How PALS handles your information

Families: contact details for you and anyone you list as an additional contact, your due or delivery date, your answers on the application (which can include health, household and wellbeing details), your address, the needs you log, and messages you send us.

Volunteers: contact details, skills, availability, bio and photo, a photo of your driver’s license, any certifications you upload, messages, and the visit recaps you submit.

• PALS staff can see everything, so we can review applications and coordinate support.
• A volunteer matched with your family sees your bio and general area. Your exact address is shown only after they have claimed a visit with you. They never see your application answers.
• Families see the bio of a volunteer coming to help them.
• Visit messages: once a volunteer claims a visit with a family, the family, that volunteer and PALS staff share a message thread about that visit. You see each other’s first names only; phone numbers and emails are not shared. The thread closes to new messages when the visit is done, and a new volunteer on the same visit starts a fresh thread.
• Notes a volunteer writes for staff after a visit, including suggestions about what a family might need, are seen by staff only.

We don’t sell, rent or trade your information. A few companies process it on our behalf, only to run the portal:

• Supabase: stores the portal’s data and uploaded files.
• Vercel: hosts the website.
• Resend: sends account emails, such as setting your password, and emails you when you get a new message in the portal (with the full message).
• Sentry: alerts PALS when something in the portal breaks. Error reports include what went wrong in the code, but not your name, email, phone number, messages or screen recordings.
• Slack: PALS staff’s internal chat. Staff are notified there when a new application arrives (with the applicant’s name) and when a new message arrives, including messages in a visit thread (with a short preview).

Your information is encrypted in transit and stored securely by these providers.

• Declined or withdrawn applications: deleted 12 months after the decision.
• Families who have finished the program: 3 years after support ends, we remove your name, contact details and address. We keep the rest as an anonymous record, such as application answers and the visits and support you received, so PALS can understand and report on its work over time.
• Volunteers: we keep a record of the visits and hours you’ve given. Your ID documents (driver’s license, certifications) are deleted 1 year after you stop volunteering.
• Everything else is kept while you’re an active family or volunteer.

You can update your own contact details and bio in the portal at any time. To get a copy of your information, correct something, or have it deleted sooner, email hello@postpartumpals.org.