Privacy Policy

We collect information you provide directly, depending on how you interact with us:

• Donations and animal sponsorships.Giving on our site runs through Stripe, our payment processor, right on the donate page. Stripe collects your name, email, billing address, and payment details, and emails you a receipt. We never see or store your card number. Stripe passes us your name, email, and, if you gave them, your phone number and mailing address, along with the gift itself: the amount, the date, whether it's one-time or recurring, which animal you sponsor, and whether you chose to cover the processing fees. If you save your details with Stripe's Link for next time, that information is held by Stripe under its own privacy policy. When a sponsorship is set up in person, at an event for example, a staff member records your name and contact details so we can send you the payment link. Gifts made before this site existed, through the Givebutter donation page we used until 2026, were brought over into the same records (the name, email, phone, mailing address, gift amount, and date that Givebutter held) so your giving history is in one place. The Givebutter contact list came over too: whether you had unsubscribed from its emails (we honor that here), and the names on any Plant Based Palooza tickets bought with your email.
• Fundraisers and event tickets.A gift made on one of our fundraiser pages is recorded the same way, tagged with the fundraiser it was for. Tickets to a special event are bought through Stripe the same way as a gift, and we keep your name, email, which tickets you bought, and what you paid. When part of a ticket price is above what the event is worth, that part is recorded as a gift on your record so it appears on your year-end receipt, and your confirmation says how much. Fundraiser pages show only totals and counts, never who gave. When you sign up a group, you can give us each adult's name and, if you like, their email or phone; each adult gets a private link to read and sign the waiver themselves, and the link records their typed signature with the date and time. Anyone who hasn't signed by the day signs at check-in.
• Contacting us. Your name, email, what your message is about (picked from a short list), and whatever you write to us through the contact form. Your message is kept in our records and a copy is emailed to our inbox so we can reply.
• Newsletter.Your email address and, if you choose to give it, your first name, when you sign up on the newsletter page or in the footer of the site, or check the "keep me posted" box on one of our sign-up forms. We use them only to send you sanctuary news. We keep one record per email address, with the date you signed up. If you had unsubscribed from our emails before and then sign up for the newsletter, or submit one of our forms with the "keep me posted" box checked, we take that as you choosing to hear from us again. The box starts checked, so uncheck it if you'd rather not.
• Guided tours.Your first and last name, email, phone number, how many adults and kids are coming, the full names of any minors in your group, and a typed e-signature on our visitor waiver, together with the text of the waiver you signed. Tours are paid online through Stripe when you book, the same way as a gift (see above); we keep Stripe's reference for the payment and whether it was refunded, never your card details.
• Yoga classes.The same details as a tour: your first and last name, email, phone number, how many people are coming, the full names of anyone under 18 in your group, and a typed e-signature on our yoga waiver, together with the text of the waiver you signed. A class is paid online through Stripe when you book; we keep what you paid, Stripe's reference for the payment, and whether it was refunded, never your card details.
• Volunteer Day and event sign-ups.Your name, email, phone number, how many adults and kids are coming, the full names of any minors, and a typed e-signature on our volunteer waiver, together with the text you signed. The sign-up form also asks whether you'd like to hear from us about news, events, and volunteer opportunities. That's a checkbox you can leave unchecked.
• Applying for regular volunteer shifts.Your name, email, and phone number; the shifts you're asking for and which other days you might be able to cover; whether you've volunteered with us before and any questions you have; a typed e-signature on our volunteer waiver; and two checkboxes: whether we may text you about shifts that need coverage, and whether you'd like our updates. Submitting the form only sends us an application: nothing else is created until a staff member reviews it. If we bring you on, we create a volunteer account for you and your signed waiver carries over so you're not asked to sign it twice.
• Staff and volunteer accounts.If you have an account with us, we keep your name, login email, phone number, an optional birthday (the year is optional too), the days you could cover a shift on short notice, the onboarding documents you've read and e-signed, your shift schedule and any time-off requests, and, for staff, the hours you clock and your pay rate. Volunteers can send staff a note about an animal, including photos; staff keep the animal care log, including photos and vet documents. You can see and update some of this yourself from your account.

We use Google Analytics to understand how people find and use our website: which pages get visited, how people got here (a search engine or a social media link, for example), roughly where visitors are located (a general area, not a precise address), and what kind of device they're using. This is aggregated, statistical information; we don't use it to identify individual visitors, and we don't feed personal information like your name or email into it.

Google Analytics sets cookies in your browser to do this. When the donate page loads Stripe's checkout, Stripe also sets its own cookies and collects device and browser information to detect fraud, under Stripe's privacy policy. Signing in to a staff or volunteer account uses your browser's storage to keep you signed in, the staff portal remembers whether you left the side menu open, and the site remembers your light/dark mode preference on your device. Some onboarding documents in the volunteer portal embed videos hosted on YouTube or Vimeo, which set their own cookies when you play them. You can block or clear cookies in your browser at any time. The site will still work, though signing in and giving online need them.

Like every website, ours is served by a hosting provider that keeps routine server logs, including your IP address and the pages requested, for a limited time, to run and protect the site.

We use the information above to:

• Process your donation or sponsorship, send you a receipt, and prepare a year-end giving statement if you ask for one.
• Reply to messages you send us.
• Confirm your tour, yoga class, Volunteer Day sign-up, or event registration, and let you know if something changes, a Saturday we have to cancel, for example.
• Review volunteer applications, guide new volunteers through onboarding, and coordinate the schedule, including, only if you checked the box, texting you about a shift that needs coverage.
• Send you news, events, and volunteer opportunities, if you've asked us to.
• Run the day-to-day operations of the sanctuary: staff scheduling, timesheets and payroll, the animal care log, and the notes volunteers send about animals.
• Understand how our website is used, so we can improve it.

We don't sell or rent your personal information to anyone, and we don't publish donor or sponsor names without asking you first. We share information only with the outside services that help us run the sanctuary and the website:

• Stripe, which takes payments for donations and sponsorships and sends payment receipts.
• Google: Google Analytics for the website traffic information described above, and Firebase, which handles staff and volunteer sign-in (including the emails that set or reset a password) and stores our database and uploaded files.
• Vercel, which hosts the website.
• The email and text-message delivery services we use to send the messages described above: a copy of your contact-form message to our inbox, sign-up confirmations, and shift texts for volunteers who've opted in.

We may also share information if required by law, or to protect the safety of the animals, our staff and volunteers, or the public.

Our tours, Volunteer Days, and events welcome families. A parent or guardian signs up for the group and signs the waiver on behalf of the minors in it, and we ask for each minor's full name so the waiver covers them by name. We don't knowingly collect information directly from children. If you're signing up a child, that information comes from you, the adult in charge.

We keep gift records for as long as tax rules and our own recordkeeping require. Signed waivers are kept for as long as we might need to show that they were signed. Volunteer applications, sign-ups, and messages stay in our records so we can look back at who visited and what was said. You can ask us to update or remove your information at any time. See "Your choices" below.

• You can ask to stop receiving updates or the newsletter at any time. Email us and we'll take you off the list.
• You can ask us to make that permanent. Tell us, and we'll mark that email address so nothing on this site can add it back to our news and updates, even if a "keep me posted" box is left checked by accident. We'd still email you about something you asked for, like a receipt or a reply to your message.
• You can withdraw your consent to text messages at any time.
• You can change the card on a recurring gift or cancel a sponsorship. Email us and we'll take care of it.
• You can ask what information we have on file about you.
• You can ask us to correct or delete your information, subject to what we need to keep for legal or recordkeeping reasons (like gift records and signed waivers).

For any of these, email info@sagemtn.org and we'll take care of it.

We take reasonable steps to protect your information. Donor, volunteer, and staff records are only available to signed-in staff, and each staff account can see only the parts of the portal its role needs. A volunteer sees their own record, not anyone else's. Payment details never touch our systems at all; Stripe handles them. We rely on established, security-audited providers (Google Firebase, Vercel, and Stripe) to host and process our data. No method of transmitting or storing data online is ever completely secure, but we work to keep your information safe.

We may update this policy as the website and our programs grow. We'll update the date at the top of this page when we do.

Questions about this policy or your information:

Sage Mountain Sanctuary (Sage Mountain)
P.O. Box 681596, Park City, UT 84068
info@sagemtn.org