Effective 3 August 2026. The VillageServer Initiative helps churches, missionaries, and local believers share Scripture and discipleship resources offline. Most of our work happens far from the internet, and some of it happens where being identified as a Christian worker is dangerous. We built this site to collect the minimum we need to answer you and to get equipment where it is going.

If you are working somewhere sensitive, read “If you serve where this could put you at risk” below before you fill in any form on this site.

The short version

  • We set no cookies — no advertising trackers, no Google Analytics, no Meta Pixel, no data brokers
  • We never sell, rent, or trade your information, and we never share your name with other ministries or donors without asking you first
  • We never see your card details. Gifts are processed entirely by Zeffy on their own platform
  • Our chat assistant is an AI, and what you type is sent to Anthropic to generate a reply
  • Applications are read by people, and we reply to every one by email
  • You can ask us to delete anything we hold about you, at any time, and we will

What we collect when you are just reading

Every page records a basic visit so we know which resources are actually being used and which languages to prioritise. We store:

  • A random visitor ID — a generated string kept in your browser's local storage. It is not tied to your name, email, or any account, and clearing your browser data resets it permanently
  • The page you opened, which site you were on, and the page that referred you
  • Campaign tags in the link you followed — the utm_ values plus Facebook and TikTok click identifiers, when a link carries them
  • Your browser's user-agent string, used to filter out bots and crawlers
  • An approximate location — country, region, and city, as estimated by our host from your connection
  • Links you click, including the destination and the link's visible text
We do not store your IP address. Our host uses it in transit to estimate the city and region above, and the assistant hashes it into an irreversible string purely to enforce rate limits. The address itself is never written to our database.

Cookies and browser storage

This site sets no cookies at all. It does use your browser's local storage, which stays on your device and is never transmitted anywhere except as described in this policy. We keep four things there: your visitor ID, your chosen language and its cached translations, your open assistant conversation, and a count of assistant messages used for rate limiting.

You can clear all of it at any time through your browser's “clear site data” or “clear browsing data” controls, or avoid it entirely by browsing in a private window. Nothing on this site breaks if you do.

What we collect when you write to us

Four forms on this site send us information, and each one takes only what it needs:

  • Contact form — your name, email, and message
  • Kit availability request — your name, email, organisation, country and region, the items you asked about, and your message
  • Giving interest — your name, email, country, and which initiative or practical need drew you
  • Equipment & funding application — considerably more, described in the next section

Submissions are emailed to our team and stored in our database so we can follow up. We use them to answer you and to plan deployments — never for unrelated marketing.

What the equipment application asks, and why

This is the most detailed form on the site, because we are sending real hardware to real places and we are accountable to the people who fund it. It collects your name, email, phone, organisation and role, country and region, the kit tier you need, your mission context and intended reach, the languages and literacy situation you work in, your power and internet access, your organisation's website or sending body, a reference's name and contact, how long you have served, a shipping or delivery address, your preferred contact method and timezone, and optionally a supporting document you upload.

We run an automated check on each application that scores it out of three — whether your email domain matches your listed website, whether you gave a reference, and whether you have a findable web presence — and flags mismatches between the kit requested and the audience described. This check never rejects anyone. It only sorts the queue. Every application is read and decided by a person.

The reference you name is another person. Please ask their permission before giving us their contact details, and tell them we may reach out to verify your application.

The assistant on this site is an AI

The “Ask a question” chat is powered by Claude, a large language model from Anthropic. When you use it:

  • You are asked for your email before the conversation starts, so our team can follow up or send you a copy
  • What you type is transmitted to Anthropic to generate each reply
  • The conversation is saved in your browser and cleared automatically after about 30 minutes of inactivity
  • A transcript is stored in our database and can be read by our administrators
  • If the conversation suggests you need a person, it passes your name, email, country, and a summary to our team by email

Treat it like a public help desk, not a private conversation. Do not type anything into it you would not want stored and read by our team — no passwords, no financial details, and nothing that would identify a worker or a location that needs to stay unnamed.

We use AI to help handle application correspondence

After you apply, some of the email correspondence about your application is drafted with AI assistance, and incoming replies to our application address are read by an automated system that summarises them for our team. This means the content of emails you send us about an application may be processed by Anthropic's models in the same way the chat assistant is. A person reviews and approves decisions about your application — the automation drafts and organises, it does not decide.

If you serve where this could put you at risk

We know that for some of you, a list of your name, your village, your congregation size, and your ministry plans is not a form — it is a liability. We take that seriously, and we ask you to take it seriously too.

  • Give us the least detail that still lets us help you. If naming your exact village or congregation is unsafe, give a region and tell us in the message field that you will share specifics another way
  • Do not upload documents that identify people who are not you — membership lists, photographs of gatherings, or letters naming local believers
  • We do not publish applicant information. Names, locations, and application contents are never posted on this site, in newsletters, or in donor reports without your explicit permission each time
  • Testimonials and field photographs are published only with consent. If you appear in something on this site and want it removed, tell us and we will take it down
  • Ask us to delete your application once your kit has arrived and we will, keeping only what we need for our funders' records
Please be honest with yourself about your email too. Anything you send us also lives in your own sent folder and on your own provider's servers, which we cannot protect. If your email account is not safe, the safest route is to have a trusted sending organisation apply on your behalf.

Giving

Donations are handled entirely by Zeffy, on Zeffy's own pages. We never receive, see, or store your card number, bank details, or billing address — Zeffy's privacy policy governs what happens there. What reaches us is the information Zeffy passes on about a completed gift, such as your name, email, and amount, so we can thank you and keep our records straight.

If you tell us on this site that you are interested in giving, that is separate from an actual donation and simply lets us send you information about the initiative you named.

Who else touches your information

We keep the list of outside services deliberately short. Each one processes data on our behalf, under their own privacy terms:

  • Vercel — hosts the site and estimates approximate location from your connection
  • Supabase — the database where visits, messages, applications, and transcripts are stored
  • Resend and Google (Gmail) — deliver and receive our email
  • Anthropic — generates the assistant's replies and helps draft application correspondence
  • Zeffy — processes donations end to end
  • Google Fonts — serves the site's typefaces, which means Google receives a request from your browser on every page
  • Google Translate — receives the page text when, and only when, you switch the site to another language

Beyond these, we disclose information only when you ask us to, or when the law genuinely requires it.

Children

This site is meant for adults arranging ministry and equipment. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13, and none of our forms are aimed at them. Our field programmes reach whole communities, including young people, but we do not gather personal information about the people who use a VillageServer — the devices themselves record nothing about who reads what. If you believe a child has sent us information, tell us and we will delete it.

How long we keep things

  • Visit and click records — kept while they remain useful for understanding which resources are reaching people
  • Messages and enquiries — kept while the conversation is live and for our follow-up records afterwards
  • Applications — kept for the life of the request and afterwards as our record of what was sent where, which our funders require
  • Assistant transcripts — the copy in your browser clears itself after about 30 minutes of inactivity; the copy in our database is kept for support and quality review

We would rather hold less. If you want something gone sooner, ask us and we will remove it.

Where your information goes

We are based in the United States and our services are hosted there. If you are writing to us from Uganda, India, or anywhere else, your information is transferred to and stored in the United States, where privacy law differs from your own country's. Sending us a form means you understand that.

Your choices

Whatever country you are in, you may ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or stop using it. Email us and we will act on it — we do not require a formal process, and we will not ask you to justify the request.

You can also act without contacting us at all: clear your browser data to reset your visitor ID, browse in a private window to leave nothing behind, or simply not use the assistant. None of these limit your access to anything on this site.

Security, honestly stated

Traffic to this site is encrypted, our database is not publicly readable, administrative access is password-protected, application rate limits and bot filtering are in place, and your IP address is hashed rather than stored. That said, no small ministry can promise perfect security, and we will not pretend otherwise. If something goes wrong that affects you, we will tell you rather than quietly hope you do not notice.

Changes to this policy

When we change how we handle information, we will update this page and move the effective date at the top. If a change materially affects people who have already applied or written to us, we will email them rather than rely on you rechecking this page.

Talk to us

Questions about this policy, or a request to see or delete your information, go to villageserverinitiative@gmail.com. A real person reads it. If you would rather not put your request in writing to a Gmail address, say so in a one-line message and we will arrange another way.