Privacy Policy
Effective August 10, 2026
This policy explains what information Tree of Life Hollow collects through this website, why we collect it, and what we do with it. We have tried to write it in plain language. If something here is unclear, write to us and ask.
Who we are
Tree of Life Hollow is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in Surry County, Virginia, operating a conservation breeding program for the Choctaw strain of Colonial Spanish Horse. EIN 41-4463357. This website is treeoflifehollow.com. You can reach us at info@treeoflifehollow.com.
We do not publish the farm’s physical address. This is a working farm with livestock on it, and we keep the location private for the animals’ safety and our own. Requests under this policy are handled by email.
Information you give us
Most of what we know about you is what you chose to tell us:
- Contact and inquiry forms. Your name, email address, and whatever you write in the message. Inquiries about placing a horse, volunteering, or partnership may include more detail about your circumstances, because we ask for it.
- Donations. Your name, email address, billing address, and the amount and date of your gift. How we handle donor information is covered separately and in more detail in our Donor Privacy Policy.
- Email list. Your email address, and your name if you give it.
- Comments. If commenting is enabled on a post, the name, email address, and website you enter, plus your IP address and browser user agent, which help us catch spam.
Information collected automatically
Our web host keeps standard server logs — IP address, browser type, pages requested, timestamps — which are used for security and troubleshooting. The site sets functional cookies for things like login sessions and comment convenience. If you have an account here, a login cookie lasts two days, or two weeks if you check “remember me.”
Payment information
Donations are processed by Stripe. Your card number never reaches our servers and we never see or store it. Stripe handles that data under its own privacy policy, which you can read at stripe.com. What we receive is your name, email, billing address, and the amount and date of the gift.
Email list
Our mailing list is managed through a third-party email service, which stores your address and records whether messages were opened. If you subscribed, it is because you asked to. If you gave, we will email you as well — your receipt, our thanks, the annual February report, and news about the horses your gift supports. That is part of giving here, not a separate transaction.
Every message includes an unsubscribe link that works immediately, and we honor it. Unsubscribing from updates never affects your receipts or year-end tax documentation — those are records you are entitled to, and we will keep sending them.
Advertising on blog pages
Some of our writing channels carry third-party advertising. Ad networks, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. You can opt out of personalized Google advertising through Google’s Ads Settings. We do not place advertising on horse profiles, conservation pages, or donation pages, and we do not share any information you give us directly with advertisers.
Embedded content and media
Posts may include embedded content from other sites — video, images, articles. Embedded content behaves as though you had visited that other site directly, and those sites may set their own cookies and collect their own data. If you upload an image to this site, be aware that images can carry embedded location data.
How we use what we collect
- To answer you when you write to us
- To process donations, issue receipts, and keep the records a nonprofit is required to keep
- To send the annual February report and other updates, if you have asked for them
- To evaluate placement, volunteer, and partnership inquiries
- To keep the site running and secure
Who we share it with
We do not sell your personal information.
We share it with the service providers who make the site work — our web host, payment processor, email service, and spam filtering — and only to the extent they need it to do that job. We will disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect the safety of a person or an animal.
Donor information is governed by our Donor Privacy Policy, which describes one additional circumstance — participation in a nonprofit cooperative database — in full, along with how to opt out of it permanently. If you have donated, read that page too.
How long we keep it
Donation records are kept as long as required for tax, audit, and reporting purposes. Correspondence is kept as long as it is useful — a placement inquiry from four years ago may be exactly what we need when a horse becomes available. Comments and their metadata are retained indefinitely so follow-up comments can be approved automatically. You can ask us to delete anything we are not legally obliged to keep.
Your choices
- Ask what information we hold about you, and receive a copy
- Ask us to correct anything that is wrong
- Ask us to delete what we are not required to keep
- Unsubscribe from email at any time, from any message
- Opt out permanently of any donor list sharing — see the Donor Privacy Policy
Write to info@treeoflifehollow.com. We are two people and a herd, not a call center, but we will answer.
Children
This site is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under thirteen. If you believe a child has sent us information, write to us and we will delete it.
Security
The site runs over an encrypted connection and payment data is handled entirely by our processor. We take reasonable measures to protect what we hold, and we will not pretend that any organization our size can promise perfect security. What we can promise is that we collect as little as possible in the first place.
Changes to this policy
We will update the effective date above when this changes. If a change materially affects how we handle donor information — particularly anything involving sharing it outside the organization — we will say so plainly on this site and in the February report before it takes effect, and we will honor any opt-out already on file rather than asking you to renew it.
Questions about this policy: info@treeoflifehollow.com · See also our Donor Privacy Policy