Privacy Policy

Who we are

Umoja Africa(“Umoja”, “we”, “us”) runs this website and the scholarship, mentorship, and community programs described on it. We are the data controller for the information described below.

Umoja Africa currently operates as an online non-profit initiative. For questions regarding this Privacy Policy or your personal information, contact us at info@umoja.tbafrica.org.

What we collect, and when

We only collect information you type into a form. We do not build profiles, we do not buy data about you, and we do not track you across other websites.

When you use the contact form

We collect your name, your email address, the reason you selected, and your message. This is sent to our team inbox by email. It is not stored in a database on this website.

When you apply to volunteer or partner

We collect your name, email address, phone number, location, and your written motivation. Volunteers also provide availability, skills, and preferred role. Partner applicants also provide an organization name, partnership type, a description of the proposed contribution, and optionally a website address.

These applications are stored in a private Google Sheet that only authorized Umoja team members can open.

When you donate

Donations are processed by Stripe. You are taken to a payment page hosted by Stripe, and your card details are entered there. Your card number never reaches our servers and we never see or store it. Stripe shares with us the transaction record we need for accounting and for thanking you, such as the amount, the date, and the name and email you gave them.

Automatically, for abuse prevention

When you submit the contact form, your IP address is held temporarily in server memory so we can limit how many messages a single sender can post in a short window. It is used for nothing else, it is never written to disk, and it is discarded when the window expires.

Why we use it

To reply to your message, to assess and respond to volunteer and partnership applications, to process and acknowledge donations, to meet our accounting and reporting obligations, and to protect our forms from spam and abuse.

Where the law requires a legal basis, ours is your consent when you choose to submit a form, our legitimate interest in running the organization and keeping it secure, and our legal obligation to keep financial records.

We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not sell or rent it to anyone. Ever.

Who else can see it

We use a small number of service providers, and each one sees only what it needs to do its job:

• Stripe processes donation payments and handles your card details directly.
• Resend delivers contact form messages to our inbox.
• Google stores volunteer and partner applications in a private Google Sheet.
• Vercel hosts this website and processes standard server request logs.

These providers may process data outside your country, including in the United States. We otherwise disclose your information only where we are legally required to.

How long we keep it

Contact messages stay in our email inbox for as long as they are useful for the conversation, and are deleted during periodic inbox review. Volunteer and partner applications are kept for up to two years so we can contact you when a suitable opportunity opens, unless you ask us to remove them sooner. Donation records are kept for as long as accounting and charity reporting rules require.

Your rights

You can ask us to show you the information we hold about you, to correct it if it is wrong, or to delete it. You can withdraw consent at any time, and you can object to how we are using your information.

Email info@umoja.tbafrica.org and we will respond within 30 days. There is no charge for this. If you are in the UK or EU and you are unhappy with our response, you have the right to complain to your national data protection authority.

Cookies

This website sets no cookies of its own. We run no analytics and no advertising trackers, and the fonts we use are served from this site rather than fetched from a third party.

If you go through the donation flow, Stripe sets cookies on its own payment page in order to process the payment securely and prevent fraud. That happens on Stripe’s domain and is covered by Stripe’s own privacy policy.

Children

This website is intended for adults. The forms on it are for volunteers, partners, and donors, and we do not knowingly collect information through this site from anyone under 16.

Information about the students we support is collected offline, through our selection process, with the involvement of their parents, guardians, or schools, and is handled under separate safeguarding practices rather than through this website.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your information, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Significant changes will be noted clearly.

Contact us

Questions about this policy, or about your information, go to info@umoja.tbafrica.org. You can also use our contact form.