Your data, plainly explained
Privacy Policy
What we collect when you donate or write to us, why we collect it, who sees it, and what you can ask us to do about it.
Who we are
COODU TRUST (“COODU”, “the Trust”, “we”, “us”, “our”) runs this website at coodutrust.org. This policy explains what personal information we collect here, why we collect it, who sees it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do about it.
We have tried to write it in plain English. If anything is unclear, please write to director@coodutrust.org and we will explain it.
COODU TRUST is a public charitable trust constituted by Trust Deed dated 20 June 2000, registered as Document No. 150/B IV of 2000 with the Sub-Registrar, Dindigul, and amended by supplementary deeds dated 24 February 2006 (Doc. No. 92/BK4/2006) and 15 March 2007 (Doc. No. 156/BK4 of 2007). Our PAN is AAATC5133E.
Under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the rules made under it, COODU TRUST is the Data Fiduciary for personal data collected through this website. You are the Data Principal — the person the data is about.
What we collect
We only collect what we actually need. There is no login, no account and no membership on this site, so you can read every page here without giving us anything at all.
If you make a donation
The donation form asks for your name, email address and phone number — and, only if you ask for a receipt, also your PAN and postal address.
We ask for PAN and postal address only because a donation reported for income-tax purposes has to carry the donor’s details. If you do not want a receipt, you do not have to give them.
If you use the contact form
We collect your name, email address, phone number, the subject you choose and the message you write.
Automatically, with each donation
Our system records the IP address and the browser user-agent of the device used. We keep this only as a basic fraud and security record, so that a disputed or duplicated transaction can be traced.
What we never see
Card numbers, CVV, expiry dates, netbanking passwords, UPI PINs, OTPs and similar payment credentials are never collected by us and never reach COODU TRUST’s servers.
All payments on this site are processed by Razorpay Software Private Limited. You enter payment details on Razorpay’s own secure checkout. Razorpay tells us only whether the payment succeeded, the amount, and a payment reference. Razorpay handles that data as its own controller, under its privacy policy and under the Reserve Bank of India’s rules for payment aggregators.
Why we collect it, and on what basis
- Process your donation
- To complete the transaction you asked us to make.
- Send an acknowledgement, and a receipt if asked
- Because you requested it.
- Keep donation records in our books
- Because tax, audit and charity-law obligations require it.
- Report a donation where required
- Legal obligation, for income-tax purposes.
- Keep the IP address and user-agent
- To detect and investigate fraud, duplicates and disputed payments.
- Reply to your contact-form message
- To answer the question you asked us.
Our lawful basis under the DPDP Act is your consent, given when you submit the form for the stated purpose, together with the legal obligations that apply to a registered charitable trust’s financial records.
We do not use your information for anything else. If we ever want to send you news about our work, we will ask for your consent separately first, and you will be able to withdraw it at any time.
Anonymous donations
The donation form has a “make this gift anonymous” option.
Choosing it does not mean we collect nothing — we still need your name, email and phone to process the payment, and your PAN and address if you want a receipt. What it means is that we will not name you, or identify you as the donor, in any public acknowledgement, listing, report or communication about that gift.
How long we keep it
- Donation records
- Name, contact details, amount, date, and PAN and address where given — kept for as long as the Income-tax Act, 1961 and the Trust’s audit and accounting obligations require financial records to be preserved, and for any period during which a dispute or claim about the donation remains open.
- IP address and user-agent
- Kept with the donation record, for the same fraud and dispute reasons. Used for nothing else.
- Contact-form messages
- Kept only as long as we need them to deal with your enquiry and keep a short record of the correspondence, then deleted.
When we no longer need data, we delete it or remove the details that identify you.
Your rights
Under the DPDP Act you have the right to:
- Know what personal data of yours we hold and process, and who we have shared it with.
- Correct anything inaccurate, and complete anything incomplete.
- Have your data erased, unless the law requires us to keep it — a donation record that forms part of our audited accounts, or that has been reported for tax purposes, usually has to stay.
- Withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawal applies going forward; it does not undo something already lawfully done, and it does not by itself reverse a completed donation.
- Nominate another person to exercise these rights for you if you die or become unable to act.
- Complain to us and — if our answer does not satisfy you — to the Data Protection Board of India.
How to use them
Write to director@coodutrust.org with your name, the email address or phone number you used on the site, and what you would like us to do. Please tell us enough to let us find your record. We may ask a question or two to confirm it is really you. We will respond within a reasonable time, and we will tell you if a legal obligation prevents us from doing what you have asked.
There is no charge for this.
Third-party content on our pages
Some parts of this site are loaded from other companies’ servers. When your browser fetches a file from any of them, that company necessarily sees your IP address, basic browser and device information, and which page you were on. That is how the web works for any externally hosted file.
- checkout.razorpay.com
- The payment checkout. Razorpay may set its own cookies and collect information for payment processing, fraud prevention and its regulatory obligations.
- res.cloudinary.com
- Where our photographs and images are hosted.
- cdn.jsdelivr.net and unpkg.com
- Where our fonts and icons are hosted.
- youtube.com
- A single embedded video on the About page. Google/YouTube may set cookies or store data on your device in connection with that player, under Google’s privacy policy.
We do not control these services, and we do not receive visitor-level data back from them.
Children
This website is meant for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18, and donations should be made only by adults.
The DPDP Act requires verifiable parental consent before a child’s personal data is processed, and prohibits tracking or behavioural advertising directed at children. We do not track or advertise to anyone. If you believe a child has given us personal data through this site, write to director@coodutrust.org and we will delete it.
How we protect your information
We take security seriously, and we would rather tell you plainly what we do than make claims we cannot stand behind.
- The site is served over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection.
- Payment credentials never touch our systems at all, so they cannot be lost from them.
- Access to donation and enquiry records is restricted to the small number of people in the Trust who need it for their work.
- We keep what we collect to a minimum, which is itself a security measure.
No website, server or organisation can promise perfect security, and we do not. If a breach happens that affects your personal data, we will inform you and the Data Protection Board of India in the manner the law requires, and tell you what we are doing about it.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will publish the new version on this page and change the “Last updated” date at the top. Where a change materially affects how we use data you have already given us, and we hold an email address for you, we will try to tell you directly. Please check this page from time to time.
Grievances
If you have a complaint about how we have handled your personal data, write to the Director (Grievance Contact) at the address below. We will acknowledge your grievance and respond as quickly as we reasonably can.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.
This policy should be read with our Terms & Conditions and our Refund & Cancellation Policy.
Contact us
For any question, request about your data, or complaint about how we have handled it, write to the Director, who is our grievance contact.
COODU TRUST
74, 2nd Floor, Thadicombu Road, Dindigul – 624 001, Tamil Nadu, India