We Believe in Data Privacy and Security.

Nothing is more significant to us than the goodwill of donors and vitality of the nonprofits they support. That is why we spare no effort to ensure data privacy in accordance with the law, best practices and what is right.

First and foremost, we and our nonprofit members never directly see or store any donor payment information. (Saved payment details are captured by and stored securely in a payment processor without passing through our servers. That data can nevertheless be deleted upon request.)

With any data we do collect and retain, we take every reasonable action to protect against its loss or misuse, both in transit and at rest. While in transit, it is protected using end-to-end encryption and SSL protected web pages (see more below). At rest, it resides in encrypted databases. Most importantly, we only store data for as long as required, and, critically, we will never sell, rent or lease it to third parties.

We are however obligated to disclose some personal data to nonprofit members receiving donations and to third-party partners who help process those donations, as fully described in our Privacy Policy. With nonprofits, we share donor first and last name, email address and any other provided information. Other personal payment data may be passed through to partners for the purpose of processing donations.

For more about individual nonprofits’ privacy policies and how they use and protect personal data, contact the nonprofits directly. For more about some of our partners, see More About Our Partners’ Security below.

These details aside, we acknowledge and respect donors’ right to control their data. With that in mind, we will always abide by any donor’s wish to delete personal data, when requested. We are also in compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which governs data protection and privacy. Although it officially applies only to EU citizens, we set store by the spirit of it and have adjusted our data protection policies to suit. For more regarding this, see our Master Service Agreement, Terms of Use, and Privacy Policy.

In terms of hardware, our website and technology are hosted by Amazon Web Services (see more below), a robust and reliable platform that ensures continuous operations, round-the-clock support and top-quality security, including firewalls, encryption, monitoring, penetration testing and more. Learn more about AWS security.

We believe all money donated to nonprofits should get to those nonprofits as quickly as possible. 

The speed of disbursement is in part a function of the form of payment and whether the nonprofit is a Give Lively member. For Give Lively member nonprofits, funds processed through Stripe are delivered to designated accounts within two business days for credit and debit card donations, and seven business days for bank transfers. (Remember, for this to happen, all nonprofits must have activated Stripe accounts that are connected to Give Lively.) It takes slightly longer – three to seven business days – for funds processed through PayPal to be transferred to a nonprofit’s bank account.    

When nonprofits are not Give Lively members, these transfers take longer and involve mailing paper checks. Read more about How Give Lively Disburses Donations.

While we do everything we can to keep data secure and operations seamless, there is no such thing as 100% secure and error-free systems. Unfortunately, service interruptions and failures happen, as do unexpected and very rare instances of fundraising tech misuse.

Whatever the event, we respond to any and all concerns as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Our engineering and membership teams search for solutions, communicate how long they may take, recommend workarounds, if needed, and then advise of fixes once they have been implemented. Followup monitoring, proactive communication with all nonprofit members affected by the interruption, after-the-fact diagnostics and systemwide improvements are all part of the process.

If there is ever any reason to believe that Give Lively and its technology are not doing what they should or that the security of an account has been compromised, please contact us immediately at support@givelively.org. 

Remember: Give Lively is unable to issue refunds on behalf of our nonprofit members, due to our Terms of Use. Refunds can only be made by the nonprofit named on the donation receipt.

Our commitment to nonprofits goes beyond buttressing their fundraising efforts. We also support values that inspire nonprofits to tackle tough challenges and complex issues such as gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, social and environmental justice and more.

In view of this, we work to terminate all uses of our technology that promote activities not in alignment with our values. These unacceptable uses include:

• discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation or military status in any activities, programs or operations 
• advocating against or denying the rights of women,
• advocating for the sale, ownership and/or civilian use of assault weapons, weapons of war, high capacity magazines, automatic weapons or any mechanism that can convert a firearm into an automatic weapon 
• disseminating hate speech or dangerous speech, promoting or inciting violence online or offline.

We have included this here (and in our Terms of Use) because we place great significance on the safety of the space we are proud to share with donors and our nonprofit members.