Privacy Policy - Us For Them

Effective date: May 1, 2026
Last updated: May 1, 2026

At a glance

We’re a small faith-based ministry. We collect the minimum information we need to do two things: (1) help people who need a kidney be seen by potential donors, and (2) let people pledge to pray. We don’t sell your data. We don’t run advertising. We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is being used.

When you submit a kidney need listing, your first name, city/state, story, photo, and hospital are shown publicly so donors can find you. Your email is private and only used to contact you about your listing. When you submit a pledge to pray, your first name + last initial and city/state appear on a public map.

You can ask us to remove your listing or your pledge at any time, for any reason, by emailing us.

1. Who we are

Us For Them is a faith-based ministry that inspires the Church to consider living kidney donation. We operate the website at usforthem.org. We are not a transplant center, healthcare provider, or hospital. We do not perform medical evaluations, donor matching, surgery, or any clinical activity. All of that happens through the transplant center listed on each individual’s profile.

For privacy questions or requests about your data, contact us at prayer@usforthem.org.

2. What we collect

a. Information you give us when you submit a kidney need listing

When someone fills out our submission form, we collect:

First name (publicly displayed)
City and state (publicly displayed)
Email address (kept private; used only to contact you about your listing)
Your story (publicly displayed)
A photo of yourself (publicly displayed)
The name of your hospital and a link to its donor program (publicly displayed)
An optional YouTube link (publicly displayed if provided)

We also record an audit trail of your consent: the date and time you accepted our consent statements, your IP address at submission, your browser’s user agent string, the version of each consent statement you agreed to, and the exact wording of those statements as they appeared to you. We keep this so that if our consent language ever changes, we can show what you specifically agreed to. This audit trail is private — only Us For Them administrators can see it.

b. Information you give us when you pledge to pray

When someone fills out our pledge form, we collect:

First name (publicly displayed)
Last initial (publicly displayed)
City (publicly displayed)
State (publicly displayed)

We then use a free service from the U.S. Census Bureau to convert “city, state” into approximate latitude/longitude coordinates so we can place a dot on the map. Your individual address is never collected — only city-level location.

We also temporarily record your IP address to limit how often any one person can submit a pledge (currently capped at one per hour) and to detect spam. This rate-limit record expires automatically and is not retained long-term.

c. Information we collect automatically

Like most websites, our hosting provider (SiteGround) keeps standard server logs of every request: IP address, browser user agent, page requested, and timestamp. These are used for security and operational troubleshooting and are retained per SiteGround’s policy.

We use Google Analytics (via the Site Kit by Google plugin) to understand how visitors use the site — which pages are popular, how people arrive, what device they use. Google Analytics may set cookies on your browser. We do not use these analytics to identify you personally; we use the aggregate trends to improve the site. Google processes this data per Google’s own privacy practices.

d. What we don’t collect

We do not collect financial information. We do not run a payment processor and do not accept donations through this site.
We do not collect health records, medical history, lab results, or any clinical data. Those are between you and your transplant center.
We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13 (see Section 9).

3. How we use what we collect

We use the information you give us only for the purposes you’d expect:

To publicly display your kidney need listing so potential donors can find you.
To publicly display your pledge to pray on the prayer map.
To contact you (by email) about your listing — for example, if we have a question, need to verify something, or are letting you know about a removal request.
To send a notification email to our administrators when a new listing is submitted, so we can review and approve it.
To keep a record of your consent in case it’s ever questioned.
To improve the site (via aggregate analytics).
To prevent spam and abuse (rate-limiting, honeypot fields, basic security checks).

4. Who we share it with

We are a small operation and we don’t sell or rent your data to anyone. The only third parties who see your data are service providers we rely on to run the site:

SiteGround — our web host. They store the website’s database, your photo, and the server logs.
Google — through Site Kit / Google Analytics. They receive standard analytics data about your visit.
U.S. Census Bureau Geocoder — when you submit a pledge, we send your city and state to their free public API to get coordinates back. We do not send your name or any other field.
OpenStreetMap — the map on the pledge page is rendered using OpenStreetMap tiles. Your browser fetches map images from their servers when the map loads.
Anyone you, or others, share your listing with publicly — when your kidney need listing goes live, by design it can be shared on social media, by email, and by other people. We have no way to track or limit those onward shares once a listing is public.

We will also disclose information if required by law, court order, or to protect the safety of someone we believe to be in immediate danger.

5. Public display — what’s visible to the world

Because the entire point of the kidney need listings and the pledge map is public visibility, please understand:

Your kidney need listing (first name, location, story, photo, hospital, YouTube link if you submitted one) is visible to anyone with internet access. Search engines may index it. People may screenshot or save it. We cannot retract content that has already been copied or cached elsewhere.
Your pledge (first name + last initial, city, state) is visible on the public map. Hovering a dot reveals your name and location.
Your email address is never shown publicly for either form. It stays private to Us For Them administrators.

If you are not comfortable with this level of public exposure, please do not submit.

6. How long we keep it

Kidney need listings are kept until you ask us to remove them. As part of our review process, we may archive listings approximately two (2) years after submission. We do not delete listings automatically — an administrator reviews older listings and decides whether to keep them active or move them to an archived state. If you’d like a listing reviewed sooner, kept active longer, or removed entirely, contact us at prayer@usforthem.org.
The consent audit trail for a listing is kept as long as the listing is published, plus a reasonable period afterward for legal record-keeping.
Pledges are kept indefinitely as part of the prayer map history, unless you ask for removal.
Server logs and analytics data follow our providers’ retention policies (SiteGround and Google respectively).

7. Your rights

You can, at any time and for any reason:

Ask us to remove your listing or your pledge. Email us at prayer@usforthem.org with the name and city/state you submitted under, and we will remove it. We aim to do this within 30 days.
Ask us what we have on file about you. We’ll send you a copy of the data associated with your submission.
Ask us to correct something inaccurate. Email us with what needs to change.
Withdraw consent. This is the same as asking for removal — withdrawing consent will result in your listing or pledge being taken down.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under laws like the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA), or the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We honor those rights. Contact us using the email above and tell us which right you’d like to exercise.

We will not retaliate against you for exercising any of these rights.

8. Health information

Your kidney need story may describe your health condition. Once you publish that information on our site, it becomes public. We are not a healthcare provider, we are not a HIPAA covered entity, and we do not protect this information the way a hospital would.

If there are details about your medical situation you want to keep private, do not include them in your story. Share only what you’re comfortable with the world seeing.

For all medical questions — your transplant evaluation, donor matching, surgical questions, recovery, anything clinical — please rely on your transplant center, not on us.

9. Children

This site is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13 years old.

If a kidney need listing is submitted on behalf of a minor, our consent form requires the submitter to confirm they are the minor’s parent, legal guardian, or have direct permission. If you believe a child’s information has been submitted without proper authorization, contact us at prayer@usforthem.org and we will remove it promptly.

10. Cookies

Our site uses a small number of cookies:

Google Analytics cookies (set by Site Kit) — used for aggregate analytics.
WordPress session cookies — used only when an administrator logs in to manage the site. Visitors don’t get these.

You can disable cookies in your browser settings. The site will still work, though analytics will be incomplete.

11. Security

We take reasonable steps to protect the data we hold: HTTPS for all traffic, WordPress and plugin updates, hosted security tooling from SiteGround, and limited admin access. No system is perfectly secure. If we ever experience a data incident affecting personal information, we will notify affected people in line with applicable law.

12. International users

We are based in the United States and host all data with U.S. providers. If you visit from outside the U.S. and submit information, you understand and agree that your data will be processed in the U.S.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The “Last updated” date at the top will reflect the most recent version. For material changes (for example, adding a new third party or a new type of data we collect), we will note the change prominently on the site for a reasonable period.

14. Contact

Privacy questions, removal requests, or data access requests:

prayer@usforthem.org

Us For Them