How your information is protected

Who is responsible for your information

The organisation you volunteer with decides what information it collects, why, who can see it and how long it is kept. Under data protection law it is usually the data controller, and Volunteeria is the software provider that stores your information for it.

Your organisation should tell you how it uses your information, usually in its own privacy notice. For questions or requests about your information, contact your organisation first.

What never happens to it

• Never sold, and never shared with advertisers, data brokers or anyone else for their own purposes. The only outside companies involved are the specialist providers that run the service, such as hosting, file storage and email delivery, and they may use it only to provide their part.
• Nobody at Volunteeria browses it. If your organisation reports a problem we cannot fix any other way, we ask its permission first, look only at what is needed, and stop when it is fixed.
• Never used to train AI or machine-learning models, ours or anyone else's.
• No marketing. Volunteeria never contacts you to promote anything. Emails you get come from your organisation using the software.

Where it is kept and how it is protected

• Stored in Europe: the database in Frankfurt, Germany, and uploaded documents in private storage within the EU.
• Encrypted when it travels between your device and Volunteeria, and when it is stored.
• Each organisation's volunteer records are kept separate from every other organisation's.
• Passwords are scrambled so that nobody, including us, can read them.
• Automatic backups, and the database is not reachable from the public internet.

Who at your organisation can see it

• Only staff your organisation has given permission to. Some coordinators can only see the volunteers they look after.
• Safeguarding concerns are normally seen only by your organisation's named safeguarding leads.
• Other volunteers cannot see your profile.
• A private message to you is never put in an email: the email only says a message is waiting, and you read it in Volunteeria. Announcements your organisation sends to volunteers by email do include their full text.
• Important changes are recorded in an activity log, so there is a record of who changed what.

Keeping your account safe

• Your volunteer code is not a password. If you have an email address, you sign in with a code or link sent to your email, which works once and expires after 15 minutes. Otherwise you choose your own password.
• You are signed out automatically after an hour without activity.
• You can choose to trust your own device for 30 days, but never tick this on a shared computer.

Your choices and rights

• You can see and update many of your own details in your profile, and choose which emails you get.
• You can ask your organisation for a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete it. Volunteeria gives your organisation the tools to do this.
• If you are unsure who to ask, signed-in volunteers can use the data query option on the Privacy & portal terms page, or email hello@volunteeria.com.