What are our intentions regarding privacy?
CCPS values privacy and security as central pillars to how we approach our mission. We structure our entire operation around minimizing the amount of information that we need to obtain, reduce the amount of information that we must retain after use, and employ redundancies to ensure the security of all kept information.
Helping vulnerable people into stable situations necessitates the utmost care. We operate as if any information leaked or shared about anyone we work with has the potential to harm the very people we are dedicated to protect. We opt toward practices that err far on the side of caution.
What do we avoid doing?
If you use an ad-blocker you’ll notice that orccps.org will have little to no notifications for that extension. This is because we believe information obtained about and from you should be as voluntary as possible with full transparency about how it is obtained, stored, and used.
CCPS does not track you. We do not want to track you.
CCPS does not share your information with marketers. That is not how we operate.
We want to know as little as we need to remain effective both for your safety and ours. With this in mind Signal is our preferred contact method as it focuses on privacy and security, but we will respond to however you choose to reach out (though may direct the conversation to more secure channels).
What kinds of information do we always collect?
By visiting a website there are certain kinds of information that are automatically logged by the server. This information usually is a combination of:
- IP Address
- Browser’s User Agent
- Requests for which pages you’re visiting
Beyond these automatically collected details, anything else obtained is voluntary, such as reaching out through the contact forms on our site or another contact method, or by donating through one of our payment processors.
We do not use any automatically collected information. That would be fundamentally against our core principles. If you’d like help reducing your personally identifying information that websites collect reach out to us through our Contact Page and we’ll be happy to assist as best as we can. We also recommend checking out Privacy Guides, linked at the end of this page, for more information on digital privacy and security. The sections on Desktop Browsers, Mobile Browsers, and VPNs are good starting points.
What other kinds of information do we obtain?
Any other information obtained is exclusively voluntarily given through primarily two ways:
Contacting us directly:
By contacting us directly you are choosing to provide information about yourself in the form of whatever you share.
If you use the contact form on our website you will notice that any information we would need for responding to you is voluntary: feel free to reach out even if you don’t want us to have the option of replying. We won’t try to contact you without your consent.
If you contact us through other means such as email, chat client, or physical mail, your message will likely be accompanied by some type of contact information. If you indicate that you’d like a response we will retain that information to respond as needed and remove it from our records as soon as further communication is no longer necessary.
Donating:
Having applied for a 501(c)(3) designation with the IRS we are required to request basic demographics for donors both for our own accounting and to provide a receipt. This includes your name and physical address. We do not use donor information for any other purposes ever without explicitly granted consent. We do not verify the authenticity of demographics you provide about yourself for donations.
If you donate through one of our payment processors such as Stripe or PayPal the payment processor will collect information about you while completing your transaction. We have limited access to what they collect: for instance, card and banking information is redacted to show us only a few trailing digits.
If you donate to us through other means we have no intentions of retaining more information than absolutely necessary for that donation to be accounted for and to provide you with a receipt. Should we discover that your donation has more information attached to it than we need for those required purposes and you haven’t given explicit consent for us to retain that information we will trim it immediately.
How do we use information we receive from you?
Information shared voluntarily through contacting us will be used for the purposes derived from the content of your message itself (such as responding to questions asked or interviewing you if you are in need of assistance or want to help) and for general operations to complete our mission (such as connecting you with additional resources as appropriate or pairing you with available housing).
We do not market with your information unless you detail that such information you’re sharing with us is for those purposes. We do not use your information for anything beyond our charitable mission as CCPS.
Whom do we share your information with?
Your information will only be shared with those deemed absolutely necessary for our operations and kept at a minimum for such operations to be completed. Any sharing of such information will be on a specific basis: that is, we share your information only with those who specifically need it and only the portion they specifically need. We do not share any general or aggregate information with any parties (with the exception of previously mentioned required reporting to the IRS for donors). We emphasize to anyone we work with the utmost importance of privacy and security in all information we share and constantly evaluate them for their performance in these and other ways. If we find them lacking we will cease working with them and request that all shared information be purged from their records.
As soon as we deem information you’ve shared with us as no longer necessary to retain we will purge it unless you’ve explicitly asked us not to. If you reach out to us and you give specific instructions regarding handling your information we will do all we reasonably can to accommodate.
How do we keep your information secure and private?
We double down on encrypting all stored information and maintain strict access controls. We audit the flow of what we store both internally and externally for threats. We have taken great foundational effort to ensure as best as we can that what we record is compartmentalized to minimize the impact of any potential compromise.
If we ever have reason to believe that your information has been misused, leaked, compromised, or accessed without authorization we will alert you as soon as possible through every channel available.
No security solution is foolproof. We do our absolute best to keep your information secure and private, much beyond what is required and even beyond what many would consider strong due diligence, but can never guarantee that your information will be completely kept safe beyond our best efforts. Be wary of any entity that claims this as it is an impossible guarantee.
What controls do you have over information that we keep?
As far as CCPS is concerned any information you share with us is still your information. If at any time you would like to us to remove, amend, or purge part or all of what you’ve shared with us contact us. Upon verification that you are authorized to make that request (usually by being the person who shared the information with us in the first place) we will both purge what you’d like removed and purge record of you making this request.
Where can you learn more about improving privacy while online?
One of the best freely available resources we’ve found online for this is Privacy Guides. They provide a fairly comprehensive overview of the realities of privacy and security in the digital age. They also maintain updated lists of what they consider best practices and recommendations for both hardware and software.
We have no affiliation whatsoever with Privacy Guides… we just think they do fantastic and important work.
If you have any question about privacy and/or security, either broad or specific, contact us and we will assist you as best as we can.
What other privacy policies apply to you?
If we collaborate with another organization on your case their privacy policies will also apply. You may ask us at any time to provide those for you. If you donate the privacy policy of the respective payment processor will apply for that transaction. Below are links to those policies:
Our privacy policy was last updated on June 26th, 2025.