Introduction
We’re committed to respecting your privacy and keeping your personal information safe. This privacy policy tells you what to expect whenSeeds of Hope collects personal information.
Who We Are
Seeds of Hope’s mission is to help young leaders find and achieve their goals and dreams through mentoring and scholarship funding. We are also creating a community of faith intent on encouraging community members along life’s journeys.
What Personal Information We Collect About You
Seeds of Hope gathers personal data for the following purposes: 1) to provide you with requested products, materials, or services; 2) for communicating scholar and mentor programming; 3) to share Seeds of Hope updates and ministry results, 4) to process donations, and 5) to request ongoing support.
Personal information can include information such as your name, communication preferences, email address, postal address, IP address, telephone number, mobile number, date of birth or bank account or bank card details so we can process donations.
In some cases, we may also collect information about you from publicly available sources. This can occur when you:
• Ask about our activities
• Register with us for information
• Make a donation
• Sign up for publications or newsletters
• Sign up for our videos
• Sign up to receive special greetings and communications
• Participate in the taping of videos or provide photos with your endorsement
• Telephone, write, contact us online or text us
• Otherwise provide us with your personal information
We do not collect sensitive personal information about our supporters unless there is a clear reason for doing so, for example, you voluntarily share information as part of your participation in a group mentoring activity.
Service Providers
We use service providers such as agencies, marketing consultants, software, and software as a service (SaaS) providers to help us provide you with our services.
We may give relevant persons within these service providers access to your personal information, but only to allow them to perform their authorized services for us.
Some service providers may be based outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) however, we will endeavor to ensure that any data transfers outside of the EEA are carried out in compliance with relevant data protection legislation and that the processing of your data is subject to appropriate security measures.
How We May Use Your Information
We will not rent, swap or sell your personal information.
The legal basis that we rely on for processing your data will depend upon the circumstances in which it is being collected and used, but will in most cases fall into one of the following categories:
• Where you have provided your consent to allow us to use your data in a certain way
• Where the processing is necessary to carry out for the performance of a contract with you
• Where the processing is necessary in order for us to comply with a legal
obligation such as tax audit requirements; or
• Where it is in our legitimate interests to perform our functions, for example, processing donations or sending you administrative communications where our legitimate interest is to raise funds and to deliver our charitable purposes.
Legal Requirements
We may disclose your personal/sensitive personal information when required to by law, for example, as a result of a subpoena or court order. Further, we safeguard the sharing of such information with our vendors by using formalized information sharing agreements where appropriate, or on an ad hoc basis after ensuring the request and disclosure are legally compliant.
Other ways we may use your information: Our Donors and Supporters
If you wish to support us by making a donation, or becoming a Seeds of Hope Partner, we will collect your name and contact details as a minimum.
Where appropriate, we may also ask for your date of birth and your motivation or personal experience for supporting us. We will use the information you provide to give you the services, products or information you asked for, tailor communications to you, to administer your donation, to send you a thank you letter or thank you call, to support you as a community member, or manage your marketing preferences.
We may also send you administrative communications, for example confirming a direct debit instruction when you have made a donation to us.
Online Donations and Payments
To make an online donation or payment by direct debit or payment card, you will be directed to a payment gateway which uses security features and encryption to ensure your data remains safe. The payment gateway encrypts your bankcard information through the use of tokens, so we never keep your bankcard information in our records.
We work with the following companies to facilitate provision of our services:
• First Citizens Bank – Wire Transfers, Checking/Banking
• Stripe: Payment gateway, ACH/credit card processing, Tokenization
• Donately/Stripe: Online payment processor, tax receipts, donor database.
These companies have payment gateways operated on behalf of and under contract to us. Further information about the collection and use of your data will be provided on the relevant payment gateway for you by request.
If you enter your details into one of our online forms and you don’t “send” or “submit” the form we may contact you to see if we can help you with any problems you may be experiencing with the form or our website.
Donating through Seeds of Hope Contracted Payment Gateways
The listed online payment gateways process your donation on behalf of Seeds of Hope. They use, retain and disclose your personal and credit card details for this purpose only, including processing your data outside of the European Economic Area. Where such transfer occurs, we will ensure your data is adequately protected under data protection law where applicable.
Data Profiling and Analysis
We may also carry out analysis of the personal information we collect about you and add publicly available information to create a profile of your interests, preferences and your ability to support us, including the amount or level of potential donation or legacy you may be able to give.
This is so we can contact you in the most appropriate way and with the most relevant information, which enables us to raise funds for nonprofit outreach more cost-efficiently to fulfill our mission.
Public information is compiled from sources such as public registers (e.g. listed Directorships), newspaper articles, and social media posts.
Please let us know if you would prefer us not to process your data in this way by contacting us at seedsofhopemktg@gmail.com
Marketing Communications
Where you give us your consent, we will also use your personal data in order to send you marketing and fundraising communications in connection with the following marketing and fundraising activities and services:
•Emails and updates – including other publications informing you about our work.
• Appeals and fundraising activities – including requests for donations, information about how you can leave us a gift in your will, or attend or take part in a fundraising event, and updates on the impact that your fundraising activities have had on our mission.
• Shop products and other services – including information about products offered by our online shop and other services that may be of benefit to you.
You decide how you want us to contact you, whether by mail, email or by phone or text message (SMS/MMS) and you can update your communication preferences at any time by contacting us seedsofhopemktg@gmail.com. Occasionally, we will also send you a communication to update and refresh your communication preferences. This is an automated process using Mailchimp/Donately.
Donating Through Our Online Store (reference question for legal below)
When you make a donation and select a thank gift from our online store, we will collect certain information from you including your name, address, phone number, email address, gift aid status where applicable, marketing preferences and payment details, so that we can process your gift and thank
you product shipment, or contact you if we have any queries regarding your transaction.
Where you have given us your consent (where applicable), we may send you information about other offers that may be of interest to you by post, email, SMS or contact you by phone. Your data will be held and processed by Seeds of Hope.
Seeds of Hope will not use your personal data for any other purpose unless you explicitly instruct us to do so.
Visitors to Our Website
When someone visits Seedsscholars.org or associated websites, we use third party services, including Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behavior patterns.
We do this to understand how our website was accessed, and the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow these third-party companies to make any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website other than a general IP Address. If we do want to collect personal information through our website such as asking you to fill out a form, we will make this clear and explain what we will do with it.
We also use click through and open mail tracking when sending emails so that we can understand whether the recipient has opened an email, unsubscribed,
or clicked on a link to our website. This enables us to assess the effectiveness of our communication with you.
Cookies
We use cookies to help us communicate more effectively to you. Cookies are small text files that sit on your device so that our website will remember you and your preferences.
To help us create a more effective website that reflects users’ needs, we use cookie files to collect and record information about how our site is used and collect your IP address (a number that identifies a specific computer or other internet device) for system administration and to report aggregated information.
For more information about how we use cookies, please review our entire Cookie Policy here.
You can refuse to use cookies by turning them off in your browser. The ‘Help’ function within your browser should tell you how. You may also contact your browser’s software manufacturer for questions on how to disable your cookies. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use most of this site.
However, please be aware that restricting cookies may impact the functionality of some areas of our website. You may find that some areas on the website will be slower, or may not function at all, and you may not be able to participate in certain activities if cookies are disabled.
For more information on cookies, visit whatarecookies.com.
Information Security
We protect your data by using up-to-date security features and procedures and we respect the privacy of all visitors to our website.
Associated Websites
Our website may also include links to other websites, not owned, associated or managed by Seeds of Hope. While we try our best to only link to reputable websites, we cannot be held responsible for the privacy of information collected by sites not managed by us, nor can we accept responsibility or liability for them. For this reason, you should consult the privacy notice on any external website you link to before you submit any personal information to those websites.
How We Keep Your Data Safe and Who Has Access
We ensure that there are appropriate technical controls in place to protect your personal details. For example, our online forms are always encrypted, and our network is protected and routinely monitored.
We undertake regular reviews of who has access to information that we hold to ensure that your information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff and our contracted vendors.
We use external companies to collect or process personal data on our behalf. We do comprehensive checks on these companies before we work with them, and put a contract in place that sets out our expectations and requirements, especially regarding how they manage the personal data they have collect or have access to.
For UK and EEA residents: Some of our suppliers run their operations outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Although they may not be subject to same data protection laws as companies based in the UK, we take steps to make sure they provide an adequate level of protection in accordance with UK data protection law. By submitting your personal information to us you agree to this transfer, storing and/or processing at a location outside the EEA.
We may need to disclose your details if required to the police, regulatory bodies or legal advisors. We will only ever share your data in other circumstances if we have your explicit and informed consent.
How Long We Hold Your Personal Information For
We regularly review personal information we hold, and delete anything we no longer need. We will only keep your personal data for as long as necessary. Different laws require us to keep different data for different periods of time.
Certain regulations we are subject to, including the United States Internal Revenue Code require that we keep records of financial transactions for seven years.
Otherwise, data on former partners and supporters is typically retained for up to three years after last contact. However, we will keep your data during your lifetime if you have included us in your will, estate planning, or trust.
Keeping Your Information and Preferences Up-To- Date
We continually strive to improve the quality and accuracy of the information you have provided, such as your contact details. This helps us ensure our records are fully up-to-date and to avoid misdirecting communications.
You can help us keep our records up to date by telling us when your contact details and other personal information changes. You can also change your mind at any time about how we contact you or ask us to stop contacting you altogether.
Please contact our Administrator and they’ll make the changes for you:
Email: seedsofhopemktg@gmail.com
Write to:
Seeds of Hope
624 Tyvola Road #103-308
Charlotte, NC 28217
If you tell us that you no longer want to receive further contact from us and you are on our donor database, it may take a short while before our communications stop altogether as selection of donor information for some of our mail appeals is completed a few weeks in advance of the mailing. If you request to receive no further contact from us, we will keep the information we hold on you and add you to our suppression lists to ensure that you do not receive unwanted materials in the future.
Access to Your information, Correction, and Erasure
You have the right to see and access information contained in personal data we hold about you. If you would like to receive or transfer some or all of your personal information (called a Subject Access Request), please contact the Administrator:
email: seedsofhopemktg@gmail.com
We may require proof of identity of the person making the request.
We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate and up to date. You may ask us to correct or remove any information you think is inaccurate by contacting the Administrator at the address provided above.
You have a right to ask us to delete your personal data; however, this is not an absolute right. We can refuse to erase personal data which we need to keep (i) to comply with a legal obligation (for instance, gift aid processing and bankcard provider requirements) and (ii) in relation to the exercise or defense of any legal claims. Please note, upon a request for erasure, we may also keep a minimal amount of personal data on an in-house marketing suppression file in order to comply with a request not to receive marketing.
Changes To This Policy
We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page. This privacy policy was last updated on January 20, 2021.
