Privacy
How we handle your information
iHOPE-Kids is a small nonprofit. We ask for as little as we can, we use it only for the reason you gave it to us, and we never sell it.
The short version
- No advertising, no tracking companies, and no cookies for visitors. This website loads nothing from anyone but us. The one exception is a video, which comes from YouTube only after you press play.
- What you type into a form goes to our team so we can answer you. We never sell it, rent it, or pass it to anyone for marketing.
- We count visits without knowing who anyone is. If your browser asks not to be tracked, we do not count your visit at all.
- You can ask what we hold about you, or ask us to correct or delete it. Write to info@ihopekids.org.
In effect from September 19, 2026.
Who we are
iHOPE-Kids is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Houston, Texas (EIN 33-1242508). This policy covers this website, ihopekids.org. You can reach us at info@ihopekids.org, or by mail at PO Box 300010, Houston, Texas 77230.
What you give us, and why
We only learn who you are when you fill in a form. Each form asks for what that job needs and nothing more.
- CPR workshop sign-up
- What we ask for. Your name and email, and your phone number if you give one; how many people are coming; whether you prefer English or Spanish; how you heard about us; and any note you add.
- Why. To hold your place, send you the details, and know how many people to expect.
- Contact form
- What we ask for. Your name, email, phone number if you give one, what your message is about, the message itself, and how you heard about us.
- Why. To reply to you.
- AED application
- What we ask for. The parent or guardian’s name, email and phone number. About the child: their age, their diagnosis or risk, your relationship to them, the city you live in, whether they see a cardiologist, whether they have an ICD or pacemaker, whether there is already an AED at home, and whether anyone at home is trained in CPR. Also what you tell us in your own words, and how you heard about us.
- Why. To consider your application and to work with you on it. This is health information about a child, and we treat it that way: it is read only by the members of our team who handle what arrives through this website, and it is used for nothing else.
- Student Ambassador form
- What we ask for. Your name, email and phone number, your school and grade, what you would like to do, and anything you add.
- Why. To contact you about the Student Ambassador program.
- Volunteer form
- What we ask for. Your name and email, your phone number if you give one, how you would like to help, and anything you add.
- Why. To contact you about volunteering.
- Research and registry enquiry
- What we ask for. Your name and email, whether you are writing as a family member, a researcher or someone else, your institution if you are a researcher, and your message.
- Why. To reply to you.
- Referral form for healthcare providers
- What we ask for. Your name and email, your phone number if you give one, your institution and role, the reason for the referral, and your message. The form asks clinicians not to include anything that identifies a patient.
- Why. To reply about the referral.
- Email updates
- What we ask for. Your email address, your name if you give one, and which page you signed up on.
- Why. To send you news from iHOPE-Kids: workshops, research, and families’ stories.
If you correct a mistyped email address straight after sending a form, we keep the address you replaced alongside the new one, so our team knows which is right.
A form here does not enroll you in research
Joining the iHOPE-Kids registry or the DNA biobank happens separately, on a secure research survey system (REDCap) run by Baylor College of Medicine, with its own consent forms. What you share there is governed by that consent and by the research team’s own privacy protections, not by this page. This website does not feed the registry: the forms here only reach our inbox.
What is recorded automatically
When you send a form
Alongside your message we store a one-way scrambled code made from your internet (IP) address. We do not store the address itself. The code exists so that one computer cannot flood our forms, and it is used for nothing else.
Counting visits
We run our own visit counter. It records the page, roughly how long it was open, the name of the website you came from (such as google.com, never the full address), your country, whether you are on a phone or a computer, and whether the visitor looks like a search-engine robot. To tell one visit from another it uses a one-way scrambled code made from your IP address and browser type that changes every day, so visits cannot be linked from one day to the next, or back to you. It uses no cookies, it stores nothing on your device, and none of it goes to any other company.
Keeping the site running
Like every website, the computers that serve ours log technical details of each request, including IP addresses, to keep the service working and secure. They are run by our hosting company, Vercel.
The heart-rhythm teaching tool
The calcium-imaging player on our resources page saves your settings in your own browser so they are there next time. They are not sent to us.
Videos, donations and other websites
Videos
Our videos are hosted by YouTube. Nothing is loaded from YouTube until you press play, and the play button says so. When you do, the video comes from YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player, and YouTube (which is run by Google) receives your IP address and details of your browser, as it does for any video you watch. Google’s privacy policy applies to that.
Donations
The Donate button takes you to Givebutter, the service that processes gifts for us. We never see or store your card number. Givebutter tells us who gave and how much, so that we can thank you and keep the records the law requires of a charity. Givebutter’s privacy policy applies on their site.
Other links
Some buttons take you to other websites: the research enrollment surveys described above, our Instagram page, and news stories about our work. Each has its own privacy policy, and we do not control what they collect.
Who sees your information
- Our team. Staff and trained volunteers who need it to answer you. Each person can open only the parts of our system they work on, signing in is limited to our organization’s own accounts, and the system keeps a record of who opened what.
- The research team. Messages about research, the registry, the biobank or a patient referral are read by the iHOPE-Kids research team, whose members work at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.
- The companies that run our technology. Vercel hosts this website, Supabase hosts our database, and Google provides our email, which is how your message reaches our team and how we reply. They hold the information on our behalf.
We never sell or rent personal information. We do not share it with advertisers, data brokers or other organizations for their own use, and we do not buy mailing lists. We would disclose information if a law or a court order required us to, or to protect someone’s safety.
Children and teenagers
Much of our work is about children, but this website is written for parents, guardians, clinicians and supporters. We do not knowingly collect personal information from a child under 13 without a parent or guardian taking part.
The Student Ambassador form is meant for students aged 13 and over. If you are under 13, please fill it in together with a parent or guardian, using their email address and phone number. If we learn that a child under 13 has sent us their details on their own, we will delete them.
A parent or guardian can ask at any time to see, correct or delete what their child (anyone under 18) has sent us. Information about a child that a parent gives us, for example in an AED application, is used only for the purpose the parent gave it.
How long we keep it
- A message or an application stays in our inbox while we are working with you. When our team archives it, it is deleted automatically one year later.
- Sign-ups for a CPR workshop are archived once the workshop has taken place, and deleted a year after that.
- Your email address stays on our updates list until you unsubscribe. When you do, we take it off the list, and it is deleted a year later.
- Visit counts are deleted after 400 days, and after 30 days for search-engine robots.
You can ask us to delete your information sooner. See “Your choices” below.
How we protect it
This website is served only over an encrypted connection. What you send us is stored in a database that is not open to the public: only our own systems can read it, and our team reaches it only through the staff portal, which requires signing in with one of our organization’s Google accounts. We scramble IP addresses before we store anything.
No system is perfectly secure. If there were ever a breach that put your information at risk, we would tell you, and the authorities, as the law requires.
Your choices
- See, correct or delete what we hold about you. Email info@ihopekids.org from the address you used, and we will answer within 30 days. There is no charge and you do not need to give a reason. The law gives these rights to people in some places; we offer them to everyone.
- Stop email updates. Reply to any update, or write to info@ihopekids.org, and we will take you off the list. You can subscribe again whenever you like.
- Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. If your browser sends either signal, our visit counter does not record your visit at all. We have no other tracking to switch off.
We are based in Texas, in the United States, and the people who read your message are here. If you write to us from another country, your information will be handled in the United States.
Changes, and how to reach us
If we change this policy we will post the new version on this page and change the date at the top. Questions about any of it are welcome: info@ihopekids.org, or PO Box 300010, Houston, Texas 77230.