Privacy Policy
How Agudas Yisroel of Staten Island handles personal information — both on this website and in the shul’s own membership records.
Last updated 4 September 2026.
This policy covers two different things, and it is worth keeping them apart. The first is this website, which collects nothing at all. The second is the shul’s own records — the membership and billing information the office keeps in order to run a congregation, which is where the real information sits.
This website
agudah.si is a set of plain pages. There are no accounts, no forms and nothing to submit. We use no cookies, no analytics and no advertising or tracking pixels of any kind. We do not know who visits, how often, or what they read.
The site is hosted on GitHub Pages. Like any web server, the hosting provider records the ordinary technical details of a request — IP address, browser and page requested — for security and reliability purposes. We do not have access to those logs and do not use them.
Some pages link out to services run by other organisations, including our donation form and our weekly zmanim sheet. Once you follow a link away from agudah.si you are on somebody else’s website, under their policy rather than this one.
The shul’s records
To run a shul we keep records about our members and their households. Depending on the person, that can include:
- Name, Hebrew name, address, telephone numbers and email address
- Household and family relationships, where they matter for seating, kibbudim or billing
- Membership status, dues, donations, pledges and payment history
- Yahrzeit dates and the names they are observed for
- Aliyos and other kibbudim received, and any obligations arising from them
This information comes from you — on a membership form, in an email, at the office, or through our member portal — and from the ordinary business of the shul, such as a gabbai recording who received an aliyah.
We use it to run the congregation: to bill and receipt membership and donations, to send statements, to issue tax letters, to remind you of a yahrzeit, and to reach you about the shul’s affairs. We do not use it to profile anybody and we do not make automated decisions about people.
Text messages and WhatsApp
If you give us a mobile number, we may use it to send you account messages: notice that a statement is ready, a receipt for a payment, a warning before an automatic payment is taken, and yahrzeit reminders.
We do not sell personal information, and we never have.
No mobile information is shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text message originator opt-in data and consent are never shared with anyone. The only sharing that happens is with the messaging provider that carries the message on our behalf, which is a subcontractor acting on our instructions and for no other purpose.
How often, and what it costs. Message frequency varies with your account. In an ordinary month it is none or one, and it will not normally exceed a few messages a month. We charge nothing for messages, but message and data rates may apply from your own mobile carrier. Reply HELP to any message for help, or contact us using the details below.
You can stop text messages at any time by replying STOP to any message from us, or by telling the office. Replying STOP to a text stops texts; it does not stop WhatsApp, and the reverse is equally true — they are separate and you can stop either without stopping the other. You can also set your preferences yourself in the member portal.
Stopping messages never affects your membership, and it never affects anything else the shul does for you. See our Terms of Use for the full messaging terms.
Who else sees this information
Only the people who need it. Within the shul, access is limited by role: a gabbai can record kibbudim without seeing anybody’s balance, and financial records are open only to the treasurer and those he authorises.
Outside the shul, we use a small number of service providers who handle information strictly on our behalf and only for the purpose we engage them for:
- Payment processors, to take card and bank payments. Card numbers and bank account numbers go directly to the processor and are never held by us.
- Email and text message providers, to carry the messages we send you.
- Hosting and backup providers, which store our records securely.
- Professional advisers, such as our accountant, where there is a proper reason.
We also disclose information where the law requires it. Beyond that, nothing goes anywhere. We do not sell, rent, trade or lend member information to anyone, for any purpose.
Keeping it, and keeping it safe
Financial and charitable records are kept for as long as tax and not-for-profit rules require, and generally longer — a statement should still be answerable years later. Other information is kept while it is useful to the shul and to you.
Access is restricted by role and protected by passwords. No system is perfect, and we would rather say so than promise otherwise.
What you can ask for
Ask us what we hold about you and we will tell you. Ask us to correct something and we will correct it. Ask us to stop contacting you by a particular means and we will stop.
Some things we cannot delete on request: a donation receipt or a billing record has to survive for tax and audit purposes, and a shul cannot unremember that it issued one. Everything else is negotiable — talk to us.
Children
We hold information about children only as part of a family record — a name, a Hebrew name, a date — and only where a parent has given it. We do not send messages to children and we do not collect anything from them directly.
Changes
If this policy changes we will update this page and change the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will say so rather than expecting anyone to notice.
Contact us
- By email
- info@agudah.si
- By telephone
- (718) 283-4280
- By post
- Agudas Yisroel of Staten Island
46 Birchard Avenue
Staten Island, NY 10314
United States