Legal

Privacy Policy

We hold the information you share with us with the same care we bring to every part of this ministry. This page explains what we collect, why, and how it is protected.

Last updated: September 20, 2026

Who we are

Thrive Ministries is a registered Canadian charity based in St. Catharines, Ontario. We walk alongside Christian ministry leaders and their families with retreats, healing groups, and Spirit-led care. We handle personal information in accordance with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). If you have any questions about this policy, you can reach us at info@thriveministries.ca.

Information you share with us

We collect personal information only when you choose to share it with us, and only what we need to serve you well:

  • Contact form messages, including your name, email address, and anything you write to us.
  • Care request forms, when you reach out for soul care, a retreat, or another form of support.
  • Event registrations, including your name, contact details, and any details the event requires.
  • Outcome evaluations, which may include personal reflections on your experience with us. We know these are entrusted to us in confidence and we treat them with extra care.
  • Newsletter signups, where your first name and email address are sent to Mailchimp, which holds our newsletter list. The website keeps no subscriber list of its own, though your address is recorded in the site activity log described below.
  • Site issue reports, where sharing your name and email is optional and used only to follow up on your report.
  • Leader recommendations, where you tell us about someone else. This one is different from everything above, so it is described on its own below.

With the exception of newsletter signups, these submissions are stored in the website's own database and are readable only by our site administrators. Newsletter signups go to Mailchimp instead, described below.

When you tell us about someone else

Our Encouragement Ministry relies on people letting us know about a leader, pastor, or family who could use encouragement. If you recommend someone, you are sharing information about a person who has not contacted us themselves, so we want to be plain about what happens to it.

We ask for their name, the church, ministry, or organisation they serve, and a way to reach that ministry. We also ask whether they know you are putting their name forward. We deliberately do not ask for their home address or their personal contact details: we approach the ministry, and the ministry decides what reaches them. We use what you share only to follow up, and we do not publish it, sell it, or pass it to anyone outside our ministry team.

We keep a recommendation only as long as we need it to follow up and to avoid approaching the same person twice. If you have been recommended to us and would rather we did not hold your details, tell us and we will delete them, without needing a reason.

Donations and payments

Online donations are processed by Stripe, a third-party payment processor. Your card details are entered on Stripe's secure checkout page and are never seen or stored by our website. We keep a record of your name, email address, donation amount, and fund designation so we can issue receipts and maintain the records required of a registered charity.

Email and newsletter consent

We only send you email you have asked for, in keeping with Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). Newsletter consent is always your express choice: opt-in boxes on our forms are never pre-checked. Our newsletter is sent through Mailchimp, and every newsletter carries an unsubscribe link that removes you from the list immediately, without needing to contact us.

Website activity

To keep the site healthy and understand how it is being used, we keep an internal log of site activity such as pages visited, clicks, and resource downloads. Some of these events are forwarded to a third-party messaging service, so our team is alerted when something needs attention. A few entries identify the person who acted, and a newsletter signup is one of them: it records the address that subscribed, so the ministry can see who has joined and put it right if the signup did not reach Mailchimp.

When something goes wrong on the site we also record the error. Alongside the page involved, these technical records note the browser or other software that made the request, and the address of the page it came from. That is how we tell a genuine visitor apart from the automated traffic that reaches every website. We do not keep your IP address in these records, and we remove any information that follows a question mark in a web address before storing it.

Your IP address is read briefly while a request is being handled, so we can limit how often the same source submits a form or starts a donation. It is used for that check and then discarded. We do not write it to our records.

Error records are also sent to a third-party error monitoring service, so faults can be diagnosed and fixed. That service is deliberately configured not to receive your IP address, your cookies, or anything you typed into a form.

Cookies

The public website does not set advertising or tracking cookies. The only cookies in use are essential ones that keep our own team signed in to the site's administration area.

Where your information lives

Most of your information is stored in the website's own database. Alongside it, we rely on a small number of trusted service providers:

  • A cloud storage provider stores media and documents uploaded to the site.
  • Stripe processes donations, as described above.
  • Mailchimp holds our newsletter list and sends the newsletter. Newsletter subscribers are kept there rather than on this website, so Mailchimp is also where an unsubscribe takes effect.
  • Our team messaging service receives operational alerts, which can include details from form submissions.
  • Our email delivery provider transmits the emails we send you.
  • An error monitoring service receives technical records of faults on the site, so they can be diagnosed and fixed.

Some of these providers store data on servers outside Canada, including in the United States, where it may be subject to the laws of those jurisdictions.

How we use your information

We use the information you share with us to respond to your messages, provide the care and programs you have asked about, process your registrations and donations, and send communications you have requested. We never sell or rent your personal information to anyone.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as it is needed for the purpose it was collected, or as long as the law requires. As a registered charity, we retain donation records for the periods required by the Canada Revenue Agency.

The technical error records described above are the shortest lived. Because they are the only records that note your browser and the page you came from, we remove them after 90 days.

Your rights

You are welcome to ask us what personal information we hold about you, request that it be corrected, withdraw your consent to communications, or ask us to delete information we no longer need. Write to us at info@thriveministries.ca and we will respond promptly. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle personal information, we will update this page and revise the date at the top. Significant changes will be noted clearly here.

Contact us

Thrive Ministries
PO Box 28013, Lakeport
St. Catharines, ON L2N 7P8
info@thriveministries.ca