Privacy

If you are just visiting

We do not use analytics, advertising, or tracking of any kind. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to — we set no cookies for visitors at all.

When you scan one of our signs

We count the scan. That is genuinely all: the sign's code and the date, added to a running total for that day. If you open the same sign again within five minutes, your phone shows the page it already has, so that is not counted twice.

We do not record your IP address, your device, your location, or anything that could distinguish you from anyone else who scanned the same sign. The record is a number, not a visit. We keep those counts because "this sign was scanned 240 times last season" is the kind of evidence that supports grant applications — and it works just as well without knowing anything about you.

Photographs

Photographs on this site are taken by our volunteers. Camera files normally carry hidden data including GPS coordinates; our upload process removes all of it before the image is stored, so publishing a photograph never reveals where it was taken.

Many of our photographs show people at work on our sites. If you are in one and would rather not be, write to hello@gaianrestoration.org and tell us which, and we will take it down. A photograph is not part of your record, so deleting your record does not find it. We remove it from this site at once; a copy kept along the way by a browser or a network can take a little while to clear.

If you sign up for a workday

Signing up is optional — you can always just turn up. If you do sign up, we keep the name and email you give us, your party size, and any note, so we can plan the day, remind you the day before, and reach you if it is cancelled. You can delete it yourself at any time.

If you come to a workday

At the gate you may be asked to check in by typing your email address into a volunteer's phone. That screen can only tell you about yourself; it cannot show anyone a list of who else is coming. If the phone has no signal, what you typed waits on that phone until it has, then is sent and cleared from it.

Afterwards we record that you were there and how long you worked: the date, the site, and the hours. Volunteer hours count as matching contributions when we apply for grants, so we report the totals to funders and to our board. At the end of the year we may email you a thank-you with your own total, which you can unsubscribe from. If you do, we note that on your record so it does not come again.

If you sign the volunteer agreement

When you volunteer you sign an agreement, on your own phone or one handed to you. We keep your name and email, the signature you typed, the date and time, the exact text you agreed to, and the kind of browser it was signed in.

If you sign for children in your care, their names are written on your agreement. That is the only place a child's name is kept.

If you give

Donations are taken by Givebutter on their own page. We never see or store your card details. Givebutter tells us who gave, and we copy that into our own records: your name and email, the amount, the date, and whether it was a one-time gift or membership dues. We keep it for our accounts and so we can thank you. We do not sell or share our donor list.

If an organisation gives in your name — your employer matching your gift, say — we record the organisation as the giver and note that the gift was made in your name.

If you ask to hear from us

The "Hear about workdays" form keeps your email address and what you asked to hear about. We send one message asking you to confirm, and nothing more unless you do — so nobody else can sign you up. If nobody confirms within 30 days, we delete the address. Every email from the list has an unsubscribe link: open it and press the one button on the page. It is a button, not the link itself, because some email services open every link in a message to check it, and that must not unsubscribe you.

How we keep bots out of our forms

When you start filling in one of our forms (signing up for a workday, signing the volunteer agreement, asking to hear from us, or asking for your record), your browser loads Cloudflare Turnstile, a check that tells people from automated spam. Most people never notice it; now and then it asks you to tick a box. It does not see what you type into the form.

To make the check, Cloudflare looks at signals from your browser and connection, such as your IP address and the kind of browser you use, and it may store a little data in your browser while it does. Cloudflare also uses those signals to improve its bot detection, under its own terms. Reading this site never loads the check, and our donation and shop pages never load it at all.

We also count how often each form is sent, so that one connection or one address cannot flood it. Each time you send a form, we add one to a count kept against your connection's IP address and, when you sign in or ask to hear from us, against the email address you typed. The count holds nothing else, and it is deleted within two days.

If you contact us

If you email or call, we keep what you sent so we can reply. We do not add you to any list without asking.

What we may add ourselves

The people who coordinate our volunteers may add to your record: a phone number you gave them, a skill you offered, what you have told them you care about (pollinators, say, or one of our sites), a short working note such as something to follow up, and, if you come with others, the household you arrive with.

Who can see it

Names, contact details, signed agreements, hours and giving can be seen only by a small number of alliance administrators. The volunteers who edit these pages cannot see any of it.

Our volunteers who edit this site

A small number of alliance members can sign in to update these pages. For them we store an email address, a name, and the times they signed in. Signing in uses an emailed link rather than a password, so we never hold anyone's password. Those accounts use a session cookie, which is set only after signing in.

Other services we rely on

Deliberately few. The typefaces on this site are served by us rather than by a font provider, so reading these pages does not tell anyone else that you did.

• Cloudflare hosts this site and stores its data. Like any web host, their systems process requests in order to serve pages. It also runs the spam check on our forms, described above.
• Resend delivers the email this site sends: sign-in links for our volunteers, and the confirmations, reminders and updates you asked for. It is given your email address and what each message says: the first name you gave us, in a greeting, and in the year-end thank-you your name, your hours and the sites you worked at. Nothing else about you.
• Proton hosts our inbox, hello@gaianrestoration.org. Anything you write to us there is held by Proton for us, under its own privacy policy.
• Givebutter takes donations and sends the tax receipt. It holds your payment details and keeps its own record of your gift, under its own privacy policy.

Children

This site is not directed at children. A child may come to a workday only with a guardian, who signs for them. The one thing we hold about a child is their name on that guardian's agreement: no email address, no hours, and no record of their own.

Asking us about your information

If you have only read this site, there is nothing for us to look up. If you have signed up for a workday, subscribed, volunteered or given, you can see what we hold about you and delete it yourself — no account needed, just your email address. It shows your details, hours, signups, each agreement you signed in full (with any children's names on it), gifts, your subscription, the email we have sent you, and your editor account if you have one. It does not show our coordinators' working notes, but deleting your record deletes those as well.

One exception, stated plainly: if you signed a volunteer agreement, we are required to keep that signed record for seven years — twenty when it covered a child, because a claim can arrive until they turn twenty. It is deleted automatically once that time is up, and deleting your record removes everything else we hold. A gift an organisation made in your name is that organisation's gift and stays in our accounts, with your name taken off it. Deleting your record here does not reach Givebutter, which keeps its own. If you would rather ask a person, write to hello@gaianrestoration.org.

Changes

If we start collecting anything else, we will say so here before we do it. Last reviewed October 2026.