1. Who we are
Zambia-Iowa Agricultural Partners ("ZIAP", "we", "us") is a tax-exempt public charity registered under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, EIN 99-2864574. Our registered address and the postal address for formal correspondence are published on the impact report page. For the purposes of data protection law, ZIAP is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy.
Our fiscal year ends 30 June. Financial records supporting this policy are filed annually on Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service, and a copy is available on request.
2. Information we collect
We collect only what a stated purpose requires. In practice that falls into four groups.
Information you give us
- Donations. Name, email address, postal address, gift amount, designation, payment date, and your tax receipt preference. Card and bank details are captured by the payment processor, not by ZIAP, and never reach our servers.
- Collaboration and volunteer enquiries. Name, institutional affiliation, email address, and the description of the research or analysis you are proposing.
- Correspondence. The contents of email you send us, including your address and any attachments you choose to include.
- Records requests. The details you supply when asking for the annual report, Form 990, or plot-level data.
Information collected automatically
- Server logs recording IP address, timestamp, requested URL, browser type, and referring page, retained for a short period for security and abuse investigation.
- Aggregate page counts, recorded only if you opt into analytics cookies. No cross-site tracking, no advertising identifiers, no device fingerprinting.
Information we never ask for
- Government identification numbers, social security numbers, or passport copies, at any stage including gift matching.
- Bank account or card credentials, by any channel including email. We will never ask you to send them.
- Health information, political affiliation, religion, or trade union membership.
Special categories of personal data
We do not knowingly collect special category data under the GDPR, and a donation for religious or political purposes is not such a declaration: telling us where to apply a restricted gift is a designation instruction, not a statement about you. No automated decision-making with legal or similarly significant effect is carried out on any individual, including on loan eligibility, which is decided by a village savings group and reviewed by a human field officer.
3. Farmer household data
This is the part of our program with the most direct effect on someone's livelihood, so it gets its own section rather than a footnote.
- What is recorded. Plot identification, treated and control pairings, input quantities and dates, labour days, harvest weight, rainfall readings, and a cost and return ledger. The ledger is held by the household and copied into the program record so that a reviewer can verify a number the household states.
- What is not recorded. We do not collect national identity documents, biometrics, religious affiliation, or information about a household's non-farming activities. Land tenure documents are viewed by field staff to confirm plot boundaries but are not copied into the digital record.
- Identifiability. Public reporting uses district-level aggregates. A household is named only where that household has asked to be named as a case study, and the ask is recorded.
- Research access. Plot-level data is released to academic partners only under a written data-sharing agreement that prohibits onward publication of household identifiers and requires deletion of working copies at the end of the project.
- Withdrawal. A household may ask that its ledger copy be withdrawn from future analysis. Records already aggregated into a published figure cannot be separated out, and we will say so plainly rather than imply a retraction we cannot perform.
The record belongs to the farmer
The ledger stays with the household whether or not the program continues. That is the point of the financial tracking curriculum: the capability is the program's product, and the record is the farmer's property.
4. How we use information
We process personal information for the following purposes, and no others:
- To process a donation, issue a receipt, and meet the record-keeping obligations of a US public charity.
- To administer restricted gifts and report to the funder that a restriction was honoured.
- To respond to enquiries, and to scope a collaboration or volunteer placement before access to any data is granted.
- To run the agricultural program: measure demonstration plot results, reconcile village savings group registers, and publish aggregated outcomes.
- To maintain the security and availability of the website.
- To comply with lawful requests from regulators, grantmakers, and auditors.
Where we rely on consent — for optional analytics cookies, for a donor being named publicly, for a restricted gift whose purpose we record — you may withdraw that consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal. Write to info@ziap.org with "Consent withdrawal" in the subject line.
We do not use donor information for scoring, for credit assessment, or for any form of automated profiling.
5. Cookies
This site uses a deliberately small set of cookies. The consent banner at the foot of each page lets you accept all of them or keep to the strictly necessary ones, and the settings panel lets you change your answer at any time.
| Name | Purpose | Type | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| ziap.consent.v1 | Records your cookie decision so the banner does not reappear on every page. | First-party, 12 months | Set only after you choose |
| Server log | Security monitoring and abuse investigation. Not a cookie and not readable by this site. | First-party log | Always on |
| Aggregate page counts | Tells us which pages are read, so reporting effort follows interest. No identifiers, no profiling. | Analytics, opt-in | Off until you accept |
No advertising, social-media, cross-site tracking, or session-replay technology is used anywhere on this site.
You can clear or block cookies in your browser settings at any time. Blocking strictly necessary storage means your consent choice will not be remembered and the banner will reappear on each visit; no other functionality of this site depends on it.
6. Sharing and disclosure
We share personal information only in these circumstances:
- Payment processing. Donations are handled by a payment processor acting as an independent controller or processor under contract. They receive the minimum required to charge the card and issue a receipt.
- Program partners in Zambia. Field staff and accredited trainers receive only the household records needed for the villages they are assigned to.
- Institutional funders. Where a grant requires it, we report expenditure and output totals. We do not send donor identity to a funder unless the donor asks us to.
- Hosting and service providers. Our web host, email provider, and payment processor process data under written agreements limited to providing their service.
- Legal obligation. Where required by law, a court order, or a regulator such as the IRS, the Iowa Attorney General, or a Zambian authority. We will narrow any request to what is actually required.
- Organizational transfer. In the unlikely event of a merger or transfer of assets, information moves only to a successor that assumes this policy in full.
We do not sell personal information, we do not rent mailing lists, and we do not accept payment for the disclosure of donor or farmer information.
7. Retention
Records are kept for as long as a stated purpose needs them, and no longer. Financial records follow US nonprofit retention requirements; research records follow the data-sharing agreement that created them.
| Record | Kept for | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Donation and receipt records | 7 years | IRS substantiation requirements for charitable deductions. |
| Correspondence | 3 years | Grant and partnership audit trails; longer only where a grant requires it. |
| Household ledgers and plot records | 10 years | Paired-plot comparisons need the prior season to remain interpretable. |
| Research working copies held by partners | 12 months | Contractual deletion at the close of the project. |
| Server logs | 30 days | Security investigation. Aggregated beyond that point. |
| Consent record | 12 months | Demonstrates that a choice was made, and when. |
At the end of a retention period the record is deleted, or anonymised so that it can no longer be attributed to a person. Financial records that must survive deletion are archived with restricted access held by the Treasurer.
8. Security
Because the organization is volunteer-run, we describe our controls plainly rather than claiming a certification we do not hold. We do not claim SOC 2 or ISO 27001.
- Transport. All pages and forms are served exclusively over HTTPS. Unencrypted requests are redirected rather than served.
- Browser security. Every page declares a Content Security Policy that permits scripts and styles from this origin only, forbids plugin content, and restricts form submissions to this origin.
- Server headers. HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy, and Permissions-Policy are set at the host.
- No credentials in the site. API keys, payment credentials, and record-system configuration are not present in any page, stylesheet, or script served to the browser. The site holds no secrets.
- Access. Donor records are held in the organization's accounting system under two-factor authentication, accessible to the Treasurer and the Board President.
- Field records. Paper ledgers are held by the household. Digital copies are held in access-controlled storage and transferred to Zambia under an agreement that prohibits onward use.
- Payment data. Card numbers are handled only by the payment processor, in a PCI DSS compliant environment, and never by ZIAP.
Suspected incidents are reported to the Board President and the Treasurer immediately, assessed within five business days, and disclosed to affected individuals and regulators where the law requires it.
9. Your rights
Wherever you live, ZIAP applies the same standard of transparency. If you are in the EEA, the UK, or California, the following rights apply in addition to anything your local law gives you.
| Right | What it means here | Response time |
|---|---|---|
| Access | A copy of the personal information we hold about you, and a plain description of what it is used for. | 30 days |
| Rectification | Correction of an inaccurate name, address, or email, and addition of information that is relevant to a restricted gift. | 30 days |
| Erasure | Deletion where we are not required to keep the record. Financial records we must retain are withheld rather than deleted. | 30 days |
| Restriction and objection | Stop processing while a correction or a lawful basis is reviewed, including objecting to being named publicly. | 30 days |
| Portability | Your donation history in a structured, machine-readable file. | 30 days |
| Withdraw consent | Withdraw consent for optional analytics cookies, for a public acknowledgement, or for a recorded restricted designation. | Immediately |
| Non-discrimination | Exercising any right never affects your treatment as a donor, a research partner, or a program household. | Immediate |
Send requests to info@ziap.org with "Records request" in the subject line. We verify identity before releasing anything, and we say which documents we used.
ZIAP does not sell personal information and does not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so the California right to opt out of sale or sharing has nothing to act on. We honour a Colorado or Connecticut universal opt-out signal if a browser sends one.
10. Zambia and Iowa
ZIAP is a US nonprofit with field operations in Zambia, so personal information moves between two jurisdictions. We handle that deliberately:
- Field records are collected in Zambia and held in the districts where the program operates, under Zambian data protection law as it applies to a nonprofit's processing.
- Aggregated district-level results are published in the United States. Household identifiers are not exported.
- Where a transfer of personal information to the United States is necessary, it is limited to what a funder's reporting obligation or an audit requires.
- Households are told, in the language they are comfortable in, that a ledger exists, who can read it, and how to ask for it to be withdrawn.
11. Children's privacy
This site is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. Our program serves adults who hold farming households. If you believe a child's information has reached us, write to info@ziap.org and we will delete it.
12. Changes to this policy
We update this policy when our practices change, at minimum annually. The effective date and review date at the top of this page always reflect the current version. A material change — a new category of data collected, or a new third party receiving information — is announced on the home page before it takes effect, and donors who have opted into notices are notified directly.
Previous versions are available on request so that a reviewer can see what a stated practice was at any point in time.
13. Contact and complaints
Questions about this policy, or a request concerning your information:
501(c)(3) public charity · EIN 99-2864574.
30 days to complete a formal rights request.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to your national data protection authority. In the United States, the IRS Office of Exempt Organizations hears complaints about charitable status, and the Iowa Attorney General handles consumer complaints. Zambian data protection complaints are directed to the relevant Zambian authority. We would rather hear the complaint from you first, so that it can be fixed.