Your Story Is Safe With Us
People trust us with hard information: injuries, finances, and recovery. This page explains exactly what we collect, why, who sees it, and how to have it deleted.
Effective October 31, 2026
What Did You Do On Our Site?
Who We Are
M.A.D. Make A Difference ("M.A.D.", "we", "us") runs makeadifference.life. M.A.D. is in the process of forming as a New Jersey nonprofit. Questions about this policy go to theteam@makeadifference.life.
What We Collect
When you submit a nomination:
- Your name, email, optional phone number, and how you know the nominee.
- The nominee's name, contact information, and New Jersey town.
- The nominee's condition (hemiplegia, paraplegia, or quadriplegia), whether they are in therapy, and an optional therapy provider.
- A description of their financial burden and community service, plus optional volunteer hours, organization contact, and reference letter availability.
When you sign up to get involved: your name, email, optional phone number, town, optional business or organization, the ways you want to help, and any message you add.
When you donate: payments are handled by Stripe. We receive your name, email, amount, and date. We never see or store your full card number.
When you email us: your email address and whatever you choose to send.
When you browse: our hosting provider keeps standard server logs, such as IP address, browser type, and pages requested, to keep the site running and secure.
Health And Financial Information
We treat condition, therapy, and financial details as sensitive. They are used only to review eligibility for the M.A.D. Recovery Fund. They are never sold, never used for advertising, and never published.
M.A.D. is not a healthcare provider. If a nominee is shortlisted, we may ask the nominee directly for documentation from their care provider confirming their condition and current therapy. We only request this from the nominee, never from their provider without their written permission.
Nominating Someone Else
If you nominate another person, you confirm that they know about the nomination and agree to share their information with us. If we learn a nominee did not agree, we will delete the nomination.
How We Use Information
- To review nominations against our published criteria.
- To contact nominees, nominators, and references about a nomination.
- To contact volunteers, sponsors, and fundraiser hosts about ways to help.
- To process donations and send receipts.
- To answer your messages.
- To keep the site secure and prevent spam.
Stories And Photos
We will never share a nominee's or recipient's name, photo, condition, or story publicly without their written permission. Permission can be withdrawn at any time by emailing us, and we will remove the content from our site.
Who We Share With
We do not sell or rent personal information. We share it only with:
- Our review team, the people at M.A.D. who evaluate nominations.
- Service providers that run the site for us: Render (website hosting and database), Stripe (donations), Resend (email delivery), and Google Fonts (website fonts, which receives your IP address when the page loads).
- Authorities, only when required by law.
Cookies And Tracking
Our site does not use advertising trackers or set its own tracking cookies. Stripe may set cookies on its own checkout pages to process payments and prevent fraud.
Text Messages
We do not currently send text messages. If we add text messaging, we will update this policy and ask for your consent before sending any.
How Long We Keep It
- Nominations not selected: deleted within 24 months of submission.
- Selected recipients: kept as long as needed to support the recipient and meet legal and tax recordkeeping requirements.
- Donation records: kept as long as required for tax and accounting purposes.
- Get Involved sign-ups: kept while you want to help. Ask us any time and we will delete yours.
- Emails: deleted when no longer needed.
How We Protect It
Nominations are stored in an access-controlled database. Only authorized M.A.D. team members can view them. No system is perfectly secure, so we collect only what we need to make a fair decision.
Your Choices
You can ask us to show you, correct, or delete the information we hold about you. Email theteam@makeadifference.life and we will respond within 30 days. We may need to keep some records that the law requires, such as donation records.
Age Requirement
Our programs serve adults 30 and older. We do not knowingly collect information about anyone under 18. If you believe we have, email us and we will delete it.
Changes To This Policy
If we change this policy, we will update the effective date at the top of this page. Significant changes will be noted on our home page.