Privacy Policy

Who we are

H.O.P.E. Ministries (Helping Others and Providing Encouragement) is a church app for practical help and prayer. It is built and operated by Rivanna Technologies LLC, doing business as Rivanna Works (“we”, “us”), for the churches that use it (each “the church”). This policy explains what information the app collects, how it is used and shared, and the choices you have.

It covers the H.O.P.E. Ministries app on iPhone, Android and the web, the text messages and emails it sends, and this website. It does not cover the rest of rivannaworks.com, your church's own website, or Planning Center.

Rivanna Technologies LLC is responsible for the information H.O.P.E. Ministries holds and for protecting it.

Who can use the app

H.O.P.E. Ministries is for adult members and attenders of a church that uses it, who have a record in that church's Planning Center directory. The churches using H.O.P.E. Ministries are:

• Mountain View Chapel, Madison, Virginia

Each church's information is kept to that church. People at one church never see another church's members, needs or prayer requests.

Information we collect

From your church's directory (Planning Center)

With the church's permission, H.O.P.E. Ministries copies a limited set of fields from the church's Planning Center account about once a week. The copy is read-only: H.O.P.E. Ministries never changes the church's records. The fields are:

• Name, primary email address, phone number and address
• Gender, whether you are listed as a child, and your membership and directory status
• Background-check status
• The church groups you belong to, and whether you lead them

H.O.P.E. Ministries does not copy birthdates, giving records, notes, household details or any medical information.

Information you give us in the app

• Needs you ask for, post or sign up for, including the name, address, phone number and notes for the person who needs help
• Prayer requests, updates, encouragement notes, and when you mark that you are praying
• Requests for a call from a church leader
• Your skills and your settings, such as notification choices, quiet hours and breaks
• Reports about posts

Information collected automatically

• A push notification token for your device, if you allow notifications
• Sign-in records, including the time and the IP address a sign-in request came from
• When you last used the app, and server logs used to keep the service running and secure

The app asks for one device permission: notifications. It does not access your location, camera, photos, microphone or contacts. H.O.P.E. Ministries has no advertising and no analytics or tracking tools.

How we use information

• To sign you in and keep your account secure
• To show needs, sign-ups and prayer requests to the people allowed to see them
• To send the notifications, emails and sign-in texts you have chosen to receive
• To let church leaders coordinate help and look after the prayer wall
• To fix problems, prevent misuse and improve the app

We use your information only to run H.O.P.E. Ministries for your church. We do not sell it, rent it or use it for advertising, and we do not use it to train artificial intelligence models.

Who can see your information

Needs

The private details of a need (the person's name, address, phone and notes) are shown only to church leaders and to the volunteers who sign up for it. Volunteers stop seeing them 30 days after the need ends. Messages asking for volunteers describe the need without those details.

Prayer requests

You choose who sees a request: everyone, women only, men only, or selected groups. If you post anonymously, other members do not see your name, but church leaders do. People who can see a request can see who is praying for it, unless those people keep their names private. If you ask for a call, the leaders who can see your request get your name and phone number.

The directory

Church leaders can look up anyone in the app. Members cannot search the directory. When a member asks for help for someone else, they type that person's name and town, and a leader finds them.

Volunteers

Church leaders see a list of members with their skills, how many needs they have signed up for, and their background-check status. It never shows an address, phone number or gender. Members cannot see it.

Records for leaders

Leaders and administrators can see a log of the messages the app has sent and the history of each need. Administrators can see a record of changes to roles, skills and moderation.

Rivanna Works

Our staff look at a church's information only to run, support or fix the service, when the church asks us to, or when the law requires it.

Service providers

We share information only with the companies that help run the app, and only as needed for that purpose:

• Planning Center, your church's directory, for sign-in and the directory copy
• Amazon Web Services, in the United States, for hosting, storage, backups, email and text messages
• Expo, with Apple and Google, to deliver push notifications

Notifications and emails never include a person's name, address or phone number for a need, the text of prayer requests shared with a limited audience, or the details of a call request. Those appear only inside the app, so they are not shown on a lock screen or passed to these providers.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety. If Rivanna Technologies LLCis ever sold or merged, this policy will continue to apply to the information we hold.

Text messages

If you sign in with a mobile number, H.O.P.E. Ministries sends a one-time sign-in text, only when you ask for one. These are the only texts H.O.P.E. Ministries sends: no marketing, reminders or news. Message frequency depends on how often you sign in. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out orHELP for help.

Mobile phone numbers and text-message opt-in information are not shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes.We share them only with the provider that delivers the texts.

Your choices

• Choose, for each kind of message, whether it comes by push, by push and email, by email only or only in the app. Messages about a change to your role always come by push and email.
• Turn on quiet hours, and turn prayer alerts on or off.
• Take a break from being asked to help, for 1 week, 2 weeks or 1 month.
• Keep your name private when you pray for someone.
• Sign out to remove your device's push token.
• Reply STOP to stop sign-in texts. You can still sign in by email.

How long we keep information

• Sign-in links and codes expire within 15 minutes, and their records are deleted a day later.
• You stay signed in on a device for up to 90 days. Expired sessions are deleted daily.
• A need's private details (the person's name, address, phone and notes) are deleted 1 year after the need ends. The need itself, its dates and who helped stay as the church's record of the help it gave.
• Prayer requests move to an archive after 30 days unless the poster renews them.
• If you are no longer an active member in your church's Planning Center directory, your account stops working straight away, and your information is deleted 90 days later.
• Server logs are kept for 30 days, and backups for up to 35 days.
• Other records, such as the inbox, the log of sent messages and archived prayer requests, are kept while your church uses H.O.P.E. Ministries.
• If a church stops using H.O.P.E. Ministries, we delete its information within 90 days, after giving the church a copy if it asks for one.

Your church's Planning Center directory is the source for who you are. To correct your name, contact details or other directory information, ask your church office to update Planning Center. The app picks up the change on its next weekly copy.

Leaving, and your rights

You can leave H.O.P.E. Ministries at any time from Me → Settings → Leave H.O.P.E. Ministries in the app. Leaving ends your access, signs you out everywhere and deletes your skills, settings, prayer requests and encouragement notes. Requests you made that are still open are withdrawn and your sign-ups are cancelled. In the history of needs you took part in, your name is replaced with “Former member”. If you can't use the app, see Leave and delete your account to do it without the app.

You can also ask us for a copy of the information H.O.P.E. Ministries holds about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. We will confirm who you are with your church and reply within 45 days. We will not treat you differently for asking.

Security

Information is encrypted between your device and our servers, and our disks and backups are encrypted at rest. Sign-in codes, links and session tokens are stored only in scrambled (hashed) form, and access rules are enforced on the server. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information, and we will tell the church and the people affected promptly if a breach affects them.

Children

H.O.P.E. Ministries is for adults. People listed in Planning Center as children cannot sign in, and their information is not copied into the app. H.O.P.E. Ministries is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child's information is in the app, contact us and we will delete it.

This website

hopeministries.app sets no cookies and uses no analytics, advertising or tracking. Its fonts and images are served from this site. Like any website, our hosting provider records the requests it receives, such as IP addresses, to deliver the site and protect it from abuse.

The web version of the app keeps your sign-in in your browser's storage, so you stay signed in. Signing out removes it.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will post the new version here with a new effective date. For significant changes, we will also tell users in the app before the change takes effect.

Contact us

Rivanna Technologies LLC, doing business as Rivanna Works, Charlottesville, Virginia. Call (540) 395-3149 or use our contact form. You can also ask your church office.

See also the H.O.P.E. Ministries Terms of Use.