Privacy Policy

DharmaCats (“DharmaCats,” “we,” “us”) is an Arizona nonprofit and a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. We run the website dharmacatssanctuary.org.

If you have a question about this policy or your information, write to us at hello@dharmacatssanctuary.org.

When you write to us

The contact form asks for your name, your email address, what your message is about, and your message. We use this only to read and answer what you sent.

When you send the form, your message is saved in a private area of our website that only authorized DharmaCats administrators can see, and a notification is emailed to our inbox at hello@dharmacatssanctuary.org through our website’s email delivery service. The email delivery service keeps a short record that a notification was sent (for example, the delivery time and status) so it can deliver reliably.

The copy on our website is deleted automatically 90 days after we receive it, whether or not it has been read. Our routine database backups may hold it for approximately 14 more days before it is gone. We do not keep attachments, and we do not store your IP address or device details with your message.

If you email us directly, your message arrives in the same inbox. Email in our Microsoft 365 inbox is kept as needed for sanctuary correspondence and applicable obligations.

Please leave out anything private you don’t want us to have. We keep what you tell us to ourselves, and we only share a story with your permission.

Your Care Basket

The Care Basket lets you gather the cats, care items, and sanctuary needs you’d like to support. It does not ask for your name, email address, or any payment details.

To remember your basket, your browser keeps a random key in its own storage on your device. Our system stores only a scrambled version of that key, together with your selections (which cats or items, the amounts you chose, and whether you prefer to give once or monthly). We cannot tell who a basket belongs to.

A basket is removed automatically 30 days after it was last changed. You can also empty it yourself at any time. If you clear your browser’s storage, the basket can no longer be reached from that browser.

When you make a gift

We keep a record of each gift — your name, contact details, the amount, the date, your giving preference, and any message you include — so we can keep accurate books and meet our legal, accounting, and recordkeeping obligations.

Visiting the website

The website does not use advertising cookies or advertising tracking, and we do not sell or share your information for advertising.

Our website host counts visits in aggregate — for example, pages viewed, how long a visit lasts, the site that referred you, and approximate country and type of device — so we can understand overall traffic. It does this without cookies and without identifying who you are or following you from one visit to the next.

Like most websites, our host also processes basic technical information when pages are requested — such as your IP address and browser type — to deliver the site and keep it secure.

The website has a private sign-in area used only by authorized DharmaCats administrators. It stores sign-in information in the browser of the person signing in.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your information.

We share it only with the services that run the website on our behalf — website hosting, our database, email delivery, and our Microsoft 365 email inbox — and only as needed for them to do that work. We may also share information if the law requires it.

If we begin accepting gifts online, we will update this policy before we do.

• Contact messages on our website: deleted automatically 90 days after we receive them. Routine database backups may hold them for approximately 14 more days.
• Email in our Microsoft 365 inbox: kept as needed for sanctuary correspondence and applicable obligations.
• Care Baskets: removed automatically 30 days after the last change.
• Gift records: kept as necessary for legal, accounting, and recordkeeping obligations.

You can ask us to show you, correct, or delete the information we hold about you by writing to hello@dharmacatssanctuary.org. We may need to keep gift records that our legal, accounting, and recordkeeping obligations require. We can delete a contact message from our website sooner than 90 days on request.

You can ask us at any time to stop contacting you.

This website is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has sent us information, write to us and we will delete it.

We limit access to private records to authorized DharmaCats administrators, who sign in with a password and a second verification step. No system is perfectly secure, but we take care to protect what you share with us.

If we change this policy, we will post the new version here with a new effective date.

DharmaCats
hello@dharmacatssanctuary.org