We hold the information you share with us with the same care we bring to every part of this ministry. This page explains what we collect, why, and how it is protected.
Last updated: September 22, 2026
Thrive Ministries is a registered Canadian charity based in St. Catharines, Ontario. We walk alongside Christian ministry leaders and their families with retreats, healing groups, and Spirit-led care. We handle personal information in accordance with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). If you have any questions about this policy, you can reach us at info@thriveministries.ca.
We collect personal information only when you choose to share it with us, and only what we need to serve you well:
With the exception of newsletter signups, these submissions are stored in the website's own database and are readable only by our site administrators. Newsletter signups go to Mailchimp instead, described below.
Our Encouragement Ministry relies on people letting us know about a leader, pastor, or family who could use encouragement. If you recommend someone, you are sharing information about a person who has not contacted us themselves, so we want to be plain about what happens to it.
We ask for their name, the church, ministry, or organisation they serve, and a way to reach that ministry. We also ask whether they know you are putting their name forward. We deliberately do not ask for their home address or their personal contact details: we approach the ministry, and the ministry decides what reaches them. We use what you share only to follow up, and we do not publish it, sell it, or pass it to anyone outside our ministry team.
We keep a recommendation only as long as we need it to follow up and to avoid approaching the same person twice. If you have been recommended to us and would rather we did not hold your details, tell us and we will delete them, without needing a reason.
Online donations are processed by Stripe, a third-party payment processor. Your card details are entered on Stripe's secure checkout page and are never seen or stored by our website. We keep a record of your name, email address, donation amount, and fund designation so we can issue receipts and maintain the records required of a registered charity.
We only send you email you have asked for, in keeping with Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). Newsletter consent is always your express choice: opt-in boxes on our forms are never pre-checked. Our newsletter is sent through Mailchimp, and every newsletter carries an unsubscribe link that removes you from the list immediately, without needing to contact us.
To keep the site healthy and understand how it is being used, we keep an internal log of site activity such as pages visited, clicks, and resource downloads. Some of these events are forwarded to a third-party messaging service, so our team is alerted when something needs attention. A few entries identify the person who acted, and a newsletter signup is one of them: it records the address that subscribed, so the ministry can see who has joined and put it right if the signup did not reach Mailchimp.
We also use Google Analytics to understand how the site is found and used: which pages are read, roughly where in the world visitors are, and which sites and searches sent them here. It tells us how many people came, not who they are. We do not give it your name, your email address, or anything you type into a form, and it is never told how much a donation was for. Before any page address is sent to Google we remove everything that follows a question mark, so the reference that identifies a payment on our thank-you pages stays out of it.
Google Analytics sets cookies to do this, which is what the Cookies section below describes, and it stores the information it gathers outside Canada. The detailed records of individual visits are kept for two months, the shortest period it allows, after which only anonymous totals remain: counts of how many people read a page, with nothing left that could be traced back to a particular visit.
When something goes wrong on the site we also record the error. Alongside the page involved, these technical records note the browser or other software that made the request, and the address of the page it came from. That is how we tell a genuine visitor apart from the automated traffic that reaches every website. We do not keep your IP address in these records, and we remove any information that follows a question mark in a web address before storing it.
Your IP address is read while a request is being handled, so we can limit how often the same source submits a form or starts a donation. We do not write it to the website's own records.
Google Analytics receives your IP address too, because any request to a website carries one. Google uses it to work out the approximate part of the world you are in and then discards it, and it is not something we are able to switch off. It is not stored in our own records either way.
Error records are also sent to a third-party error monitoring service, so faults can be diagnosed and fixed. That service is deliberately configured not to receive your IP address, your cookies, or anything you typed into a form.
Two kinds of cookie are in use on this site. Essential ones keep our own team signed in to the site's administration area. Analytics ones are set by Google Analytics, described above, and let it recognise a returning browser so that two visits from the same person are not counted as two different people.
We do not set advertising cookies, we do not use the site to build advertising audiences, and we have turned off the settings that would share analytics information with Google for advertising purposes.
You can refuse the analytics cookies. Every browser can block or clear cookies for a single site, and Google publishes a browser add-on that switches Google Analytics off everywhere you go. The site works exactly the same either way: nothing here depends on being measured.
Most of your information is stored in the website's own database. Alongside it, we rely on a small number of trusted service providers:
Some of these providers store data on servers outside Canada, including in the United States, where it may be subject to the laws of those jurisdictions.
We use the information you share with us to respond to your messages, provide the care and programs you have asked about, process your registrations and donations, and send communications you have requested. We use the record of pages visited to understand how the site is being used, so we can improve it and see whether what we publish is reaching anyone. We never sell or rent your personal information to anyone.
We keep personal information only as long as it is needed for the purpose it was collected, or as long as the law requires. As a registered charity, we retain donation records for the periods required by the Canada Revenue Agency.
Our own technical error records, which note your browser and the page you came from, are removed after 90 days. The records of individual visits held in Google Analytics are kept for two months, the shortest period it offers, and after that only anonymous totals remain.
You are welcome to ask us what personal information we hold about you, request that it be corrected, withdraw your consent to communications, or ask us to delete information we no longer need. Write to us at info@thriveministries.ca and we will respond promptly. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
You can also limit how your visits are measured at any time, without writing to us and without giving a reason. Blocking or clearing cookies for this site stops the analytics cookies described above, and Google publishes an opt-out add-on that switches Google Analytics off everywhere you go. Nothing on this site stops working if you do.
If we change how we handle personal information, we will update this page and revise the date at the top. Significant changes will be noted clearly here.
Thrive Ministries
PO Box 28013, Lakeport
St. Catharines, ON L2N 7P8
info@thriveministries.ca