Privacy policy
Draft for the pilot. It takes effect when the site launches on 1 December 2026, after a legal review.
We collect as little as we can. We never store ID numbers, addresses or photos of the people we help, and we never see your card number. This page explains what we do keep, why, and how to have it changed or removed. It follows South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and, for people in Europe, the GDPR.
1. Who is responsible
The Helping Hand is responsible for the information on this site. Donations will be held in trust by a registered South African NPO, which we will name here before launch. You can reach our Information Officer at the contact email we will publish here before launch.
2. What we collect
- Donors: your name, email address, whether you live in South Africa or abroad, and, if you choose, the area you'd most like to help. Your password is stored scrambled (hashed), never as text. We keep a record of each gift: the amount, the bill and the date.
- Partner staff: your name, email address and the organisation you work for.
- Partner organisations: registration numbers (NPO, PBO or EMIS), contact details and the organisation's bank account, checked against a bank letter.
- People who receive help: only a first name or nickname, the general area, the household size and a short story, shared with their permission (a parent or guardian agrees for children). For electricity and school fees we keep the meter or learner number, to stop the same bill being paid twice. The partner keeps their full details offline; we never receive them.
- Receipts that partners upload as proof of payment, and reports donors send about a bill.
3. Card payments
Payments are handled by PayFast on its own secure pages. We never see or store your card number, expiry date or security code. PayFast tells us only whether a payment worked and how much it was.
4. Why we use it
- to run your account and record your gifts
- to pay bills, check receipts and stop fraud or double payments
- to show you the receipt for bills you helped with
- to meet legal and accounting duties of the NPO that holds the money
5. Who can see what
- Everyone sees each bill: first name or nickname, area, household size, story, amount and the partner that checked it. Meter and account numbers show only their last three digits.
- Receipts are visible only to people who gave to that bill, the partner's staff and our admins.
- Partners never see donors' names or email addresses.
- We don't sell or share your information for marketing, and we don't use advertising or tracking tools.
6. Where it is stored
The site runs on Vercel and the database on Neon, in data centres in Frankfurt, Germany. Both are bound by contracts to keep it secure. Information sent between your phone and the site is encrypted (https).
7. Cookies
We use one cookie, only to keep you signed in. It expires after 14 days or when you sign out. There are no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies. To show amounts in your own currency, our host tells us which country your internet connection is in. We use it only for that page view and don't store it.
8. How long we keep it
Gift and payment records are kept for five years, because South African law requires financial records to be kept. Bills and receipts are kept as long as the gift records they belong to. If you close your account, we remove your name and email and keep only the anonymous gift records.
9. Your rights
You can ask to see the information we hold about you, correct it, have it deleted, or object to how we use it. Email the contact email we will publish here before launch and we'll reply within 30 days.
If you're not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Information Regulator in South Africa (inforegulator.org.za) or, if you live in the Netherlands, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl).
10. Changes
If we change this policy, we'll update this page and tell signed-up donors by email first.