Privacy

What we collect

We collect the least we can, and we say what each piece is for.

If you apply:

• Your name, age, grade and school
• Your email address, and your educator's name and email
• The project itself — title, pitch, description, budget, links, an optional video and an optional image
• Whether you have run something like it before
• How you would like the money to reach you

Only the project and the school ever appear on your public card. Your chosen project link appears on your full project page after approval; extra supporting links stay private for TKS review.

If you vote:

• Your email address
• Your grade and school, if you choose to give them
• Whether you opted in to the newsletter

Fraud telemetry, at the moment you confirm a vote:

We store a keyed hash of your IP address, together with your browser's user-agent string. We do not store the address itself. The key is specific to this cycle. We use both only to review votes for fraud — checking for bots, alias clusters and bought votes — and they are due for deletion 90 days after voting closes, through the cleanup process described under “How long we keep it”.

Cookies:

Three short-lived functional cookies, set only when you act. They remember the address you typed and the project you voted for, so the next page can name them without putting your address in a link. Two expire after 15 minutes and one after a minute.

Traffic analytics: we use Google Analytics to understand visits to public pages and which partner links bring people here. It uses cookie identifiers and records page views, campaign labels, referrer information and basic browser and device information. We do not send application fields, email addresses or private link tokens, and we do not measure private status, confirmation or administrator pages. Public project visits are grouped together rather than identified individually.

Google Analytics runs automatically on public pages. Analytics cookies are configured to expire after 180 days without automatic renewal. Your browser settings or tracking protection may block analytics cookies and requests.

For administrators only, an additional essential authentication cookie keeps the administrator signed in while using the private Admin pages. It is inaccessible to page scripts and may be split into smaller cookies. Admin access expires within eight hours of signing in, even if the cookie is refreshed, and signing out clears it. Visitors who do not sign in to Admin do not receive this cookie.

What is public

A project's public card shows the project and the school. Nothing else about a student is published, ever.

On project cards and full project pages: the title, the project type, the school, the one-line pitch, the description, the budget, the selected decorative cover or uploaded project image, the optional video, the amount requested, and the weighted vote total. Your chosen project link appears only on the full project page.

Never on project cards or other public pages: student names, ages, grades, cities, school boards, contact details, or your educator's name or address. Authorised TKS administrators can access private application details to review applications and administer grants.

The Winners page shows the same fields, plus the amount awarded and the final weighted total, and any completion note a winner sends afterwards. Completion notes follow the same rule: nothing that identifies an individual student.

Vote totals are public. Who voted is not.

How long we keep it

Most personal data is due for removal 90 days after voting closes.

• Vote records are due for anonymisation 90 days after voting closes. The weights and the totals survive; the identity does not.
• Fraud telemetry — the IP hashes, browser user-agent strings and cycle-specific key material — is due for deletion at the same cutoff.
• Private application details are due for deletion at the same cutoff, including for winners. If a grant still needs payment or follow-up, we keep only the student and educator contact details and payment route needed to finish it. These remaining details are due for deletion once grant administration is complete.
• If your project won, we keep the winner's name, school, the amount awarded and the payment confirmation, as our record of grant payments until 12 months after grant administration is complete. At that point, the private grant record is due for deletion. Public project pages, results and approved completion updates remain available.
• Newsletter subscriber records are kept until you unsubscribe.

Cleanup is scheduled daily, so data due for removal is normally processed in the next daily run. Failed deletions are retried.

Removal from the live service does not immediately remove data from existing backups. Backup copies remain until they expire under our backup retention policy. If we restore a backup, we remove data already due for deletion before returning the restored service to use.

These are the rules we hold ourselves to. If you want something removed sooner, write to us.

Deletion and takedown

Write to damian@tks.world and we will delete what we hold about you.

If something on the site identifies a student, tell us and it comes down. No questions asked, and quickly.

You can ask what we hold about you at the same address.

Withdrawing a project takes its card down straight away and voids its votes. You can do that yourself from the private status link we emailed you.

Where your data is processed

Application and vote records are stored in Canada. Other services may process data outside Canada.

The database is hosted with Supabase in Canada Central, in Toronto. That is where applications, votes and subscriber records live.

The website runs on Vercel and our email is sent through Resend. Both are US companies, so a page request and an email pass through US systems.

If you confirm a subscription to Developing Future-Ready Leaders and our newsletter provider is connected, your address is also sent to Beehiiv, a US company. If it is not connected, nothing is sent anywhere.

Google also processes analytics data outside our Canadian database, including in the United States. Google Analytics is configured to retain event and user data for two months; this limit does not apply to aggregated reports. We do not enable advertising personalization or Google Signals. Learn how Google uses data at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

We say this plainly because most of the people using this site are minors: application, vote and subscriber records are stored in Canada and may be processed in the United States by those providers.

Newsletter consent

Subscribing to Developing Future-Ready Leaders is a separate decision from voting, and it takes two steps.

The opt-in on the vote form is unchecked. If you tick it we send a second, separate email, and nothing happens until you press Confirm in it. Ignoring that email confirms nothing.

Every newsletter carries an unsubscribe link, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Unsubscribing removes you from the newsletter and suppresses your address from our exports. It does not change votes you have already cast.

Contact

damian@tks.world reaches a person.

Use it for anything on this page: a question, a deletion request, a takedown, or something that looks wrong.

It is the same address every email from us replies to.