Privacy Notice

The Found Church Men's Ministry App · Version 1.8 · Last updated 20 September 2026

Who we are

Fearless is the men's ministry app of Found Church. Found Church is the data controller — we decide how and why your information is used, and we're responsible for looking after it.

The app is built and hosted on our behalf by Courageous Design, who act as our data processor under a written agreement and may only use your data on our instructions.

If you have any questions about your data, contact us at the church office.

The short version

• We use Fearless to help the men of our church connect, meet up, and support one another.
• You choose what to share. Most of your profile can be set private or hidden item-by-item.
• We don't sell your data or share it outside the church for marketing.
• Some information (like being part of a church men's ministry) is treated as sensitive and given extra care.
• A small number of church leaders may see who hasn't been around for a while, so someone can check in. They never see your private messages, journal or notes.
• You can delete your account yourself from Settings, and ask to see, correct or download your data at any time.

What information we hold

Depending on how you use the app, we may hold:

• Your account — name, username, email address, and a securely hashed password. We can never see your actual password. If you register yourself, a church admin may check your details before your account is switched on.
• Your profile — an optional photo, a short bio, and the interests and skills you choose to add. You can mark each of these public or private.
• Your contact details — your email address, and a mobile number if you add one. Both are hidden from the other guys unless you tap the eye beside them to share. A shared detail appears on your profile; a shared number also lets the guys you are meeting message you on WhatsApp. You can hide or remove either at any time, on your profile under Contact details.
• Your groups — the Life Group or Church Team you belong to (set by a church admin).
• Meet-ups and events — the get-togethers you suggest, accept or vote on, including activity, place and time, and the church events you mark “I’ve got my ticket” for.
• Meet-up photos (optional) — pictures added to a meet-up by the men who went, and whether the person adding them chose to share them on Home. A photo can show other people as well as the one who added it. See “Meet-up photos” below.
• Conversations — messages you send in group chats and private one-to-one messages, plus any pictures you attach to them, and reactions and @mentions. A picture is held on exactly the same terms as the message it is on: it is shown only to the people who can read that message, it can only be fetched by someone signed in and in that chat, and it goes when the message goes. We shrink every picture and strip hidden details such as where it was taken.
• Prayer requests (optional) — what you ask for prayer for, who you chose to send it to, and whether you asked for your name to be hidden. See “Prayer requests” below.
• Journal (optional) — private personal or spiritual notes. These are encrypted, so they can't be read from the raw database.
• Private notes and Alongside (optional) — notes you keep about a meet-up or another man, and a private list of men you want to get to know or support. Only you can see these; notes are encrypted.
• Book recommendations (optional) — a book you put forward and what you say about it, or a thumbs up you give someone else's. What you write is shown to the other guys with your name beside it, and the book appears on your profile, unless you mark it Only me. See “Book recommendations” below.
• The Share Shed (optional) — anything you put up to give away or ask to borrow: what it is, what you write about it, any photos of the item, and who answered it. If you lend something, we also hold the date it changed hands, the date it came back and any reminders you sent. See “The Share Shed” below.
• Notifications — what the app has told you about, and how you like to be told (in the app, by email, or as a phone notification). If you switch on phone notifications, we store the delivery address your device gives us and which browser it is.
• Suggestions — we suggest interests you might like, based on the interests you and others have picked. You can ignore or dismiss them.
• App usage — when you last used the app, which pages you open and what you use (for example, posting a message). Leaders see this in overall reports, and it is also how the app spots men who haven't been around for a while (see below).
• Bug reports and suggestions you send us — your name, what you wrote, and for bug reports basic details about your device and any screenshots you attach.
• Help questions (optional) — if you use the Ask box on the Help page, the question you type is sent to an AI service to answer (see Anthropic, below). We don't keep your question: we only note that a question was asked and whether our help notes covered it.
• Your consent — a record of which version of this notice you agreed to, and when.

We do not intend to hold data about anyone under 18.

Why we use it, and our legal basis

Under UK data protection law (UK GDPR) we must have a lawful basis for using your information.

• To run the ministry app and connect our men — our basis is your consent, given when you first use the app. You can withdraw it at any time by deleting your account.
• Because being part of a church men's ministry reveals religious belief (treated as "special category" data), we also rely on the condition for a not-for-profit body with a religious aim processing its members' data (UK GDPR Article 9(2)(d)) — and, for optional features like the Journal, your explicit consent.
• To care for the group (spotting men who may have drifted away) — our legitimate interest as a church in looking out for one another.
• To keep the app secure and working (login, anti-abuse, fixing bugs) — our legitimate interest in protecting members and the service.

You are never required to use the optional features (Journal, private notes, Alongside, book recommendations, private messaging, email or phone notifications, the Ask box on the Help page). They're there if you want them.

Looking out for one another

Church leaders chosen to care for the ministry can see a short list of men who haven't used the app for a couple of weeks, who keep suggesting meet-ups that don't happen, or who joined but haven't got started. The point is simply that someone says hello. A leader can note that they've been in touch, so two people don't both call.

This list is worked out only from whether and how you use the app — never from what you write. Leaders cannot read your Journal, your private notes or your private messages, and there is no score or ranking of anyone.

Who we share it with

We share your information only where needed to run the app:

• Other men in the ministry — see only what your privacy settings allow. If you set your profile private, only your name is shown.
• Church-appointed leaders and administrators — can manage accounts, see overall reports and the "looking out for one another" list above. They cannot read your Journal, notes or private messages.
• ChurchSuite — our church membership system. If enabled, Fearless keeps your name and email in step with ChurchSuite (the church's main record). This only happens after you've signed up and consented. Church event listings from ChurchSuite may be shown in the app; these contain no personal member data.
• Courageous Design — our developer, who hosts the app and receives the bug reports and suggestions you send.
• Our hosting and email providers — who store the data and send emails on our behalf.
• Google — when you set up a meet-up, the place search is provided by Google Maps, so Google receives your device's internet address and anything you type into that search. Google may process this outside the UK.
• Phone notification services — if you switch on phone notifications, they are delivered through your browser's own service (Google, Apple or Mozilla). The message itself is encrypted, so they can't read it.
• Anthropic (Claude) — an AI service, used in two ways. Our admins use it to help write interest descriptions, tidy up duplicate interests, and draft the summary of a recommended book; only interest names and descriptions, or a book's title and author, are sent — never anything about you, and never what you wrote about the book. And if you use the Ask box on the Help page, the question you type is sent to it, so it can answer from our help notes. It is not sent your name, your account or anything else about you — only what you type, so please leave out personal details. Anthropic is based in the US, so your question is processed there. Under its terms for businesses it does not use what we send to train its AI, and it deletes it after a short period.

We do not sell your data or share it with advertisers, and we do not share it outside the church without your consent.

Meet-up photos

After a meet-up has happened, the men who went can add up to six photos to it. By default they are seen only by the men that meet-up was for. We shrink every photo and strip hidden details such as where it was taken.

When adding photos you can tick a box to share them on Home, where everyone signed in here can see them. That box is never ticked for you — ticking it is you telling us that everyone in the photo is happy for the rest of the guys to see it. Leave it alone and the photo stays with the men who were there. Photos are never public outside the app, never shown to anyone outside your part of it, and never shared with anyone else.

• Only add a photo if everyone in it is happy to be in it, and never one of a child or of anyone who isn't part of the ministry without their say-so. Only tick the sharing box if you have actually asked them.
• Photos added before 20 September 2026 are not on Home. They stay with the men that meet-up was for, which is what was promised when they were added.
• If you're in a photo you don't want there, you can take it down yourself from the meet-up page if you went. If you didn't, ask the person who added it, or contact us and we'll take it down.
• Our legal basis is legitimate interest: helping the ministry share the good times that bring men together, balanced by the limits above.

Prayer requests

In the Prayer room you can post a request and choose who sees it — everyone signed in here, or just one of the groups you belong to. Only the guys you choose can see it, only they are told about it, and it only appears on their Home page. Nobody else sees it anywhere in the app.

A prayer request may say something about your health, your family or your faith. That is a more sensitive kind of information than most of what this app holds, so we are clear about how it is handled: you decide whether to write it at all, you decide who sees it, and you can ask us to remove it at any time.

• You can ask anonymously. Tick the box and your request shows as Someone — to the other guys and to the leaders alike. Nobody in the app is shown who asked.
• Anonymous means anonymous in the app, not in the database. Our system still records which account posted an anonymous request, so that a request can be removed if it needs to be. It is not used to tell anyone who you are and it is never shown in the app, but we would rather say so plainly than let you assume otherwise. If that matters to you, please don't write anything you wouldn't want an administrator of this app to be able to connect to you.
• Replying to a request, or tapping the praying hands, is not anonymous — your name is shown, as it is everywhere else in the app.
• Our legal basis is legitimate interest: this is a church ministry and praying for one another is what it is for. Where a request reveals something about your health or your beliefs, we rely on the rule that lets a church handle its own members' information for its own religious purposes, and it is never shared outside the guys you chose.
• A prayer request is deleted with your account, along with everything else you have written.

Signing yourself up

You can create your own account rather than waiting for one of the team to make one for you. We ask for your name, email address and a password, and we ask you to agree to this notice. Because being part of a church ministry says something about your religious beliefs, that agreement is your explicit consent (UK GDPR Article 9(2)(a)), and you can withdraw it at any time by deleting your account in Settings.

• Nothing is set up until you confirm your email. We send a link to the address you gave, and the account only becomes real when you tap it. So if somebody types your address in — by mistake or otherwise — they cannot make an account in your name.
• Unconfirmed sign-ups are deleted within three days, automatically. If the link is never tapped, nothing about that person is kept.
• If your email matches someone we already know at Found through ChurchSuite, you go straight in once you've confirmed it.
• If it doesn't match, your sign-up waits for one of the team to look at it, and we'll email you when your account is open. If they decide not to open it, your name and email are deleted — we don't keep a list of people we've turned away.
• We never tell anyone whether a given email address already has an account, because that would reveal who is part of this ministry. If someone tries to sign up with an address that's already in use, we email the person who owns it instead.

Book recommendations

You can put a book forward and say a few words about why it mattered to you. What you write is shown to the other guys with your name beside it, and the book is added to your profile — unless you mark it Only me, in which case you are the only one who sees it. You can change your mind either way, edit what you wrote, or remove it altogether, at any time.

Before a book appears, an admin completes it with a summary and a cover picture. We fetch the cover ourselves and keep our own copy, so your device never contacts the book site and nothing about you is sent there — only the book's title. The links to shops are ordinary search links: we earn nothing from them, and no one is told you tapped one.

An admin can take down something you wrote while leaving the book itself up. If that happens you'll still see your own words, marked as hidden.

The Share Shed

The Share Shed is where you can pass on something you no longer need, or ask whether anyone has something you could borrow. Nothing is bought or sold — there are no prices and no payments in the app, and whatever you arrange is between the two of you. Fearless and the church are not part of it.

Anything you put up can be seen by everyone signed in to your part of the app. Photos are of the item, not of people — and as everywhere else in the app we shrink them and strip hidden details such as where the picture was taken, which matters when it was taken in your own garage.

If you borrow something, who knows? Only the two of you. The app records who has what and since when so the pair of you can keep track of it, and that record appears nowhere else: not on your profile, not as a number, not in anything the leaders see, and not in any report. It is not a score, and nobody is keeping one.

Reminders are only ever sent by the person who lent the thing, when he chooses to send one. Nothing is automatic and nothing is scheduled: he sees the words first and can change them, and the app will send at most one a week and three in all before it stops offering. If a loan is left untouched for three months the app stops raising it at all, so nothing hangs over anyone indefinitely.

Private messages and safeguarding

Fearless lets men message one another privately. These messages are private and are not routinely monitored. However, as a church we take safeguarding seriously: if there is a concern about someone's safety, or a report is made, appropriate church leaders may need to look into it in line with our safeguarding policy. Please treat one another with the same respect and care you would in person.

How we keep it safe

• Your Journal and private notes are encrypted, and passwords are stored only as secure hashes.
• Access to the live system is limited to our developer and church-appointed administrators.
• We use standard protections against common web attacks, secure sign-in, and encrypted email.
• We keep the amount of data we hold to what the ministry genuinely needs.

How long we keep it

• While you're part of the ministry, we keep your account and content so the app works for you.
• If you leave (or are removed from the ministry list in ChurchSuite), your account is hidden, and then reviewed for deletion after 12 months.
• You can delete your own Journal entries and notes at any time, and delete your whole account yourself from Settings. That permanently removes your profile, messages and everything else linked to you.
• Two things are kept without your name: app usage records (so overall reports still add up), and a note of which version of this notice was agreed and when, kept for 6 years as evidence that we handled data lawfully.
• Meet-up photos stay with the meet-up until the person who added them or someone who went takes them down, we remove them on request, or the account of the person who added them is deleted.
• Share Shed listings stop being shown after 60 days (things going free) or 21 days (things you've asked for), and you can put them back up. They are deleted with your account, along with their photos.
• Bug reports and suggestions you've sent are kept by our developer until they're dealt with. Ask us if you'd like yours removed.
• Questions typed into the Help page's Ask box are not kept by us at all. Anthropic keeps them briefly under its own terms, then deletes them.
• A sign-up that is never confirmed by email is deleted within three days. A sign-up the team decides not to approve is deleted at that point.

Your rights

You have the right to:

• See the data we hold about you — including anything a leader has noted about checking in with you.
• Correct anything that's wrong.
• Delete your account and data ("right to be forgotten") — you can do this yourself in Settings.
• Download a copy of your data.
• Object to or restrict certain uses (including being included in the "looking out for one another" list), and withdraw consent at any time.

To exercise any of these, contact the church office. We'll respond within one month. Withdrawing consent or deleting your account won't affect anything we did lawfully beforehand.

Cookies and app usage

Fearless uses a single essential cookie to keep you logged in — no advertising or tracking cookies. The app stores its own files on your device so it loads quickly and works as an app. Everything the app needs is served from our own site, except Google Maps, which loads only when you set up a meet-up. We record in-app usage (like page visits and last login) as described above — never sold, and never used for advertising.

Complaints

We'd always rather hear from you first — please contact the church office and we'll do our best to put things right. You also have the right to complain to the UK's data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) — ico.org.uk, helpline 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this notice

If we make significant changes, we'll let you know in the app and ask you to agree to the updated notice, showing you just what's changed. The version and date at the top show the current edition.

Version 1.8 · 20 September 2026

• You can now post a prayer request in the Prayer room, and choose who sees it — everyone here, or just one of your groups. Only the people you choose can see it, and only they get told about it.
• You can post a request anonymously. Nobody in the app is shown your name — not the others, not the leaders. We do still store which account wrote it, so that a request can be taken down if it needs to be; we do not use it to tell anyone who you are.
• A prayer request appears on the Home page of the people you sent it to, alongside everything else there.

Version 1.7 · 20 September 2026

• A photo from a meet-up can now be shared on Home, where everyone here can see it. It only happens if the person adding it ticks a box to say everyone in the photo is happy with that — otherwise it stays with the people the meet-up was for, as before.
• Photos added before this change are not affected. They stay with the people the meet-up was for.
• Anyone who was at the meet-up, and whoever added the photo, can still take it down at any time — and that removes it from Home too.

Version 1.6 · 20 September 2026

• You can now recommend a book. What you write is shown to the others with your name beside it, and the book goes on your profile — unless you mark it Only me.
• We fetch the cover picture ourselves and keep our own copy, so your device never contacts the book site. The shop links are ordinary searches and we earn nothing from them.
• Our admins can use Claude to draft a book’s summary. Only the title and author are sent — never your name, and never what you wrote about it.

Version 1.5 · 20 September 2026

• You can now sign yourself up rather than waiting for one of the team to make your account. We send a link to your email address, and nothing is set up until you tap it.
• If a sign-up is never confirmed, we delete it within three days — so if somebody types your address in by mistake, nothing about you is kept.
• If we can’t match you to someone we already know at Found, your sign-up waits for one of the team to look at it. If they decide not to open the account, your name and email are deleted.

Version 1.4 · 19 September 2026

• You can now add photos to a meet-up you went to. Only the people that meet-up was for can see them, and anyone in a photo who went can take it down. Please only add a photo if everyone in it is happy to be in it.

Version 1.3 · 19 September 2026

• When you tap “I’ve got my ticket” on a church event, we keep a note of that, so the event stops being pinned to the top of your Home. It’s deleted with your account.

Version 1.2 · 18 September 2026

• The optional Ask box on the Help page is answered by Claude, an AI from Anthropic. Only the question you type is sent — never your name or account details.

Version 1.1 · 15 September 2026

• We’re clearer that a few church leaders can see a named list of who hasn’t been around for a while, so someone can say hello.
• We’ve added the newer parts of the app: signing yourself up, deleting your own account, email and phone notifications, private notes, Alongside, interest suggestions, reactions and mentions, and bug reports with screenshots.
• We’ve named the outside services involved: Google Maps for place search, the phone notification services, and Anthropic.
• We explain what’s kept after an account is deleted: unnamed usage records, and a note of which version of this notice was agreed.

‹ Back to Fearless