Privacy Policy

Who we are

Brightnote is operated by Twiddle Technologies, Company No. 14837803 (United Kingdom). The schools on Brightnote are South African, so this policy is written with South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) in mind, but our donors give from anywhere, and this policy applies to you wherever you're giving from.

What we collect when you donate

Directly from you, on the giving page: your name, your email address, the amount you give, and whether you'd like to give anonymously (which hides your name from the public page, not from the school itself). If you tell us you're an alum, we also record that and your graduation year, if given.

From Paystack, once payment succeeds: a saved authorization reference that lets us charge a monthly gift again without you re-entering your card. We never receive or store your actual card number; Paystack holds that.

Why we collect it

To process your donation, send you a receipt, run a monthly gift if you chose one, and let you cancel it yourself later. If you tick "keep me updated", we also use your email to send occasional news about the school's fundraising progress. If you don't tick it, you still get your own receipt and welcome email, since those are about your own gift, not marketing, but you won't get anything else.

What we collect if you create a Brightnote profile

Brightnote is also a network for school communities, not only a giving page. If you create an account, your profile holds what you choose to add: a display name, username, headline, bio, profile and cover photos, location, and a LinkedIn URL if you give one. You can also add your history with a school — as a learner, alumnus, parent, teacher or staff member, with dates and a graduation year if relevant — and school or work experience entries.

We also record who you follow and who follows you, posts you publish, comments, reactions, shares, and "cheers" you send or receive from other members.

What's public on your profile

Your display name, username, headline, bio, photos, location, LinkedIn URL, and your school/work history are visible to anyone who visits your profile page, including someone who isn't signed in — the same way a LinkedIn profile works. You can hide your profile from your account settings at any time, which removes it from public view immediately; your giving history and any active monthly gift keep working exactly as before, since those are kept separate from your public identity. We may also record recognition badges you earn from schools; when we start showing badges, they'll appear on your profile the same way.

Who you follow and who follows you are shown on your profile, so other members can find people they know through you — the same way follows work on most social networks. If you hide your profile, you no longer appear in anyone else's list. Your cheer history is not shown to other members or the public — only to you. A post you publish is shown according to the audience you pick for it when you post.

Payment processing

Paystack is our payment processor and handles your card details directly. Paystack has its own privacy policy governing how it handles that information; ours covers what Brightnote itself stores.

What we share with the school

The school you give to can see your name, email, donation amount, date and whether you're giving monthly, through their own Brightnote account. This is how a school knows who has supported it and can thank you directly. A school cannot see your card details, which only Paystack holds.

Other service providers

We use Paystack for payments, Resend to send email, and Supabase to host our database. We also use Amplitude to understand how pages are used — on the public giving and marketing pages, and (as of 2026-10-19) the feed, network, profile and discovery pages — and Sentry to catch technical errors. Neither runs inside a school's own account area or Brightnote's own internal admin tools.

Emails we send

A welcome email and receipt when you first give, and a follow-up if you haven't invited anyone yet. If you opted in to "keep me updated", occasional news about the school's fundraising progress. Every email has a working unsubscribe link, and you can change your update preference or cancel a monthly gift from the "manage your gift" link at any time.

How long we keep it

We keep donation and donor records for as long as the school's account with Brightnote is active, since a school needs its own giving history to run properly. We don't yet have an automatic deletion process; if you ask us to delete your information, see "your rights" below.

Security

Your card details are entered directly with Paystack and never pass through or get stored on Brightnote's own systems. Our database is access-controlled so a school can only ever see its own donors, not another school's.

Your rights

Wherever you're giving from, you can ask us what information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Email hello@brightnote.co.za and we'll help. South Africa's POPIA gives you these rights; depending on where you live, another privacy law (for example the GDPR, if you're in the UK or EU) may give you further rights of your own, and we'll do our best to honour a request made under it too.

If you have a profile, you can hide or permanently delete it yourself from your account settings, without needing to email us — hiding takes it out of public view immediately, and deleting removes your public identity while keeping the underlying donation/giving records a school legitimately needs to keep, same as if you'd asked us by email.

Cross-border processing

Because the schools on Brightnote are South African, your information is sent to and processed in South Africa when you give, regardless of where you're giving from. Brightnote is operated by a UK-registered company, and some of our service providers (including Paystack, Resend and Supabase) may also process or store information outside South Africa as part of providing their services to us.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request about your own information: hello@brightnote.co.za.