Welcome to CAF America

CAF America's Privacy Policy

Privacy Notice last updated – August 2026

OUR PRIVACY NOTICE

The purpose of this Privacy Notice is to let you know how we handle and look after your personal information. This includes what you tell us about yourself, what we learn by having you as a customer or contact, and the choices you give us about what marketing you want us to send you. This Notice explains how we do this and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

We promise that we will:

  • Only use your personal information for the purposes for which you have trusted it to us,
  • Only retain your personal information for as long as we are required by law, and
  • Always ensure appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your personal information and privacy.

We promise that we will never:

  • Sell your personal information,
  • Share it with other organizations without a clear legitimate reason, or
  • Be involved in any data swapping schemes.

This Notice covers all personal information that is processed by CAF America, one of the entities that form the CAF Group. Please be assured your personal information will not be shared with any outside organization except as part of providing a product/service or when legally obliged to do so.

 

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY NOTICE

Any changes to this Notice in the future will be posted to our website and, where appropriate, through email notification. Unless otherwise specified, all such changes will take effect immediately upon posting to the website.

 

YOUR PRIVACY

We have a dedicated Data Protection Officer at CAF, and you can contact them if you have any concerns or questions about how CAF handles your personal information.

You have certain rights under applicable data protection legislation in your jurisdiction. You can also exercise your privacy choices and rights, including rights to access, correct, amend, restrict, or delete your personal information, or object to the processing of your personal information by contacting us:

By mail: The Data Protection Officer, 225 Reinekers Lane, Suite 375, Alexandria, VA 22314-2840

By email: privacy@cafamerica.org

By phone: 202-793-2232 (calls to this number may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes)

Individuals who reside within the EU are also able to contact Castlebridge NomRep Services Ltd.
By email: caf@gdprnomrep.eu

 

HOW TO SUBMIT A COMPLAINT

If you believe your rights regarding your personal information have been infringed upon, please contact us at privacy@cafamerica.org.

 

WHAT PERSONAL DATA WE COLLECT – AND HOW WE COLLECT IT

Personal information we collect about you

  • First name, last name, preferred name
  • Email address
  • Home address
  • Previous home address(es)
  • Telephone number(s)
  • Date of birth
  • Gender
  • Government-issued ID number
  • Financial details – how you plan to fund the account you hold with us
  • Your financial position, status, and history
  • Your criminal background
  • Health, previous and current conditions (for potential employees)
  • Donations you make to charitable organizations
  • Information about you such as:
    • Confirmation of your identity, such as passport or driving license numbers
    • The source of funds being paid to CAF
    • Adverse media
    • Whether you are an individual who has political exposure
    • Sanctions or restrictions associated with you including criminal warnings or convictions
  • Additional signatory name, address, date of birth, telephone number(s), email address (as instructed by you)
  • IP address
  • Demographic data
  • Successor details (as instructed by you)
  • Usage data (e.g, website visits, pages viewed, clicks, downloads, session duration, navigation patterns, and interactions with website content)
  • Organization data which will include information on directors, trustees and those with controlling functions
  • Any additional information that you choose to share with us (e.g., your preferences, if you have any special requirements or requests such as having statements in large font or Braille)

Ways we collect personal information

  • From you
    • Application forms including those on a third party providers portal
    • Payment requests that you make
    • When you contact us by telephone, email, letter, in person, via our websites or any of our social media networks (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn)
    • When you make a gift
    • When you apply for a role at CAF
    • Cookies and online tracking
    • During the course of business where you are a supplier of services to CAF
    • When you sign up to our newsletters or events
    • Surveys and research questionnaires
    • If you attend an event or webinar provided by us
  • From other sources
    • Publicly available resources such as online web searches, social media networks
    • Government sanctions listings
    • Subscription resources
    • When you are introduced to CAF (e.g., from a financial adviser or a partner we work with)
    • Agents we work with
    • Government and law enforcement agencies

WHY WE PROCESS DATA – ON A LEGAL BASIS

Under data protection legislation we must have a reason or a ‘legal basis’ for processing personal information. In this section, you can see the reasons why we process personal information and what processing activities we undertake.

Our legal reasons for processing your personal information

  • To fulfil our contract with you/your organization.
  • We have a legal or regulatory requirement.
  • We have a legitimate interest – you have additional rights where we use our legitimate interest for processing.
  • You have given us your consent – you have additional rights where we use consent for processing.

 

What we will use your personal information for

  • To provide you with the product or service that you have signed up for
  • To amend the website features we show you, if required, by using your IP address. This includes Live Chat.
  • To process donations and grants to charities
  • To communicate with you about your product or service or when you sign up to our newsletters or events
  • To confirm your identity and carry out our legal and regulatory requirements such as anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing checks
  • To consider you as an applicant for a role at CAF
  • To develop new ways to meet the needs of our customers and supporters
  • To support meeting CAF’s mission and objectives
  • To develop our products and services
  • To better understand giving to charitable organizations 
  • To keep in touch with you about our campaigns, events, and other related products and services
  • To allow our organization to run efficiently and appropriately for such things as financial planning, business capability, governance, and audit

IF YOU DO NOT PROVIDE US WITH YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Your personal information is needed to either:

  • Provide you with your product or service under your contract with us, or
  • Meet our legal and regulatory obligations.

If you do not provide us with the personal information that we request, it may delay or prevent us from providing you with the product or service you have requested. Where this happens, it could result in us having to cancel the product or service that you have with us.

 

HOW WE USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU

There are some occasions where we will use legitimate interest to process your information. We will only do this where the activity supports our mission to make giving go further, so together we can transform more lives and communities around the world, and we will always consider the impact to your privacy and ensure that there are appropriate safeguards in place to protect it.

You can tell us you do not want us to use your information for our legitimate interest at any time by getting in touch with us.

 

SHARING DONOR INFORMATION WITH RECIPIENT CHARITIES

Sharing this information with charities plays a huge part in how we support our mission to motivate society to give, it allows:

  • CAF to connect donors to the charities they support,
  • Charities the chance to reach out to their donors
  • Donors the opportunity to be involved with charities that they support, and
  • The charitable sector to continue to work together with donors to strengthen the relationships and work that they do.

When you make a donation, your name, email, and address (contact information) will be shared with the charity you have sent a donation request to. You can also contact the charity you are donating to, who is subject to the same data protection legislation, to stop contacting you.

 

TELEPHONE RECORDING

When you call us, we may record the call for training or monitoring purposes.

Wherever possible we’ll let you know that calls are recorded.

 

PROFILES OF YOUR PREFERENCES

In order to give you the best possible service, we may use your personal data to create a profile of your interests and preferences. What that means is we could use information you have given us, like your age or your location or your donation history, to get a better idea of who our customers are and how we can help.

That helps us make sure we send you information which is relevant to you and helps us develop our services, so they work best for our customers, now and in the future. We may occasionally commission insight companies or use industry standard profiling products offered by third parties to help us do this.

We believe this is one of our legitimate interests and have considered this carefully to ensure we work in a fair and balanced way, taking your rights into account.

It’s your right to opt out of your information being used for any profiling. To opt out of profiling you can let us know by contacting us.

 

RESEARCH

Because our mission is to encourage people to give ever more effectively, we analyze trends in the donations made through CAF both to improve our service and to draw wider lessons and insight for the charity sector as a whole. We do occasionally make anonymized data from our operations available to carefully selected academic researchers to allow them to conduct research into broader trends in giving, for the benefit of charities. We do ensure that any data which might identify individuals is removed.

It is your right to opt out from your information being used for research purposes. To opt out of research you can let us know by contacting us.

 

MARKETING

From time to time, we will send out communications about our work, our products and services, events, and other related information. This is ‘marketing.’

We normally send out our marketing communications by email. We will only send these where you have agreed to receiving them.

It is your right to opt out from your information being used for direct marketing. To opt out of receiving marketing from us you can let us know by contacting us or by clicking the unsubscribe link included at the bottom of every marketing email we send.

The most effective way to opt out of receiving marketing or research is by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of each message, as this is actioned instantly. When you use another method to opt out of receiving marketing, this may take a little longer to action, although we aim to honor all opt-out requests as soon as we receive them.

If you decide to opt out of receiving marketing emails, you will still receive operational communications about your product or service.

We do not share your data with any other third party for them to market to you.

 

THE PREVENTION OF FRAUD AND MONEY LAUNDERING

Checking identity

We are required by law to check the identity of our new customers and our existing customers from time to time. This makes it more difficult for criminals to use financial systems, or to use false names and addresses, or to steal the identities of innocent people. Checking identity is an important way of fighting money laundering and other criminal activities.

To enable us to meet this obligation, we will access electronic databases to validate your name and address. This process involves checking the details you provide against those databases to confirm your identity. If we are unable to validate your name and address details in this way, we may ask you to provide certain documents to confirm your name and address.

In addition to this, as part of our ongoing requirement to verify the identity of existing customers, you may be asked to provide certain documents to confirm your name and/or address even though you may not be applying for new products or services.

Prevention of financial crime

We carry out checks to prevent and detect financial crime including fraud, money laundering, bribery and corruption, tax evasion, and terrorist financing. We do this to comply with our legal obligations, because it’s in our legitimate interest or because it is in the public interest.

These checks include carrying out customer due diligence, customer risk identification, name screening, transaction screening, and monitoring.

That could include (among other things):

  • Screening your name to identify higher risks and to confirm sanctions do not apply;
  • Screening, intercepting, and investigating any payments, instructions, or communications you send or receive, including application and instruction forms;
  • Investigating who you’re paying or who’s paying you (e.g., checks on payments into and out of your account and other parties related to those payments);
  • Passing information to relevant agencies if we think you’ve given us false or inaccurate information, or we suspect criminal activity;
  • Investigating the source of your wealth or origin of funds being paid to us;
  • Use of publicly available information to verify information we collect about you;
  • Combining the information we have about you with information from other parts of the CAF Group to help us better understand any potential risk; or
  • Checking whether the people or organizations you’re paying or receiving payments from are who they say they are, and aren’t subject to any sanctions.

We may carry out checks using fraud prevention databases. If false or inaccurate information is provided, and fraud is identified, details will be passed on to fraud prevention agencies. Law enforcement agencies and government agencies may access and use this information. We and other organizations may also access and use this information to prevent fraud and money laundering.

We may share your information with relevant agencies, law enforcement, and other third parties where the law allows us to for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime. We may be required to use your information to do this, even if you’ve asked us to stop using your information.

Agencies and external databases

Details of the financial crime prevention databases that we use are available upon request.

 

WHO WE MIGHT SHARE YOUR INFORMATION WITH AND WHY

CAF will only share your personal information with trusted suppliers of services where it is appropriate to do so.

We may share your personal information with other members of the CAF Group, which will only be done where there is a legitimate reason for doing so.

When we decide to work with suppliers and third parties, we always make sure that:

  • They have appropriate standards and processes in place to protect and are suitable to look after your personal information,
  • They only retain your personal information for as long as is required,
  • They only use your personal information for the purposes that we have trusted it to them,
  • There is a written contract or agreement in place between us and them to protect personal data, and
  • We regularly review and monitor to ensure they remain appropriate and ethical.

Who we might share your data with – and reasons why

Examples
 Relevant authorities for legal or regulatory purposes
  • Law enforcement and fraud prevention agencies
Agents, suppliers, subcontractors, and advisers for provision of a service. There is always a contract in place to protect privacy with any third party we work with.
  • Email management system providers
  • Payment processors
  • Auditors
Someone linked to your/your organization’s product or service
  • Authorized signatories
  • Fellow company director
  • Fellow partner
  • Fellow trustee
Organizations you permit us/ask us to share your information with
  • Charities that you donate to
  • You might ask us to send information to your accountant/auditor
  • Independent financial adviser
  • Product/service providers
  • Your employer (where you donate via payroll giving)

SENDING PERSONAL INFORMATION OUTSIDE THE U.S. AND EEA (EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA)

We may transfer your personal information outside the United States and/or the EEA when:

  • You ask us to do so,
  • We have to comply with a legal obligation, or
  • We are working with our trusted partners and agents to provide you with your product or service.

Wherever possible we will ensure your personal information remains protected to a standard consistent with U.S. and EEA privacy and security expectations by using one of more of the following safeguards:

  • Transferring your information to a country or jurisdiction that provides robust data protection and privacy safeguards
  • Entering into a contract with the recipient that requires them to protect your information to standards comparable to those applied in the United States and EEA, such as through appropriate security controls, confidentiality obligations, and data handling requirements

 

HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION

CAF will only keep your personal information for as long as we believe necessary. Our retention periods incorporate our legal and regulatory requirements that we have.

Where we cannot delete personal data for legal, regulatory, or technical reasons, we will always only retain it while making sure that your privacy is protected and will only use it for those purposes.

 

HOW WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION SECURE

We take the security of your information extremely seriously. We use appropriate security arrangements to prevent the personal data that we hold from being accidentally or deliberately compromised. This is both in the security of our IT networks and information systems (cybersecurity), and also our physical and organizational security such as access to physical data and ensuring relevant controls around our buildings is always appropriate.

With regards to security standards and certificates that we align to or hold, we:

  • Align our processes to comply with industry standards such as ISO27001
  • Are compliant with the PCI Data Security Standards

 

ONLINE ACTIVITIES – COOKIES, WEB BEACONS, AND OTHER TECHNOLOGIES

Our website uses cookies, web beacons, analytics technologies, and similar tools to understand how visitors use our website and interact with our content. These technologies may collect information such as IP address, browser type, device information, pages visited, referral source, session duration, clicks, downloads, and general location information derived from IP address.

We use this information to:

  • Operate, maintain, and secure our website
  • Understand how visitors use our website and its content
  • Improve website functionality, accessibility, and user experience
  • Measure effectiveness of communications, campaigns, and website content
  • Better understand the interests and needs of our audiences

We may also use website analytics, session replay, heatmapping, and similar technologies to help us understand how visitors navigate our websites, identify where users experience difficulties, evaluate content effectiveness, and improve our digital services.

Where required by applicable law, you will be provided with choices regarding the use of certain cookies and tracking technologies.

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