BC Initiatives Society — Privacy Notice

Who we are

BC Initiatives Society is a youth-led organization in British Columbia. Our Opportunity Hub helps people find scholarships, volunteering, jobs and community opportunities. You can browse the directory without creating an account.

What information we collect

If you submit an opportunity, we collect the details you provide: title, organization, category, location, description, eligibility, amount or pay, commitment, deadline (if known), and the official application link. You may also give us your email address, but that is optional. Our submission system adds a submission ID and timestamp.

Our hosting and security providers process basic technical information needed to operate and protect the website. To reduce abuse, the website uses short-lived, pseudonymous rate-limit information derived from connection details rather than keeping raw visitor IP addresses in the rate-limit database. We will update this notice if we add materially different collection practices.

Why we use this information

We use submitted opportunity details to check whether an opportunity is real, current, appropriate for the directory and safe to link to. If you provide an email address, authorized BCI reviewers may use it to ask you a question about your submission. We do not use your submission email for unrelated marketing.

What is public and what remains private

Submissions are sent to a restricted Google Sheet for review and are not automatically published. If an opportunity is approved, we may publish its non-private details—including the organization, description, eligibility, deadline and official application link—in the public directory. We do not publish your optional submitter email or internal reviewer notes.

Visitors who click an official application link leave BCI’s website and go to the external organization. That organization has its own application forms and privacy practices. BCI does not collect your scholarship or job applications through the Opportunity Hub.

Where information is stored and who can access it

We use Google Sheets / Google Drive to manage opportunity information and private submissions. We use Lovable-managed website infrastructure and Supabase for technical operations and spam protection. BCI restricts access to private submissions to its owner and authorized reviewers. These providers may process information under their own service and privacy terms, and processing locations may vary.

How long we keep it

We keep submissions while needed for review, follow-up, or legitimate legal and operational purposes. Our internal policy has a 90-day target to remove or de-identify unnecessary personal information after a submission has been reviewed and any required follow-up is complete, where no longer retention requirement applies. This is handled through manual reviews; automatic deletion has not been implemented. Where personal information is used to make a decision directly affecting an individual, BC law (Personal Information Protection Act) may require retention for at least one year after the decision. Legal holds and other justified requirements may result in longer retention.

Your choices and privacy requests

You may leave the optional email field blank. You can ask to access or correct personal information we hold about you, or request deletion where permitted by law. We may need enough information to verify that the record belongs to you before sharing or changing it.

Privacy Officer position: Opportunity Hub Privacy Officer, BC Initiatives Society. Privacy contact: bcinitiativessociety@gmail.com. You may also contact BCI through https://www.instagram.com/bcinitiativessociety/. For privacy requests, email is preferred. Please do not send sensitive identity documents through Instagram.

Security and questions

BCI uses restricted access and basic safeguards intended to limit unauthorized access, but no online service can guarantee absolute security. Contact our Privacy Officer with questions, complaints or concerns about your information.

This notice should be reviewed when the website, providers, forms or BCI’s actual privacy practices change.