Privacy Policy — Volunteer Circle

Effective date: [Effective at beta launch — date TBD] · Last updated: [date TBD]

Volunteer Circle, a product of Ministry Boost LLC (“Volunteer Circle,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), provides software that helps churches and ministry organizations care for, communicate with, and train their volunteers (the “Service”). This Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information in connection with the Service.

1. Our role: a service provider to churches

The Service is provided to churches and organizations (each, a “Church”). When a Church uses the Service, the Church decides what information to put into the Service and how it is used — the Church is the “controller” (or “business”) of that information, and we act as a service provider / processor that handles the information on the Church's behalf and under its instructions. The terms of our data processing relationship with each Church are set out in our Data Processing Agreement (“DPA”), which is incorporated by reference into the Terms of Service.

If you are a volunteer, leader, staff member, guardian, or other individual whose information is in the Service, and you have questions or requests about your information, please contact your Church first. We will support the Church in responding to your request.

This Policy also covers information we collect directly from Church administrators and visitors to our website and sign-up flows, where we act as the controller.

2. Information in the Service

The information a Church may store in the Service includes:

  • People records: names (legal and preferred), email addresses, phone numbers, mailing address, role (admin, leader, volunteer, guardian), team and ministry membership, membership status, start date, and a profile photo if provided.
  • Minor status and guardian links: whether a person is a minor, and links to their guardian(s). Guardians may be “mirrored” into a minor's conversations as observers for safety.
  • Communication consent: separate email and SMS consent, consent source and timestamp, and opt-out status.
  • Sensitive details (access-restricted): allergies, brief medical notes, and emergency contact information. These are stored in a restricted area visible only to Church administrators, the person themselves, and (for a minor) their guardians.
  • Background-check information: status and dates only (e.g., “cleared,” “pending,” “expired,” and the relevant dates). We do not store background-check reports or their contents. Volunteer Circle is not a consumer reporting agency as defined under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. § 1681a(f)), and background-check status information stored in the Service is not a consumer report under FCRA. The Church, not Volunteer Circle, is responsible for any pre-adverse-action and adverse-action notices required by FCRA § 615 when a Church uses background-check status to make volunteer eligibility decisions.
  • Care records: notes a leader logs about caring for a volunteer (method, category, date, notes).
  • Messages: conversations between Church members. Messages are visible to Church administrators and are retained as a permanent record within the Church's account (see Section 7).
  • Training: courses, lessons, assignments, and each person's progress. Videos uploaded for courses are stored with our video subprocessor.
  • Integration data: if a Church connects a church-management system (e.g., Planning Center), we import the people and team information the Church authorizes at the Church's direction. Church-management system providers are not Volunteer Circle subprocessors.

We encourage Churches to practice data minimization — to store only what they need, especially for minors and family-ministry data.

3. Information we collect directly

  • Account and billing information for Church administrators (name, email, organization, and, if applicable, billing details processed by our payment provider — we do not store full card numbers).
  • Usage and device information such as log data, IP address, browser/device type, and actions taken in the Service, used to operate, secure, and improve the Service.
  • Cookies and similar technologies used to keep you signed in and to understand product and website usage (see Section 12).

4. How information is used

We use information to:

  • provide, maintain, secure, and improve the Service;
  • authenticate users and enforce roles and access controls;
  • send transactional and service messages (e.g., invitations, sign-in links, notifications the Church configures);
  • provide optional AI-assisted suggestions (e.g., draft messages or care prompts) where the Church enables them — see Section 6;
  • provide support; and
  • comply with law and enforce our terms.

We process Church member information only to provide the Service to the Church and per the Church's instructions. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

5. Children's and minors' information

The Service stores information about minors (for example, a teenage volunteer) that the Church provides and is responsible for. The Service is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children through the Service. The Church is responsible for obtaining any parental or guardian consent required by law before entering a minor's information.

Safety features in the Service include preventing a one-to-one message thread with a minor unless a second adult (such as a guardian) is included. For the volunteer-facing mobile application, the minimum age for self-registration and self-login is 13. Volunteers under 13 are managed by church administrators and may not self-register. For volunteers ages 13 to 17, Volunteer Circle collects only the personal information reasonably necessary to provide the Service, applies default privacy-protective settings, does not use behavioral advertising or share teen user data with advertising networks, and retains guardian-visibility features for users under 18 as a child-safety measure. These design standards are intended to align with emerging state teen-privacy requirements.

6. AI-assisted features

Where a Church enables AI assistance, limited content (such as a draft message or care note) may be processed by an AI model to generate suggestions. Suggestions are provided to a leader to review and edit before use. Our AI subprocessor processes this content in the United States and does not use it to train or improve its models. See our subprocessors list for details.

7. Message permanence and care records

To support accountability and child-safety, messages and care records are designed to be a durable record: individual users cannot permanently delete messages, and Church administrators can view message history. This is a deliberate safety feature, disclosed to users in the app. A Church may still request deletion of its entire account and data (see Section 10).

8. How information is shared

We share information only as needed to run the Service:

  • Subprocessors that provide infrastructure on our behalf, such as our hosting and authentication provider (Supabase), our video hosting provider (Cloudflare Stream), our payment processor (Stripe), and our transactional email provider (Resend). A current list of subprocessors is available at volunteercircle.com/subprocessors. We will notify Churches at least 30 days before adding a new subprocessor that will process Church Customer Data and will provide an opportunity to object. If an objection cannot be resolved, the Church may terminate the affected Services without penalty.
  • Church-directed imports: if a Church connects a church-management system (such as Planning Center), we import the people and team information the Church authorizes at the Church's direction. The Church's CMS provider is not a Volunteer Circle subprocessor.
  • Legal and safety reasons — to comply with law, enforce our terms, or protect the rights, safety, and security of users and the public.
  • Business transfers — in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, subject to this Policy.

We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

9. Security

We use technical and organizational measures designed to protect personal information, including encryption in transit and at rest and strict per-Church data isolation (one Church can never access another Church's data). No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we work to protect information and to notify affected parties of incidents as required by law.

10. Retention and deletion

We retain Church information for as long as the Church's account is active or as needed to provide the Service. A Church may request export or deletion of its data. On account closure or a verified deletion request, we will delete or de-identify the Church's data within a commercially reasonable period, except where retention is required by law. Backups are purged on a rolling schedule.

11. Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or port your personal information, or to object to or restrict certain processing. Because we process Church member information on the Church's behalf, please direct requests to your Church, which controls the information; we will assist the Church in fulfilling valid requests. For information we control directly (such as administrator accounts), contact us at privacy@volunteercircle.com.

You can opt out of SMS messages by replying STOP, and unsubscribe from non-essential emails using the link in those emails.

12. Cookies & Analytics

We use cookies and similar technologies for two purposes:

  • Essential cookies that keep you signed in and keep the Service secure. These are always active because the Service cannot function without them.
  • Analytics cookies that help us understand how our website is used so we can improve it. We use Google Analytics 4, loaded through Google Tag Manager, for this purpose.

You can opt out of Google Analytics on all websites using Google's browser opt-out add-on, or by blocking or clearing cookies in your browser settings. We do not use cookies for advertising.

13. International users

The Service is operated in the United States. If you access it from outside the US, you understand your information will be processed in the US.

14. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy. We will post the updated version with a new “Last updated” date and, for material changes, provide additional notice as appropriate.

15. Contact

Ministry Boost LLC
[Ministry Boost LLC — Maryland mailing address]
privacy@volunteercircle.com