501 Collective Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes how 501 Collective (“we,” “us” or “our”) collects, uses and shares information when you visit 501collective.org (the “Site”), make a donation, start a fundraiser, apply for a trip, sign up for updates or contact us.

In short: we collect only what we need to process your gift, respond to you and run our programs. We do not sell your personal information, and we never share it with other organizations for their own marketing.

Information you give us

• Donations and fundraisers. When you give or start a fundraiser, you provide details such as your name, email address, billing address and payment information. Payments are processed by our donation platform, Fundraise Up, and its payment processors. We do not receive or store your full card or bank account numbers.
• Contact and partnership messages. When you contact us, we receive your name, email address, organization (if you share it) and your message.
• Trip applications. When you apply for a trip, we collect the information on the application, including your name as it appears on your passport, date of birth, phone number, home address, parent or guardian details, and any medical needs or allergies you share. The application also asks for a photo of your signed passport. It travels with your application straight to our team’s email inbox; our website does not store it.
• Email updates. When you sign up for updates, we collect your email address.

Information collected automatically

Like most websites, our Site and our hosting and security provider automatically receive basic technical information when you visit, such as your IP address, browser type, device type, the pages you view and the date and time of your visit. We use this information to keep the Site secure, prevent abuse and understand, in general terms, how the Site is used.

The Site itself uses very few cookies. Our donation platform and embedded services may set their own cookies to work properly, for example to remember a checkout in progress. You can control or delete cookies through your browser settings. For more information about cookies, visit allaboutcookies.org.

Saved only on your device. If you join The Village from this browser, the Site saves the date you joined in your browser’s own storage, so our footer can thank you and show how long you have been part of The Village. That date stays on your device. It is never sent to us or to anyone else, and clearing your browser’s data removes it.

How we use your information

• To process donations and fundraisers and send tax receipts
• To respond to your messages and requests
• To review trip applications and plan safe, well organized trips, including contacting a parent or guardian in an emergency
• To send updates you have asked to receive about our partners and projects
• To keep our Site secure and protect against fraud and abuse
• To meet our legal and accounting obligations as a registered nonprofit

Medical information shared on a trip application is used only to keep travelers safe and is shared only with trip leaders and, when needed, medical providers. Your passport photo is used only to arrange your trip, such as flights, insurance and any entry requirements, and is seen only by the team planning it.

Services we work with

We share information only with service providers that help us operate, and only as needed for them to do that work. These include:

• Fundraise Up, which handles donations, fundraisers, receipts and our donor portal. See the Fundraise Up privacy policy.
• Cloudflare, which hosts and protects our Site. When you fill in one of our forms, Cloudflare Turnstile checks the form is being sent by a person rather than a bot; to do this it processes your IP address and basic browser information. See the Cloudflare privacy policy.
• Google Workspace, our email. Messages, trip applications and newsletter signups you send through our forms arrive in our team’s inbox there. See the Google privacy policy.
• Vimeo, which hosts our videos. Videos on our Site do not load from Vimeo until you choose to play them.
• Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts, which provide the typefaces used on our Site. Your browser requests font files directly from these services.
• Open Meteo, which provides the current weather shown on our story pages. When you open a story, your browser asks Open Meteo for the weather at that story’s location, so Open Meteo receives your IP address with that request. We send it no other information about you. See the Open Meteo terms.
• Our email and newsletter providers, which deliver messages and updates you have asked to receive.

We may also share information when required by law, to respond to a subpoena, search warrant or other lawful request, or to protect our rights and the safety of others.

Children and students

Our Site is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them online. Some of our trips are for high school students. For those trips, we collect parent or guardian contact information as part of the application and communicate with parents about trip details.

Email updates

Every email update includes a link to unsubscribe. You can also ask us to remove you at any time by contacting us.

How long we keep information

We keep donation records for as long as needed to meet tax and accounting requirements. We keep other information only as long as it is useful for the purpose it was collected, and trip application details no longer than needed after a trip ends, unless the law requires otherwise. You can ask us to delete your information at any time, subject to those legal requirements.

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct or delete the personal information we hold about you by contacting us. If you live in Europe or another region with similar privacy laws, you have these rights under those laws, and we process your information to carry out your requests (such as processing a donation) or for our legitimate interests as a nonprofit. Please note that your information may be transferred to and stored in the United States.

Security

We use reasonable safeguards to protect your information, and payment details are handled by our donation platform rather than stored by us. No method of sending or storing information online is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Changes

We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes to our practices or for operational, legal or regulatory reasons. When we do, we will update the date at the top of this page.

Contact us

For questions about this policy or our privacy practices, or to make a request or complaint, please email us at hello@501collective.org or write to us at: