The current prototype stores entered account, profile, saved-search, favorite, bookmark, rating, and feedback data in the visitor's browser storage for demonstration. A production launch will require a secure backend, monitored contact address, access controls, and a final privacy review.
Scope
This policy applies to NGOTech Volunteers at volunteers.ngotech.org or ngotech.org/volunteers. The directory is designed to help NGOs and community organizations discover volunteer technology support. It is not a marketplace for soliciting paid clients.
Information We Collect
We may collect the following categories of information:
- Account information, such as name, organization name, email address, email validation status, password reset status, and password credentials.
- Volunteer profile information, such as name, headline, general location, profile photo URL, LinkedIn URL, GitHub URL, other social or portfolio URL, skills, bio, availability hours, preferred days, selected NGO Tech Nerd symbol, verification status, background-check workflow status, and review-pause status.
- Student volunteer consent information, when a volunteer is 16 or 17, such as age-group confirmation, parent or guardian email address, parent or guardian consent status, public display name, student location visibility preference, and records showing that both the volunteer and parent or guardian reviewed the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
- Organization workspace information, such as saved searches, favorite volunteers, bookmarked searches, bookmarked volunteers, organization account preferences, country, website or domain, US EIN when provided, organization verification level, and information used to review organization legitimacy.
- Ratings and feedback information, such as adult public rating or student private rating, recommendation text, volunteer work completed, organization name, submission date, and updates to feedback.
- Communications and review information, including messages, questions, verification notes, review notes, safety concerns, or information provided during a rating review or reinstatement review.
- Technical information, such as browser or device information, logs, usage events, fraud-prevention signals, cookies, and similar data if used in a production version.
Public Information
Volunteer profiles may be listed after required profile connections are provided, even while account email verification is pending. Profiles with pending email verification display a grey pending badge and cannot be contacted until verification is complete. Public adult volunteer profile information may include profile photo, name, general location, skills, headline, bio, availability, preferred days, selected NGO Tech Nerd symbol, LinkedIn link, GitHub link, other social or portfolio link, verification status, ratings, recommendations, feedback, unavailable status, and rating-review pause status.
Organization account information may include organization name, country, website or domain, email address, email verification status, US EIN when provided, organization verification level, and notes or records used to review legitimacy. US NGO and nonprofit Gold status verification is expected to rely on EIN details and IRS nonprofit status. International Gold status verification is still in development and may be handled case by case, especially when an organization does not have a US partner with an EIN.
Public information is more limited for volunteers who are 16 or 17. Student volunteers may use a public display name instead of their full name. Their public location is shown as REMOTE by default. If the student is open to in-person work, the student and parent or guardian may choose to show state or region and country, but city is not displayed without an express NGOTech override. Ratings, recommendations, and feedback for student volunteers are not public and are visible only to NGOTech for safety, support, quality review, and program administration.
Account email addresses are used for account access and validation and are not intended to be displayed publicly. Organizations should understand that their organization name may appear publicly when they submit a rating, recommendation, or feedback.
How We Use Information
- To create, validate, secure, and manage accounts.
- To publish and operate volunteer profiles and directory search.
- To let organizations save searches, favorites, and bookmarks.
- To display adult volunteer ratings, recommendations, and feedback.
- To keep student volunteer ratings, recommendations, and feedback private to NGOTech.
- To calculate public average ratings and apply automatic review pauses below 4.5 for adult volunteer profiles.
- To review volunteer profiles, verification requests, background check workflow completion, rating concerns, and reinstatement decisions.
- To contact volunteers and organizations about account, safety, verification, or review issues.
- To prevent misuse, spam, fake profiles, false feedback, and paid-client solicitation.
- To comply with legal, safety, and operational requirements.
Background Checks*
Volunteers are responsible for paying for any required background check before NGOTech considers a Gold Verification Badge. NGOTech currently expects to use Checkr for background-check workflows. Checkr may collect payment and background-check information under Checkr's own terms and privacy policy. Costs may vary based on the applicant's location and mandatory country fees. NGOTech may receive status, confirmation, or review information needed to decide whether a Gold Verification Badge can be granted, denied, paused, or removed.
If a 16 or 17 year old volunteer is registering with help from a parent or guardian and wants to acquire a Gold Verification Badge, the background check will be completed by the parent or guardian on the registration form, not by the minor volunteer.
Earning a Gold Verification Badge is a paid service and is not required to get started. It is an added benefit that some organizations may require before a volunteer works with sensitive data or materials. Each organization may choose to perform its own vetting outside NGOTech's Volunteer portal, and NGOTech respects that. NGOTech is here to help when an organization requires a background check for people working on its projects.
*This background-check process is still being addressed. This is early information about how NGOTech intends the process to work. The feature is still under development and will be released more fully in a later stage. Currently, NGOTech provides background checks on an as-needed basis.
Choices And Rights
Users should be able to request access, correction, deletion, or deactivation of account or profile information, subject to legal, safety, fraud-prevention, dispute, verification, and operational exceptions. Volunteers can disable availability while keeping a profile visible. Volunteers can also request review of incorrect profile information, rating concerns, or pause status.
Some privacy laws may provide additional rights depending on a user's location, such as rights to know, access, delete, correct, limit, opt out of certain sharing, or avoid discrimination for exercising privacy rights.
Security And Retention
NGOTech should use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards appropriate to the information it collects. Production systems should avoid collecting information that is not needed, protect retained information, and delete or anonymize information when it is no longer needed for directory, account, review, security, or legal purposes.
No online service can guarantee absolute security. Users should protect their account credentials and avoid posting sensitive personal information in public profile fields or feedback.
Student Volunteers
NGOTech Volunteers may allow volunteers who are 16 or 17 years old when they are high-school-level students exploring STEM related fields, earning volunteer hours for graduation, or pursuing Senior Capstone Project research, work, builds, or related learning. Volunteers under 16 are not allowed at this time.
A 16 or 17 year old volunteer must provide a parent or guardian email address. The volunteer and the parent or guardian must both verify the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and the parent or guardian must give permission for the minor to volunteer before the account can become active.
Student privacy is treated as a first-priority rule. Public student profiles may use display names, show REMOTE as the default location, and keep ratings and written feedback private to NGOTech. Students are encouraged to use their bio to describe what they hope to learn, build, research, or contribute, including school-year, summer-break, or capstone-aligned volunteer goals.
Changes And Contact
This policy should expand as NGOTech receives new product, verification, privacy, background-check, safety, analytics, support, or operational requirements. When material changes are made, NGOTech should update the last-updated date and make the current policy available through the website.
Contact: NGOTech contact form.