Security & your data

Charities hold sensitive information: safeguarding notes, DBS checks, and people's contact and employment details. Keeping that safe is part of how CharityControl is built, not something added on later.

Your data is kept separate

Every charity's records are kept in their own separate store. They're never mixed into a shared pool with other organisations. If your charity leaves, we can hand back everything as a single export, and delete it in full on request.

GDPR

CharityControl is built to meet UK GDPR. Your charity stays in control of its data, and we only ever use it to run the service for you. You can ask for a copy of your data, or ask us to delete it, at any time. Our privacy policy sets out exactly what we hold and why.

Who can see what

• People sign in with a secure, time-limited link sent to their email. There is no password to be guessed or leaked, and access can be switched off instantly.
• Everyone sees only what their role allows. A volunteer, a trustee and the treasurer each get a different, appropriate view. We check this on our servers every time, so it can't be worked around in the browser.
• Every change is recorded in a history you can review: who changed what, and when.

Connected services and AI

• When you connect Xero, the link is encrypted and read-only. QuickBooks has no read-only permission, so the grant is broader, but we only ever read your data and the connection is encrypted the same way. We only read the figures needed for your reports.
• The AI assistant only ever sees the information the person using it is already allowed to see. It makes suggestions; it never changes your records on its own, and everything it does is recorded.

Hosting and backups

Your data is hosted in the EU (Hetzner, in Finland) and encrypted while it travels to and from you. Your records are continuously copied to separate EU-based storage as you work, so an up-to-date copy is always kept somewhere else. And we regularly test that those backups actually restore, so we know they'll be there if something goes wrong.

Is the service up right now?

You can see the live health of the platform on our status page: application, databases, email delivery and video meetings, with the time of the last check. It carries no charity data.

Questions or due diligence

Your charity's data belongs to your charity. If your funders or board need a security questionnaire completed, get in touch and we'll complete it with you.