Circle Acts
Privacy policy
Circle Acts is a nonprofit run by volunteers. We collect as little about you as we can get away with, and we do not sell or share anything with advertisers.
Last updated 2026-09-21
The short version
- You can read every article on this site without an account and without us setting a single cookie.
- We show advertising from Google AdSense, which uses cookies. We run no analytics of our own.
- The only personal information we hold is what you type into our contact or nomination forms.
- We never sell, rent or trade personal information, and we take no commission on donations.
Who we are
Circle Acts is a nonprofit run entirely by volunteers. We publish research about charities and nonprofits at https://circleacts.org. For the purposes of Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA), Circle Acts is the organization responsible for the personal information described here.
When you just read the site
This website is a set of static files. There is no account system, no login, no comment section and no shopping cart. Reading an article does not create a record about you on our side.
Our host, Netlify, records standard server request data when your browser asks for a page. That includes your IP address, the page requested, the time, and your browser and device type. Netlify uses this to serve the site, to keep it available and to defend against abuse. We do not use it to build a profile of you, and we do not combine it with anything else.
When you send us a form
There are two forms on this site, and both are optional.
- Contact form. We ask for your name, email address and message. A phone number and subject line are optional.
- Charity nomination form. We ask for the charity's name, website, country and cause, why you think it deserves attention, your email address, and optionally your name and whether you are connected to the organization.
Submissions are processed and stored by Netlify Forms and are readable by the Circle Acts volunteers who handle enquiries. We use them only to reply to you and to research the charity you nominated. We do not add you to a mailing list, because we do not have one.
Please do not send us sensitive personal information through these forms. They are not encrypted end to end and they are not the right place for health, financial or identity details.
Cookies and tracking
Circle Acts sets no cookies of its own. We run no analytics, no session tracking and no cross-site tracking of our own.
We do show advertising, supplied by Google AdSense, and that does use cookies. Google and its advertising partners may use cookies or similar technology to show you ads, to measure whether an ad worked, and in some cases to personalise what you see based on your previous browsing. This is how the site pays for itself: we have no staff, but hosting and tools cost money.
You can control this. Visit Google My Ad Center to turn off personalised advertising, or aboutads.info for the industry-wide opt-out. Blocking third-party cookies in your browser also works, and the site will still function normally.
Your browser may store a single preference locally if you use the light and dark mode switch. That value stays in your own browser, is never sent to us, and can be cleared by clearing your browsing data.
Two third parties can see your IP address because your browser fetches something from them directly:
- Google Fonts serves the two typefaces this site uses. Your browser requests the font files from Google, which means Google receives your IP address and browser details.
- YouTube appears in a small number of articles that embed a video. We use YouTube's no-cookie player, so no tracking cookie is set unless you press play, but loading the page still contacts Google's servers.
Who else is involved
| Service | What it does | What it can see |
|---|---|---|
| Netlify | Hosts the website and processes form submissions | Server request logs, form contents |
| Sanity | Stores our articles and serves images | Image requests from your browser |
| Google Fonts | Serves typefaces | IP address, browser details |
| YouTube | Video player on a few articles | IP address when such a page loads |
| Google AdSense | Shows the advertising that funds the site | IP address, cookies, pages viewed, ad interactions |
These providers operate internationally, so information may be processed on servers outside Canada and may be subject to the laws of those countries.
Links to charities
The point of this site is to send you to other organizations. When you follow a link to a charity you leave Circle Acts and that organization's own privacy policy applies. We do not track which links you click, we receive no commission, and we are not told whether you donated.
How long we keep things
We keep form submissions for up to 24 months so we can follow up on enquiries and keep a record of charity nominations we have assessed, then delete them. Netlify's server logs are kept according to Netlify's own retention schedule, which we do not control.
Your rights
Under Canadian privacy law you may ask us to:
- tell you what personal information we hold about you,
- correct it if it is wrong,
- delete it, and
- explain how we used it.
Ask through the contact details below and we will respond within 30 days. Because we are volunteers, a reply may take a few days, but the 30-day limit still applies. If you are unhappy with our response you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
If you are reading from the UK, the EU or elsewhere with stronger local rules, we will honour equivalent requests. We do not need consent to store what you deliberately typed into a form in order to get a reply, but you can withdraw it and ask us to delete the message at any time.
Children
This site is written for adults deciding where to give. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has sent us information through a form, tell us and we will delete it.
Changes
If we add analytics, or change who processes your information, we will update this page and change the date at the top before those changes take effect.
Contact us
Privacy questions and requests go to our volunteer team through the contact form, or by email to Brian@circleacts.com .