PRIVACY & TRUST
Angels Among Us receives sensitive personal and household information to administer our Angel Tree Program. This policy explains what we collect, how we use it, and how we protect the privacy of the families we serve.
We collect information because it is necessary to operate a fair, responsible, and verifiable program. A family's private information does not become public simply because a child participates in the Angel Tree Program.
This Privacy Policy applies to information collected by Angels Among Us through our website, assistance applications, verification processes, program communications, Angel Tree system, and other program-related activities.
Assistance applications are intended to be completed by a parent, legal guardian, or other authorized adult caregiver. Children should not submit applications or upload documents directly.
Depending on your participation in the program, we may collect:
We may use collected information to:
Angels Among Us may reasonably verify information provided in an application. This may include document review, address verification, comparison of information within the application, and requests for additional information when necessary.
A discrepancy does not automatically mean that a family provided false information. When appropriate, discrepancies may receive human review and an applicant may be allowed to provide an explanation or additional documentation.
Angels Among Us may use internal tools, calculations, and decision-support systems to assist with evaluating financial need, eligibility, verification, and program priority. This may include our internal HARI system.
Internal assessment results, scores, indicators, reviewer notes, and decision reasoning are not published on Angel cards or provided to donors.
If a child is accepted into the program, Angels Among Us may create a limited public Angel profile to help a donor select gifts.
Public information may include an assigned Angel code or identifier, limited display name when appropriate, age, gender when appropriate, sizes, interests, favorite colors, needs, wishes, and other information reasonably necessary for gift selection.
We do not intentionally publish the household's home address, financial information, uploaded documents, applicant contact information, internal HARI results, reviewer notes, or private verification records.
Adopting an Angel does not give a donor access to the family's private application.
Businesses, churches, organizations, or other locations hosting an Angel Tree may receive limited access to information needed to administer Angels at their location, such as Angel codes, adoption status, and gift-return status.
Host locations do not need access to household financial information, verification documents, internal scores, reviewer notes, or other private application records to perform their role.
We may use technology and administrative service providers to operate the program. These may include hosting, database, document-storage, communications, verification, security, and other necessary services.
Information may be processed by those providers when reasonably necessary to provide their services to Angels Among Us or comply with applicable legal obligations.
Angels Among Us does not sell applicant, household, or child personal information. We also do not provide private application records to donors for advertising or commercial marketing.
We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect personal information against unauthorized access, loss, use, or disclosure.
Supporting documents are kept separate from public Angel cards and are intended to be accessible only for authorized program purposes.
However, no Internet system, electronic storage system, or data transmission method can guarantee absolute security.
We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for program administration, application verification, fraud or duplication prevention, recordkeeping, dispute resolution, legal obligations, and other legitimate organizational purposes.
Different categories of information may be retained for different periods. Aggregated or de-identified information that no longer reasonably identifies a family or child may be retained longer for historical, statistical, or planning purposes.
Supporting documents for a program season are retained through the full day on January 1 of the following year and then become eligible for secure deletion. We may retain necessary application and prior-participation records, duplicate or integrity incidents, decision and audit history, Angel adoption, gift custody and distribution records, and aggregated or de-identified statistics for longer.
An applicant may contact Angels Among Us to request correction of inaccurate personal information or ask about information provided to the program.
You may also request deletion of certain information. We may not be able to immediately delete information that we reasonably need to retain for security, fraud prevention, program records, legal obligations, dispute resolution, or other legitimate purposes.
Our program necessarily receives information about children from their parents, guardians, or other authorized adult caregivers. We do not design the assistance application to be completed directly by children.
We seek to limit children's information collected and published to what is reasonably necessary to administer the program and help donors select appropriate gifts.
We may update this Privacy Policy as the program, our practices, or applicable requirements change. When material changes are made, we will publish an updated version and its effective date or program season.
Questions about privacy, information corrections, or data-related requests may be directed to Angels Among Us at (731) 332-1114.
The Privacy Policy explains how we handle information. The Program Terms explain the rules for participation.
