How Southern Ohio Soles collects, uses, and protects your information, and how we keep students’ identities private and limit access to their information.
Southern Ohio Soles (“SOS,” “we,” “us”) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides new, name-brand shoes to students in need across Appalachian Ohio. This policy explains what information we collect, why, and how we protect it. We wrote it to be read, not to bury you in legal language. If you have a question about anything here, contact us at info@southernohiosoles.org.
This policy covers information handled through our website and our online portal at southernohiosoles.org, including the accounts used by school staff (“Advocates”), student representatives, and our admin team.
Information school staff give us about a student. When an Advocate submits a shoe request, they give us the limited information we need to get the right shoes to the right student: the student’s first name and last initial, shoe size, style preference, school, and the basic information needed to coordinate delivery. Requests are entered by an adult staff member at the school, not by the student. A full name is not required, but request forms include free-text fields, and staff submitting a request may enter additional information there that we do not control or restrict.
Account information. Advocates, student representatives, and admins create accounts to use the portal. For those accounts we collect basic information like name, email address, role, and school or district.
Information you send us directly. If you email us, apply to be an Advocate or a student rep, or fill out a form on our site, we keep what you send so we can respond and follow up.
We do not collect more than we need to run the program.
We use this information only to run the shoe program: to fulfill requests, coordinate deliveries, manage accounts, communicate with the people involved, and keep basic records the way any nonprofit does. We do not sell your information. We do not rent or trade it. We do not use it for advertising, and we do not hand it to sponsors or the public.
Access is limited by role, on purpose. A student representative only sees what a delivery actually requires. They do not see private background about why a student qualifies for the program. Our admin team can see request details in order to fulfill and manage them. School staff see the requests they submit. SOS does not publish a student’s name, photo, or identifying details publicly, and limits who can view request information to authorized staff. Anything we share about our impact publicly is combined and aggregated so that it does not identify an individual student.
We use trusted outside services to host our website, store our data securely, and send email. These providers only handle information as needed to provide those services to us, and they are not permitted to use it for their own purposes.
We use individual accounts, restrict access by role, protect data in transit, and route all changes to our records through secured, controlled processes rather than leaving the database open. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable steps to keep this information safe and to limit who can reach it.
Account information is kept while the account is active. You can ask us to delete information about you or a student at any time, and we will unless we are required to keep it.
Many of the students we serve are minors, and some of our student representatives are minors. We take that seriously. Information about a student who receives shoes is provided by an adult staff member at the student’s school. We do not knowingly let children under 13 create their own accounts or submit their own information through the portal. For student representatives who are minors, we collect a signed consent from a parent or guardian directly, covering their participation, their account, and any public listing of their name or photo. If you believe we have information about a child that should not be here, contact us and we will remove it.
You can ask us to see, correct, or delete information we hold about you or your child. Email us and we will take care of it.
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top and post the new version here.
Southern Ohio Soles
Jackson, Ohio
info@southernohiosoles.org