Privacy policy

DonorSupport is an online fundraising platform. People open a page for someone who needs help, and other people donate to it. For the purposes of UK data protection law, DonorSupport is the data controller for the information collected through this site.

You can reach us about anything in this policy through our help centre. If your question is about a specific donation, include the email address you used and the approximate date. It makes finding your record much faster.

When you donate, we ask for three things:

• Your name.
• Your email address.
• The amount and currency you chose, and whether you asked to appear anonymously.

Your card details are typed straight into Stripe's secure form. They never pass through our servers and we never see your card number.

We also collect the usual technical information that keeps a website working: your IP address, browser and device type, pages visited and roughly where in the world you are. And if you arrived through a link or an advert, we note where you came from.

• To process your donation and email you a receipt.
• To show your first name and the first letter of your surname on the campaign page, unless you ticked the anonymous box. If you did, only "Anonymous" appears.
• To keep the platform safe. That means spotting fraud, blocking misuse of campaigns and investigating reports.
• To understand which campaigns reach people, so we know what is working. This is where the Meta Pixel comes in, explained in the cookies section below.
• To answer you when you contact us.

That is the whole list. We do not use your information to profile you for unrelated advertising, and we do not sell it to anyone.

UK GDPR asks us to name the legal ground for each use of your data. Ours are:

• Contract. Processing your donation, sending your receipt and showing your gift on the page are us doing what you asked us to do when you pressed donate.
• Legitimate interests. Keeping the platform safe, preventing fraud and understanding how the site is used. We have weighed these against your rights and kept them proportionate.
• Consent. The Meta Pixel and similar cookies, where the law asks for your agreement first.
• Legal obligation. Keeping the financial records that tax and accounting rules require.

Only the companies that make the site work:

• Stripe processes every payment. Stripe receives your card details, name, email and donation amount, and acts under its own privacy policy as well as ours.
• Meta Platforms receives the events measured by the Meta Pixel and Conversions API, such as the fact that a donation happened, so campaign reach can be measured.
• Our hosting and database providers store the site and its records.

We may also share information if the law requires it, for example with a court order or a fraud investigation. Beyond that, your data stays with us. We never sell it.

Stripe and Meta process data in the United States and other countries outside the UK. When that happens, the transfer is covered by the safeguards UK GDPR requires, such as adequacy regulations or standard contractual clauses.

Donation records (name, email, amount, date) are kept for up to seven years, because financial record keeping rules require it. Technical logs are kept for far less, typically a few months. When information is no longer needed, it is deleted or anonymised.

UK GDPR gives you real control over your information. You can:

• Ask for a copy of the data we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
• Ask us to delete your data, where the law allows.
• Object to a use of your data, or ask us to restrict it.
• Ask for your data in a portable format.
• Withdraw consent for cookies at any time, through your browser settings.

To use any of these rights, contact us through the help centre. We respond within one month.

If you are not happy with how we handle your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first, but the choice is yours.

This site uses the Meta Pixel and Meta's Conversions API. They tell us when someone arrives from a Meta platform and whether they donated, which is how we know if a campaign's promotion worked. The pixel uses cookies that can identify your browser.

We do not use advertising cookies from anyone else, and there are no third party adverts on this site.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings at any time. Blocking them will not stop you from donating.

Many campaigns on this site are about children, but the site itself is for adults. You must be 18 or older to donate. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.

If we change this policy, the new version replaces this one and the date at the top moves. For anything significant we will flag the change on the site before it takes effect.