In short
- We collect personal information only when you type it into a form here or make a donation or purchase.
- We use it to reply to you, coordinate baking and deliveries, and send the receipts the IRS requires.
- We run no advertising and no analytics trackers, and our public pages set no cookies of our own.
- You can ask us at any time to show you, correct, or delete the information we hold about you.
This summary is for convenience. The sections below are the policy itself.
Who we are
Bake it Forward is a nonprofit corporation organized in New Jersey and recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) public charity, EIN 42-2192662. Our registered address is 95 Harvard Circle, Princeton, NJ 08540.
This policy explains how we handle personal information collected through bakeitforwardnj.org and the email we send from it. It applies to donors, volunteers, bakery partners, Mystery Box customers, and anyone who contacts us through the site.
Information we collect
We do not buy personal information, and we do not collect it passively as you browse. Everything below is information you choose to give us.
| Where | What we receive |
|---|---|
| Contact form | Your name, email address, the topic you select, and your message. We also record the network (IP) address and browser identifier of the submission, which we use only to limit automated spam. |
| Bake Drive sign-up | Your name, email address, phone number, ZIP code (optional), what you plan to bake, and any allergen notes. If you ask us to collect from your home, your street address as well. We use the ZIP code to know which town you bake from and whether home collection is available. We do not infer your location from your network address. |
| Surplus Rescue sign-up | Your bakery name, contact name, email address, phone number, address, and the pickup schedule you prefer. |
| Volunteer records | Name, contact details, town, the roles you take on, and your availability. |
| Donations and Mystery Box orders | Payment is handled by Stripe. Stripe passes us your name, email address, the amount, and a shipping address where one is needed. Card numbers go directly to Stripe and are never seen or stored by us. |
| Email we send | Whether a message was delivered, and whether you have unsubscribed. |
How we use information
- To reply to you, confirm a sign-up, and coordinate drop-offs, collections, and deliveries.
- To issue donation receipts and the year-end acknowledgment letters that tax rules require.
- To confirm a delivery to the bakers who contributed: after a partner organization signs for a Bake Drive, we may email those bakers the signed acknowledgment and a photo of the handoff. Such photos show the goods and, where they agree, partner staff; we do not photograph the people our partners serve.
- To show what our drives look like: we publish photos of baked goods, labels, and packed trays on this site. A photo that shows a volunteer or a partner's staff is published only with that person's permission, and we will take it down on request. We do not photograph the people our partners serve.
- To email volunteers about upcoming Bake Drives. Every announcement carries a one-click unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing does not stop messages about a drive you personally signed up for.
- To publish anonymous totals, such as the number of bakers, the number of towns they bake from (derived from ZIP codes), and deliveries shown on our home page. These figures never identify anyone.
- To keep the records a charity is expected to keep, and to meet our legal and tax obligations.
Service providers
A few companies process information on our behalf so the site and our email work. They act on our instructions and are bound by their own agreements with us.
| Provider | Role |
|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Hosts this website and stores our records in the United States. Cloudflare may set a short-lived security cookie to distinguish people from automated traffic. |
| Stripe | Processes every donation and Mystery Box order. Your card details are handled by Stripe under Stripe's privacy policy. |
| Google Workspace | Delivers our email, including confirmations and receipts, from our own bakeitforwardnj.org addresses. |
How long we keep it
- Donation and payment records are kept for at least seven years, because tax and charity rules require it.
- Volunteer and partner records are kept while you are active with us, and are removed on request.
- Contact messages are kept so we can follow up on what you asked, and are deleted on request.
Your choices and rights
You may ask us to show you the information we hold about you, correct anything that is wrong, or delete it. Write to info@bakeitforwardnj.org and we will respond within 30 days.
Where the law requires us to keep a record, most often a donation receipt, we will keep that record and tell you why. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under state privacy law; write to us and we will honor any right that applies to you.
To stop receiving Bake Drive announcements, use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of them, or reply and ask.
Children
This site does not require an account and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. The games on our Bake Break page ask for nothing and store scores only in the player's own browser.
If you believe a child has sent us personal information through a form, contact us and we will delete it promptly.
Security
The site is served only over encrypted connections. Records are held in access-controlled systems that a small number of volunteers can reach, each account protected by a second sign-in factor. Payment card details never reach our systems.
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. We reduce that risk by collecting only what we need and keeping it no longer than necessary.
Other websites
Our pages sometimes link to organizations we work with or to a payment page hosted by Stripe. Once you leave bakeitforwardnj.org, this policy no longer applies, and the site you have reached handles your information under its own policy.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, we will revise the effective date shown at the top of this page. If we make a significant change to how we use donor or volunteer information, we will say so by email to the people affected.
Contact us
For any question about this policy, or to make a request about your information, reach us at:
Bake it Forward is a 501(c)(3) public charity, EIN 42-2192662. You can confirm our status through the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search.