Request deletion of your information (subject to legal retention requirements)

To exercise any of these rights, simply contact us at the email below.

Information We Never Share

We will never:

• Sell your personal information to anyone
• Share your information with other nonprofits or charities
• Rent or trade donor lists
• Use your information for purposes other than processing your donation and communicating with you about our mission

The only exception: We will share information if required by law (such as the IRS reporting described above, or in response to a valid legal process).

Changes to This Policy

If we make significant changes to how we handle your information, we'll post an updated policy here and note the revision date below. For material changes that affect existing donors, we'll also send an email notification.