Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 26, 2026

Madison International Friendship Center ("IFC", "we", "us") is a non-profit in Madison, Wisconsin. We welcome international students and their families.

This policy covers everything we run: our website at madisonifc.org, the Madison IFC mobile app, and the admin dashboard our staff use.

The short version

• We collect what we need to run classes, events, and the community. Not more.
• We never sell, rent, or trade your information. Not to anyone, ever.
• We use no advertising networks and no analytics trackers. Nothing follows you around the internet.
• The app does not track where you are. You can share your location once, by tapping a button, and only in an event chat.
• Other members see your name and what you post. They do not see your email address, your phone number, or your home country.
• You can delete your account yourself, at any time, in the app.
• You can email us to see, correct, or delete your information. We will do it gladly and promptly.

What we collect

When you visit our website

Our web server keeps ordinary logs: your IP address, your browser type and version, your operating system, and which pages you visited. These keep the site working and secure. We do not use them to build a profile of you.

When you give online

Gifts made on madisonifc.org/donate are handled by Donorbox. Donorbox uses Stripe and PayPal to take the payment. We receive what you type on the form — your name, your email address, and the amount — so we can thank you and send a tax receipt. We never see your full card number or bank account number. We do not publish donor lists.

The app has a "Support IFC" link. It opens this same page in your web browser. The app itself never takes a payment.

When you create an account in the app

• Your name. One name is fine, if that is how your name works.
• Your email address. It is also how you sign in — we email you a short code, so you do not need a password.
• Whether you are a student or a volunteer.
• Your home country, if you are a student. We ask because it is close to the heart of what we do: it tells us who is far from home at Thanksgiving, and which languages a room needs. Other members cannot see it. Only staff can.
• A phone number, if you choose to give one. This is so staff can reach you during an activity — a room change, a late bus. Other members never see it. Sharing a number with another member is a separate thing, described below.
• How you are connected to IFC, in your own words, so staff can approve your account. A person reviews every new account.

When you use the app

• Events you register for, how many people you are bringing, your answers to signup questions (for example dietary restrictions), whether you confirmed, and whether you checked in.
• Messages and photos you post in an event chat or a community group chat.
• A profile picture, if you add one. This is optional. By default your avatar is your initials on a color you choose, and no image is stored. If you upload a picture, other approved members see it beside your name. Staff can remove a picture that does not suit a community space, and that removal is recorded.

A place, only when you share one

In an event chat you can send where you are — "I am by the fountain."

• Your phone asks your permission the first time. You can say no and still use everything else in the app.
• It is one reading, taken the moment you tap the button. The app never follows you, has no access to your location at any other time, and cannot tell where you are when you are not sharing.
• It goes only to the people in that event's chat. Community group chats cannot carry a location at all — the app refuses it. That is a rule in our database, not a setting someone could change by accident.
• The place is part of that message, so it goes when the message goes: with the chat after the event, or straight away if you delete your account.

We never share your location outside that chat, and never use it for advertising or analysis.

Contact details you choose to give another member

The app has no private inbox. Instead you can offer your own contact details — a phone number, WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, or whatever you already use — to a particular member. You choose who, and you can stop sharing whenever you like.

This is separate from any number you gave staff. Giving the director your number does not give it to the class.

Your device

If you allow notifications, we store a push notification token for your device so that we can send them.

When something goes wrong

If the app or the dashboard hits an unexpected error, it sends us a technical report so we can fix it. Personal information is removed before the report leaves your device — email addresses, phone numbers, account identifiers and sign-in tokens are stripped out. We keep these because an error nobody reports is an error nobody fixes.

Feedback you send us

If you use Send feedback in the app, we keep your message, your name, and which version of the app you were using. Only IFC staff can read it; other members cannot, and you cannot see it again after you send it. If you delete your account, your feedback is deleted with it.

Records of what staff do

When a staff member does something significant — approving an account, changing an event, looking at a member's details — we record that it happened, who did it, and when. This protects you: access to your information is not invisible.

Email delivery records

We keep a record of the emails we send you and what became of them (delivered, opened, bounced, unsubscribed), so we can tell whether something important actually arrived.

What we do not do

• We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. Ever.
• We do not use advertising networks or analytics trackers.
• We do not track your location, read your contacts, or record your browsing history.
• We do not use your photos or your messages to train anything.
• We do not share member information with immigration authorities or any other government body unless the law requires it. See Students from other countries.

How we use what we collect

• To check that new members are genuinely connected to the IFC community.
• To run our programs: class schedules, event registration, rosters, and coordination chats.
• To reach you: announcements, event reminders, and sign-in codes, by push notification and by email.
• To keep people safe and the service working: moderation, security, and fixing problems.

Who can see your information

Other members see your name, your avatar, and whatever you post in a chat you both belong to. They see your home country only if you tell them yourself. They cannot see your email address, your phone number, or your registrations.

IFC staff (the director and administrators) can see member profiles, event registrations, attendance, and event chats, and can moderate chat content. Staff access to member details is recorded.

Service providers, who process data only on our behalf:

We do not sell your information to them, or to anyone.

Notifications name the event

A notification can say what it is about — for example, "Chat is open: Welcome Picnic". That text can appear on your lock screen, where somebody beside you might see it. We chose this on purpose: a notification you cannot understand is a notification that does not work. If you would rather not have them, turn off notifications for the app in your phone's settings; everything else keeps working.

Notifications never contain your location, your home country, or anyone else's personal details.

Chats

Event chats are temporary. A chat opens shortly before its event, stops taking new messages a while afterwards, and its messages are then deleted with the chat.

Community group chats — for example "General Chat" or "Selling & Giving Away" — keep only a rolling window of recent messages, about 30 days. Older messages are deleted automatically. They are for coordination, not for keeping a record.

Photos you share in a chat may be kept by staff after the chat closes, for example for a newsletter. The app says so where you share a photo. Kept photos are deleted automatically after about 90 days unless saved for a specific purpose. Email us to have one removed.

A photo you share does not carry where it was taken. Your camera usually writes the location into a photo's hidden details, and your phone will tell you so while you are choosing one. The app re-saves every picture before it is uploaded, which removes that information — so the only way your location reaches a chat is the one you choose on purpose, described above.

How long we keep things

Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself: open Profile in the app and tap Delete my account. You can also email us and we will do it for you.

Deleting removes your profile, your registrations, your messages, your photos, any location you shared, and your contact details. It cannot be undone.

One thing is kept deliberately, and we want to be plain about it. Our record of what happened stays — that an event had thirty people, that an account was approved on a certain day — because a non-profit has to be able to account for its own history. But your name, email address, phone number and home country are removed from those records and replaced with a meaningless code. The record still shows what happened. Nothing in it says who you were.

Your choices and your rights

You can:

• See what we hold about you.
• Correct anything wrong — most of it yourself, in the app.
• Delete your account, yourself or by asking us.
• Stop email with the unsubscribe link in any newsletter, or by asking us.
• Turn off notifications in your phone's settings.
• Refuse location and keep using everything else.
• Stop sharing your contact details with another member at any time.

Email privacy@madisonifc.org and we will help. We will not treat you differently for asking.

Security

• Your information is encrypted while it travels to us and while it is stored.
• Access rules are enforced by the database itself, not only by the app, so a mistake in one screen cannot expose another member's information.
• Signing in uses a one-time code sent to your email. You can also choose a password, but you do not have to. If you do, we store only a scrambled form of it, never the password itself.
• Staff access to member details is recorded.

No system is perfect. If we discover a breach affecting your information, we will tell you and the appropriate authorities, as the law requires.

Students from other countries

Most of the people we serve are international students. We know that a list of who attends a particular organization is not a neutral thing in every country.

So: your home country is visible only to IFC staff, never to other members. It is never in the subject of an email or the text of a notification. When you delete your account it is removed from our records entirely. We do not share member information with immigration authorities or any other government body unless we are legally required to, and if that ever happens we will tell you unless the law forbids it.

If any of this worries you, please talk to us. You are welcome at IFC whether or not you use the app, and you can take part in anything without telling us where you are from.

Children

The app is intended for adults, 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. If a change materially affects you, we will announce it in the app and on our website. The date at the top shows when it last changed.

Contact us

• privacy@madisonifc.org
• ifc@madisonifc.org · (608) 622-7452
• Madison International Friendship Center, Madison, Wisconsin

We would rather hear from you than have you wonder.