Privacy Policy

Hands of Hope Foundation is a nonprofit humanitarian organization based in Sierra Leone. Our work supports vulnerable children, women, and disadvantaged communities through humanitarian assistance, education support, food distribution, clothing donations, health awareness, and community empowerment initiatives.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, share, protect, and retain personal information when you visit our website, make a donation or pledge, contact us, subscribe to updates, apply to volunteer, or use our administration platform.

We collect information that you choose to provide, such as your name, email address, phone number, donation details, donor-wall preferences, volunteer interests, availability, contact messages, newsletter signup details, and administration account information.

When donation features are used, we may record donation amount, frequency, purpose, payment method, campaign attribution, payment status, provider reference IDs, and offline pledge follow-up details. We do not intentionally store full card numbers or full payment account credentials on our website.

We may also collect basic technical information such as device, browser, approximate location, pages visited, referral source, security logs, and similar website usage data needed to operate, improve, and protect the platform.

We use personal information to process and acknowledge donations, coordinate offline payment follow-up, manage recurring or one-time giving, respond to messages, send newsletters, review volunteer applications, support safeguarding, manage donor-wall recognition with consent, operate the admin dashboard, protect the website, and meet legal, accounting, reporting, and security obligations.

We may also use aggregated or de-identified information to understand community interest, improve our programs, prepare reports, and communicate impact without identifying individuals unless we have appropriate consent.

Our donation flow may support Stripe, PayPal, Mobile Money instructions, and bank transfer instructions. Card, wallet, and payment-account details are handled by the relevant payment provider or financial institution under their own security and privacy practices.

For offline giving, we may use the information you submit to record your pledge, verify payment status, and follow up securely through approved finance processes.

We share information only when needed to operate the website, process donations, provide services, comply with law, protect vulnerable people, prevent fraud, maintain security, or act with your consent.

Examples include payment processors, hosting and database providers, email or communication tools, approved administrators, professional advisers, regulators, law enforcement where required, and donor-wall publication only when recognition has been requested and approved.

We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably needed for the purpose it was collected, including donor acknowledgement, finance and accounting records, volunteer coordination, safeguarding records, legal obligations, dispute resolution, security, and organizational operations.

Newsletter subscribers may unsubscribe or request removal from mailing lists, although we may retain limited records where necessary to honor suppression, legal, or security requirements.

You may ask us to update, correct, or delete personal information where legally and operationally possible. Some records, such as donation, finance, safeguarding, security, or legal records, may need to be retained for legitimate organizational or compliance reasons.

You can choose whether to give anonymously, whether to request donor-wall recognition, and whether to receive newsletter updates. Donor-wall recognition is not published unless requested and approved.

Because our mission includes support for vulnerable children and women, we treat related information with additional care. We do not intentionally collect personal information directly from children through the website without appropriate consent or safeguarding processes.

Stories, images, testimonials, and beneficiary information should be used only with appropriate consent, dignity, and safeguarding review.

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards to protect information, including access controls, role-based administration, provider-managed infrastructure, and secure payment-provider workflows where configured.

No website, database, or internet transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure. If we become aware of a security issue affecting personal information, we will take appropriate steps based on the nature of the issue and applicable obligations.

Hands of Hope Foundation is based in Sierra Leone, but website visitors, donors, partners, service providers, and hosting or payment systems may be located in other countries. Your information may therefore be processed or stored outside Sierra Leone where our trusted providers operate.

By using the website or submitting information, you understand that data may be handled through these international systems as needed to provide the service.

We may update this Privacy Policy as the website, payment systems, volunteer processes, legal requirements, or organizational operations change. The effective date above will be updated when material changes are made.