Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 1, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Young Israel of Woodmere South (“YIW South,” “we,” “us”) collects, uses, and protects information when you visit our capital-campaign website and when you make a donation, make a pledge, or contact us through it. We are a synagogue running a community fundraising campaign — we are not an advertising business, and we do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information.

Information we collect

Information you provide

• Donations & pledges. When you donate or pledge, we collect your name, email address, an optional phone number, the amount, and any message you choose to add.
• Contact form. When you write to us, we collect your name, email address, your message, and the dedication you’re asking about (if any).

Information collected automatically

To understand how our campaign site is performing, we record first-party analytics about visits. This includes:

• Your IP address, and an approximate location (city, region, country) derived from it.
• Your browser and device information (user-agent), the page that referred you, the pages you view, and the date/time of your visit.
• On-page interactions: clicks on buttons and links, gallery opens, how far you scroll, which sections you reach, when you start or submit a form, and how long the page took to load.
• Campaign attribution (the utm_ tags on the link you arrived from), so we can tell which outreach brought you here.

We pair each visit with a daily-rotating, one-way visitor hash (so we can count unique visitors for a day without keeping your raw details tied to it) and a random device identifier stored in your browser (so we can tell new visitors from returning ones). This analytics data is first-party — it stays with us and is not used for cross-site tracking or advertising.

Cookies & local storage

We use the minimum storage needed to run the site. We do not use any advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

• Essential session cookie (_annex_web_key): a secure, signed cookie that protects forms against cross-site request forgery and keeps your session working. Required for the site to function.
• First-party analytics storage: small values kept in your browser’s local/session storage (a device id, a per-visit id, and the campaign attribution above) used only for the analytics described above.
• Privacy-choice cookie (yiw_privacy): if you choose “Don’t track my visit,” we store your choice in this first-party cookie so we can honor it on later visits. It holds only your preference — no personal data.

You can clear this storage at any time through your browser settings, and you can block storage entirely — the site will still work.

How we use your information

• To process and acknowledge your donation or pledge, and to send receipts.
• To respond to your inquiries and keep a record of correspondence.
• To understand how the campaign site is used and improve our outreach.
• To keep the site secure and prevent fraud and abuse.
• To meet our record-keeping, accounting, and legal obligations.

Payments

Online donations are processed by Stripe. When you pay, you are taken to Stripe’s secure checkout and enter your card details there. Your full payment-card details go directly to Stripe and are never stored on our servers; we receive only a confirmation and the contact details you provided. Stripe handles your payment information under Stripe’s Privacy Policy .

Service providers we use

We share information only with the providers needed to run the campaign, and only as needed for them to perform their service for us:

• Stripe — payment processing (see above).
• Cloudflare — the “Turnstile” anti-bot check on our forms, which helps confirm you’re a real person and blocks automated abuse, under Cloudflare’s Privacy Policy .
• Amazon Web Services — website hosting and email delivery (donation receipts, team notifications, and your contact messages are delivered by email).
• MaxMind GeoLite2 — the database we use to turn an IP address into an approximate location. We run this lookup on our own servers; your IP address is not sent to MaxMind.

We do not sell or rent your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

How long we keep it

We keep donation and pledge records for as long as needed to run the campaign and to satisfy our accounting, tax, and legal obligations. Contact messages are kept as long as needed to respond and maintain our records. Analytics data is retained to measure the campaign over its lifetime. When information is no longer needed, we delete it or remove its connection to you.

Your choices and rights

• Opt out of analytics: choose “Don’t track my visit” in the notice we show, and we’ll stop recording analytics for you — no IP address, no location, and no on-page interactions. If you make a donation or pledge after opting out, we still keep the gift record, but we don’t tie its campaign attribution to you (we keep it only in anonymized, aggregate form). You can also clear your browser’s site data at any time.
• Global Privacy Control (GPC): if your browser or extension sends a GPC signal, we automatically treat it as opting out of analytics — you don’t need to do anything else.
• Access, correction, deletion: you can ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it. Contact us using the details below.
• EU/UK visitors: where the GDPR / UK GDPR applies, our legal bases are our legitimate interest in running and measuring the campaign and in keeping the site secure, your consent, and performance of your donation. You may object to processing and have the rights above, including the right to lodge a complaint with your data-protection authority.
• California visitors: we do not sell or “share” personal information as those terms are defined under California law. We show California visitors a notice about our analytics, honor Global Privacy Control signals, and let you opt out of analytics at any time using the choices above.

Security

The site is served over encrypted connections (HTTPS), and access to personal information is limited to people who need it to run the campaign. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable measures to protect your information.

Children

This site is intended for adults supporting our campaign and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we’ll change the “Last updated” date above. Material changes will be reflected here.

Contact us

For any privacy question or request, contact us at general@yiwsouth.org or by phone at 5166958779.