HVNA Privacy Policy

Last updated October 2026

Who we are

The Hope Valley Neighborhood Association (HVNA) is a 501(c)(3) public charity in Durham, North Carolina. HVNA operates this website, the HVNA Listserv, and the HVNA Bulletin Board. Our mailing address is PO Box 51338, Durham, NC 27717.

What we collect

  • Information you give us. When you request to join an email group, pay dues, make a donation, or contact the Board, we receive what you enter, such as your name, email address, Hope Valley street address, and anything you write in a message or form.
  • Email group messages. When you send a message to the Listserv or the Bulletin Board, we receive the message and the address it came from.
  • Website use. Squarespace, which hosts this site, sets the cookies needed to run it and collects standard visitor information such as IP address, browser type, and pages visited for its built-in analytics. HVNA has not added third-party advertising or analytics trackers.
  • Payments. Dues and donations are processed through Squarespace's checkout and its payment processor. HVNA receives your name, email address, the amount, and any address you provide. HVNA does not receive or store full card numbers.
  • Public records. To confirm residency and keep our membership records accurate, we may compare the information you give us with publicly available records, such as county property records.

How we use it

  • To run the association and its email groups.
  • To confirm Hope Valley residency before adding someone to an email group.
  • To review submitted messages under the published moderation guidelines. We use automated tools, including an AI service, to help review messages. Some routine messages may be approved automatically. Any message that is not approved is reviewed by a person, and moderators can review any message at any time.
  • To respond to your questions and requests.
  • To record dues and donations and send receipts.
  • To keep accurate records of residents, members, and dues. We match the names, email addresses, and street addresses we receive through dues payments, email group requests, and email group messages to Hope Valley addresses.

HVNA does not use your information for advertising and does not sell it. HVNA keeps an internal list of residents and members to run the association. That list is not published or distributed.

Google services

HVNA uses Google Groups to run the email groups and Google's Gmail service, including the Gmail API, to receive and review submitted messages and membership requests. HVNA's use of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Sharing

We share information only with service providers that help us run this site, the email groups, payments, and message review (such as Squarespace, Google, and their payment processors), and only so they can provide those services. The AI service we use to review messages does not use them to train its models. We may also disclose information when the law requires it. A message approved for distribution goes to the members of that group; that is what the groups are for.

Who can see it

Only the board members and moderators who need it can see the information we keep, and their accounts are protected with two-step verification.

How long we keep it

We keep information for as long as it is needed to operate the association and the email groups. Distributed messages remain in the group's archive, which only members can see. Moderators keep a private record of submitted messages and moderation decisions for as long as it is needed to apply the guidelines consistently. Membership, dues, and donation records are kept for as long as they are needed to run the association and keep its financial records, and are seen only by the board members responsible for them.

Your choices

  • You can leave either email group at any time through Google Groups, by emailing the moderator, or through the email groups page.
  • You can ask to see, correct, or delete the information we hold about you by writing to moderator@hvna.org or through the contact page. We will remove you from the email groups and delete your messages and membership information from our records where we can. We may need to keep records of payments and donations for tax and accounting purposes, and we cannot recall messages that were already sent to group members.
  • You can control cookies in your browser settings.

Changes

We will post any changes to this policy on this page and update the date at the top.

Contact

Questions about this policy or about how HVNA handles your information can be sent to moderator@hvna.org, through the contact page at https://www.hvna.org/contact, or by mail to PO Box 51338, Durham, NC 27717.