Privacy notice

This notice explains how Initiatives for Sustainable Socio-Economic Development (“ISSED”, “we”) handles personal information collected through this website. ISSED is based in Lilongwe, Malawi.

What we collect

We only collect information you choose to give us:

• Contact form — your name, email address, and optionally your phone number and organisation, together with the subject and content of your message.
• Newsletter — your email address, and your name if you provide it.
• Donations — your name, email address, optionally your phone number, and the amount, currency and designation of your gift.

We also record the IP address a submission came from, purely to detect and limit automated abuse of these forms.

Visitor statistics

We count visits to understand which parts of our work people want to read about. This is done on our own server. We do not use Google Analytics or any other third-party analytics service, and no advertising or tracking scripts run on this site.

For each page view we store the page address, the type of device (desktop, mobile or tablet), the website you arrived from if there was one, and the date. We do not store your IP address. Instead we store a one-way cryptographic hash of it, mixed with a secret key and the current date. That lets us count how many separate people visited on a given day, but it cannot be reversed to identify you, and the value changes daily — so nobody can be followed from one day to the next.

We record only the domain a visitor came from, never the full referring address, because a search result URL can contain what someone typed. Automated crawlers are excluded from the figures, and pages inside our staff dashboard are never counted. Visit records are deleted after around a year.

What we never see

We do not collect or store payment card details. Donations are completed on the hosted checkout of our payment provider, PayChangu. Your card number, expiry date and security code are entered on their systems, not ours, and are never transmitted to this website. We receive only a confirmation that a payment succeeded, its amount, and a transaction reference.

Why we use it

• To reply to enquiries you send us.
• To send you updates, if and only if you have confirmed a newsletter subscription.
• To process and acknowledge donations, and to keep the financial records an organisation is required to keep.
• To protect the website from spam and abuse.

Newsletter consent

Our newsletter uses double opt-in. Entering an email address does not subscribe it — a confirmation link must be followed from that inbox first. Every message we send carries an unsubscribe link that works immediately and permanently.

Who we share it with

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for marketing. Information is shared only with the service providers needed to run the site — our web host, our email delivery provider, and PayChangu for donation processing — and only to the extent each needs it to perform that function. We may disclose information where we are legally required to do so.

How long we keep it

• Enquiries — retained while relevant to an ongoing conversation or relationship, then deleted.
• Newsletter — retained until you unsubscribe.
• Donation records — retained for as long as financial and audit obligations require.
• Visit statistics — deleted after around a year, and never identifiable in the first place.

Cookies

This site sets only the cookies needed for it to function: a session cookie, and a security token that protects forms against cross-site request forgery. We do not use advertising cookies, and we do not run third-party analytics or tracking scripts. Our visitor statistics do not use cookies at all.

How we protect it

The site is served over HTTPS. Access to submitted information is limited to authorised ISSED staff accounts, protected by individual passwords. Uploaded documents are stored outside the public web directory and served through an access-controlled route.

Your choices

You can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, or delete it. You can unsubscribe from our newsletter at any time using the link in any message we send. To make a request, email issedmw@gmail.com.

Children

This website is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from them through it.

Changes

If we change this notice we will update the date at the top of this page.

Contact

Questions about this notice can be sent to issedmw@gmail.com, or by post to ISSED, Lilongwe, Malawi.