Your Donors' Data: A Frank Conversation

By Ala Abu Alkheir, Founder of Thermo.Live

I want to talk about something that most fundraising software companies avoid.

Donor data.

Not in a marketing way. In a frank, direct way. Because it came up in a real conversation with a real organization after a real fundraising event. The feedback was something like: "We love the thermometer. But we're not sure we're comfortable with donor contact information going through a third-party system."

That's a fair concern. And I think it deserves a real answer.

Why Collecting Donor Data Digitally Actually Matters

Let me start by being honest about the value, because there is genuine value, and I don't want to dance around it.

A pledge is a promise, not a payment.

When someone raises their hand at a dinner and says "I'll give $500," that's the beginning of a transaction, not the end. The money arrives by cheque in the mail, by e-Transfer the next morning, or sometimes not at all. The organizations that close the most pledges are the ones that follow up quickly, personally, and with the right information in hand.

If all you captured was the amount, you've lost the relationship. You don't know who gave. You can't thank them personally. You can't call them. You can't invite them back next year.

Historically, charities solved this with paper forms passed through the crowd. Those forms then had to be manually keyed into Excel at midnight, with handwriting that may or may not be legible. Names misspelt. Phone numbers transposed. Emails missing.

Digital collection changes this entirely. By the time your event ends, you have a clean, exportable list of every donor: name, email, phone, amount, payment method. Ready for a thank-you call the next morning. That's not a nice-to-have. For organizations raising $50,000-$500,000 in a single evening, it can be the difference between 60% collection and 90%.

The Legitimate Concern

Now let me be equally direct about the other side.

Organizations are right to be cautious about where donor data lives. Their donors didn't agree to hand their information to a software company. They gave it to the charity they trust. That trust is not automatically transferable.

There are also real risks. Third-party platforms can be breached. Employees can access data they shouldn't. Companies get acquired and their data policies change overnight. And in some communities, charitable giving is private. People expect it to stay that way.

These aren't paranoid concerns. They're reasonable ones.

What Thermo.Live Does (and Doesn't Do) With Donor Data

Here is my commitment to every organization using Thermo.Live, in plain language:

• We do not sell donor data. Not to anyone, not ever. Your donors are your donors.
• We do not market to your donors. We don't email them, retarget them, or contact them in any way.
• We do not use donor data to train AI models or for any internal analytics beyond what you can see in your own dashboard.
• You own the data. You can export it as a CSV at any time. You can delete individual donations, or your entire campaign. When you delete it, it is gone.
• We know where it's stored. Thermo.Live stores data in Supabase, hosted on enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure. Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest.
• We will sign a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) upon request. This is a formal commitment that specifies exactly how we handle your data.

Anonymous Mode: When You'd Rather Not Collect It At All

We also built a feature specifically for organizations that don't want to collect donor PII through us, even with all of the above guarantees.

It's called Anonymous Mode.

When enabled, the public pledge form and QR code are turned off entirely. Volunteers log donation amounts and payment channels, but no names, emails, or phone numbers are stored. The live thermometer still works. Real-time totals still update. Your team can still see momentum build in the room.

You keep the benefit of the live thermometer without any donor data passing through our system.

I'll be honest: Anonymous Mode is a trade-off. You lose the follow-up capability that turns pledges into collected donations. But for some organizations, that trade-off makes sense. Privacy concerns outweigh the follow-up value, and that's a legitimate call to make. We think of it as a trust on-ramp. Start with Anonymous Mode, build confidence in the platform, and decide later whether to unlock the full feature set.

Where We're Going

A blog post is not a legal document. So here is what we're working towards to back up everything above:

• Data Processing Agreement (DPA): publicly available and accepted at account creation. Organizations that need a countersigned copy for their own records can request one by email.
• Explicit data retention limits: data shouldn't sit in our system longer than you need it.
• Canadian data residency: we're evaluating infrastructure options to keep Canadian donor data in Canada.

The Bottom Line

Digital donor collection is valuable. The follow-up capability it enables directly affects how much money your organization collects and retains. I believe that strongly.

But your donors trusted you. Not us. We intend to honour that.

If you have questions, or want to request a DPA before going live with Thermo.Live, email me directly at ala@thermo.live. I will respond personally.