Privacy Policy — Cheerful Give

Effective date: 12 July 2026 Last updated: 28 July 2026 Your privacy matters to us. This policy explains how A Latty trading as “Cheerful Give” (“Cheerful Give”, “we”, “us”) collects, uses and protects personal information in connection with our website https://getcheerful.org and its subdomains, our donation platform and backend service (api.thegiver.dev), and the Cheerful Give WordPress plugin (“the Services”). Personal information is any information that can be used to identify you.

1. Who we are and our two roles

The way we handle personal data — and our legal responsibility for it — depends on which data we are talking about:

As a data controller. For visitors to getcheerful.org, people who contact us, and organisations/individuals who buy a Cheerful Give licence or add-on, we decide how and why the data is processed, so we are the controller.
As a data processor. When a charity or non-profit installs the Cheerful Give plugin, their donors’ personal data (name, email, Gift Aid address, donation and payment details) is collected by the charity and passed through our backend to our payment processor. For this donor data, the charity is the controller and we act only as their processor — we handle it under the charity’s instructions to deliver the donation service, and we do not use it for our own purposes. Charities can request our Data Processing Agreement (DPA) and sub-processor list (see section 10).

This policy focuses on the data we handle as a controller. How a charity handles its donors’ data is governed by that charity’s own privacy policy.

2. Information we collect

2.1 Information you provide (as controller)

Contact details — name and email address when you sign up, buy a licence/add-on, or contact us.
Purchase information — licence/add-on orders. Card payments are taken by Stripe; we do not see or store your card number (see section 4).
Support correspondence — the content of emails or messages you send us.
Licence activation data — when you activate a paid add-on, your licence key and site domain (plus activation mode and return URL) are sent to our backend service to validate the licence. No donor data is involved in this exchange.

2.2 Information collected automatically (as controller)

Log data — your IP address, browser type/version, pages visited, and date/time of your visit, logged by our servers and hosting provider for security and to keep the site running.
Error data — technical details if something goes wrong, to help us fix it.

We do not run advertising trackers or third-party analytics on getcheerful.org.

2.3 Donor data we handle as a processor (on behalf of charities)

When a charity uses the plugin, we process the following donor personal data on that charity’s behalf, only to take the payment and record the donation:

Donor first and last name, email address;
Gift Aid details where the donor claims Gift Aid: home address (address lines, town/city, postcode) and the declaration;
Donation amount, any optional tip, frequency and campaign;
Marketing/mailing-list consent flag;
Stripe customer, payment and subscription identifiers.

Donation records are stored in the charity’s own WordPress database. They reach Stripe by way of our backend service, which relays them using a per-site token; we do not keep our own separate copy of the charity’s donor records. Card and bank details are entered directly into Stripe and never reach our systems. A donor’s IP address is used only transiently (a short-lived hashed value) to prevent abuse and is not stored.

2.4 Mailing-list sync (the “Mailsync” add-on)

If a charity enables our Mailsync add-on, then only for donors who tick the mailing-list opt-in, the Plugin sends that donor’s email address, first name and last name to the charity’s chosen email provider — currently Mailchimp or MailerLite. Importantly, the charity connects its own account with that provider, using its own API key. That provider is therefore the charity’s own processor, not a sub-processor of Cheerful Give — our software simply transmits the data on the charity’s instruction. The charity is responsible for its mailing-list consent and for honouring unsubscribes within its email tool. See Mailchimp’s privacy policy and MailerLite’s privacy policy. No donor data is sent to an email provider unless the charity has enabled Mailsync and the donor has opted in.

2.5 Diagnostic logging (optional, off by default)

The Plugin includes an optional diagnostic log to help us troubleshoot faults. It is switched off by default. Where a site administrator turns it on, the log captures PHP error output, which can contain personal data. A diagnostic log is only ever sent to us when the site administrator actively chooses to send it, in which case it is emailed to hey@getcheerful.org for support purposes. Logs expire automatically after one week. We use them solely to diagnose the reported issue.

3. How and why we use personal information (lawful bases)

As a controller we use personal data to:

provide, operate and improve the Services — performance of a contract and our legitimate interests;
process licence/add-on purchases and send the keys — performance of a contract;
respond to enquiries and provide support — legitimate interests / contract;
send you service messages and, where you have opted in, product updates — consent for marketing;
keep the Services secure and prevent fraud and abuse — legitimate interests;
comply with our legal, accounting and reporting obligations — legal obligation.

Where we act as a processor of donor data, the lawful basis is determined by the charity (the controller), and we process only on their documented instructions. We do not sell personal data, and we never knowingly direct our services at, or market to, children under 13.

4. Third parties we share data with (our processors / sub-processors)

We share personal data only with the service providers we need to run the Services. Our current providers are:

Provider	What they do	Data involved	Location & safeguard
Stripe (Stripe Payments UK, Ltd)	Payment processing for licences and for charity donations; fraud prevention	Card/payment data (entered directly with Stripe); donor/customer name, email and — for Gift Aid — address, passed as payment metadata	UK / EU / USA — Stripe’s SCCs/UK IDTA. Privacy: https://stripe.com/privacy
Cloudflare, Inc.	Hosts and runs our backend service (api.thegiver.dev) and its data stores, through which donation data transits	Donor data in transit; connection tokens	USA / global — Cloudflare’s SCCs/DPA
Resend	Sends transactional emails (e.g. licence keys) to buyers	Buyer email address	USA — SCCs

A full, current sub-processor list is maintained at getcheerful.org/sub-processors. Mailchimp and MailerLite are not our sub-processors. Where the Mailsync add-on is enabled (section 2.4), donor contact data goes to the charity’s own account with that provider, making the provider the charity’s processor rather than ours. We may also disclose personal data to professional advisers, or to authorities where required by law or to establish or defend legal claims, and to a buyer if we sell or transfer our business.

5. International transfers

Some of our providers (notably Stripe and Cloudflare) are based in, or transfer data to, countries outside the UK/EEA including the United States. Where personal data is transferred outside the UK we rely on an appropriate safeguard under UK GDPR Article 46 — typically the UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) or the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) — or an adequacy decision, as set out in each provider’s data-processing terms.

6. How long we keep personal information

We keep personal data only as long as needed for the purpose we collected it, then delete or anonymise it. Financial and transaction records are kept for 7 years to meet accounting and tax obligations. Donor data. Donor personal data held in the charity’s WordPress site is automatically anonymised by the Plugin once the charity’s chosen retention period has elapsed. Anonymisation retains the figures the charity needs for its accounts and for UK Gift Aid records, while removing the details that identify the donor. Beyond that, donor data we process on a charity’s behalf is retained per the charity’s instructions and our DPA. Diagnostic logs sent to us expire automatically after one week.

7. Security

We protect personal data using appropriate technical and organisational measures, which we keep under review as the service develops. These include:

Encryption in transit — all data is transmitted over encrypted HTTPS/TLS connections.
No card data on our systems — card details are entered directly into Stripe (a PCI-DSS Level 1 certified provider); we never see, transmit, or store your card number.
Signed, replay-protected donation relay — payment confirmations are routed between Stripe, our backend, and each charity’s site using per-site secret keys and signed, timestamped messages, so a message cannot be forged, tampered with, or replayed.
Server-side validation — donation amounts and details are validated on our servers, not in the browser, so they cannot be altered by a manipulated request.
Fraud and abuse prevention — the donation form includes rate limiting, a hidden honeypot, and automated bot-blocking, and supports Stripe Radar and an optional CAPTCHA (Cloudflare Turnstile, hCaptcha, or Google reCAPTCHA) to prevent card-testing and fraudulent activity; we alert charities to suspicious bursts of activity.
Access control and audit logging — access to donor data is restricted to authorised administrators, and sensitive actions (such as connecting or disconnecting a payment account, or exporting donor data) are recorded in an activity log.
Secret management — API keys and signing secrets are stored securely on the server and are never exposed in plugin code, in the browser, or in our source repositories; automated scanning checks for accidental exposure.
Dependency and code security — our code is checked by automated security tooling and our dependencies are monitored for known vulnerabilities.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure; where you hold an account, you are responsible for keeping your credentials safe.

8. Your data protection rights (UK GDPR)

You have the right to be informed, and to access, rectify, erase, restrict, object to, and port your personal data, and rights in relation to automated decision-making. You can also withdraw consent at any time where we rely on it.

Access (DSAR): we will respond within one month (30 days).
Erasure is a qualified right and may not apply where we must keep data for legal/accounting reasons.
Marketing: unsubscribe at any time via the link in our emails or by contacting us.
Export and erasure of donor data: donation records held on a charity’s site can be exported or erased using WordPress’s own Export Personal Data and Erase Personal Data tools, which the Plugin supports. A donor should direct such a request to the charity, as controller.

To exercise any right, contact us using the details in section 12. If your request concerns donor data we hold as a processor, we will refer you to, or assist, the relevant charity (the controller). You may also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF — tel 0303 123 1113 — https://ico.org.uk. We’d appreciate the chance to resolve your concern first.

9. Cookies

We use a limited number of cookies. See our Cookie Policy for details of what is set and how to control them.

10. Controller, processor and our DPA

We are the controller for getcheerful.org visitors and licence customers, and a processor for donor data handled by the plugin on a charity’s behalf. Charities acting as controllers can obtain our Data Processing Agreement and current sub-processor list at getcheerful.org/sub-processors or by contacting us.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy to reflect changes to our practices or the law. We will post changes at this link and, where the change is significant, take reasonable steps to notify you.

12. Contact us

For any privacy question or to exercise your rights: A Latty trading as “Cheerful Give” Data protection contact: privacy@getcheerful.org Contact form: getcheerful.org/contact Postal address: Ashburnham Place, Battle, TN33 9NF Website: https://getcheerful.org