Terms of Service
Policies and Important Information
TERMS OF SERVICE
Charitable Gifts and Donations:
Thank you for choosing to donate to Robin’s™ Nest Global C.H.I.L.D Canada (RNGC). We are a charity recognized by the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA), which regulates registered charities in Canada. Our business name is registered and we are a recognized receiptable organization. See our RNGC certification with the CRA. We appreciate your kind donation and partnership in our quest to help those less fortunate than ourselves who live in developing countries. By donating to RNGC, you are agreeing to the referred policies due to the charitable nature of donations.
These pages outline our service commitment to you, with respect to our policies revolving around donations, privacy, refunds, responsibilities, contact information, and automatic contribution arrangements made between RNGC and you. It likewise explains your rights and your responsibilities in relation to these arrangements and where you can go for help.
Donations to charities by nature are considered an unconditional voluntary gift, entrusting the charity to do with the money as they see best. The word “charity” in Latin is caritas, and when translated into Greek, is Agape, meaning unconditional love of all and persists regardless of circumstances. Wikipedia also defines Agape as “the highest form of love, charity” and “the love of God for man and of man for God”.
According to the CRA, to be considered a gift and qualify for a tax receipt for a donation to a qualified donee, your donation must be made voluntarily, be personal property, not be directed to a specific person or non-qualified donee, and the organization can determine the eligible amount of your gift.
The CRA explains that, when a donor receives an advantage in return for a donation, all or part of the donation may no longer qualify as a gift. Examples of advantages include a ticket to an event, the use of property, a dinner, or a performance at a fundraising event. For further information about acceptable types of tax-deductible gifts, please see the CRA website at https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/charities-giving/charities/operating-a-registered-charity/receiving-gifts/what-a-gift.html
*Please read this document thoroughly. For further enquiries about your contribution, please contact our RNGC Financial Officer by emailing robinsnestcanada@gmail.com.
Electronic Bank Transactions:
If you choose to donate directly to our Robin’s Nest Global C.H.I.L.D. Canada bank account at Scotiabank using the above email address, rather than the CanadaHelps platform, we will send you a tax receipt upon your request to robinsnestcanada@gmail.com. Occasionally, people prefer to remain anonymous, use a pseudonym, or do not require a tax receipt. Otherwise, email us detailing the amount of funds donated, the date your donation was made, your full name, and your return email address, or if you have no email address, include your postal address so we can send your tax receipt to you. If you prefer to make your contributions by cheque or by money order, to save time and gain more efficiency to get more funds to the children, consider making contributions three, six, or even 12 months at a time, and make them out to Robin’s Nest Global C.H.I.L.D. Canada, then post them to 842 Frankford Rd, Quinte West, ON K0K 2B0.
CanadaHelps Contributions:
Making automatic financial contributions on this platform via credit card or direct debit is a safe, quick, and cost-effective option. This process saves us a considerable amount on merchant fees and administration, leaving more funds to send overseas to help the children and their communities where the money is needed most. The amount is directly deposited into the RNGC account.
Through CanadaHelps, you can arrange to have your bank account debited directly at a frequency that suits you, such as monthly, quarterly, biannually, or annually. You can also use this platform for regular and one-off donations using your debit or credit card (MasterCard, Visa & American Express).
Of course, any donation will help further our cause. Of special note, it certainly allows us to work more effectively within our budget if, when sponsoring a child, you consider setting up an automatic monthly recurring payment, either through your bank or directly on the CanadaHelps platform, so we can act confidently and move forward financially to meet the needs of the children.
Purpose of your donation:
RNGC will always aim to honour the agreed purpose of any donation that you write on the donation form. However, we need ultimate unconditional discretion to redirect the donation if the purpose has been served, to be either passed over to further that project or the next similar need. For example, if you donated money to put toward a clean water well™, and there are funds left over, then those funds would normally be used for related issues revolving around that project, such as transportation to move the water pump to the required location, or for containers to hold water for the community, or put toward the next well that will be established. You can be sure your funds will be used responsibly where needed most.
Inquiries:
Please direct all donation enquiries to RNGC, and not to our service provider. Make inquiries at least five (5) business days before the next scheduled withdrawal date. All communication addressed to us should include your full name. All of your personal information held by us will remain confidential, except for the information provided to our financial institution to start the preauthorized withdrawals from your designated account.
Our Commitment to You:
In terms of the automatic contribution arrangement made between us and approved by you, CanadaHelps undertakes to debit your designated account for the agreed amount for your support of RNGC. When a customer enters their details, CanadaHelps will ask them to authenticate these and, once they do, it will set up a regular donation through the page where, on their specified date, the system will charge their card or bank account. The amount is directly deposited into our RNGC bank account and does not go through CanadaHelps’ account.
Withdrawal Arrangements:
The debit under this automatic contribution arrangement for credit cards will occur on the dates you first specify.
Changes to the Arrangement:
If you want to make any changes to your withdrawal arrangements, contact us at least five (5) business days before the next scheduled withdrawal date. Changes may include deferring the debit, altering the schedule, stopping an individual debit, suspending the automatic contribution, changing account details, or cancelling the automatic contribution completely.
Refund Policy:
Due to the nature of charitable giving, refunds will be returned at the discretion of our RNGC directors and reviewed on an individual basis. All donations are gifts made voluntarily to RNGC Canada, registered with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Donors will receive a tax receipt from either CanadaHelps at the time of the donation, or to their preferred email or mailing address, before February 28th of the following year. If RNGC refunds a donation, the associated tax receipt is no longer valid and should be securely destroyed. Please note that it is your responsibility to give only correct receipts to the CRA and notify them of any changes to your donation or contribution.
Due to the CRA’s restrictions and processes around donations that RNGC receives, and because Robins Nest Global C.H.I.L.D. is a charity that regularly remits funds overseas to international programs, we are under no obligation to offer refunds. Nonetheless, decisions on refunds will be at the discretion of the RNGC Canada’s directors.
Please make sure that the amount you enter is the amount you wish to give. In the event of an incorrect amount being entered, or if the donation is made accidentally, or if there is any other extremely unusual circumstance, please contact us in writing within 24 hours so we can act quickly on your behalf, so others will not be affected. We will review your request as soon as possible, and you can expect a response within five (5) working days. If you receive a refund from us, the associated tax receipt is no longer truthful (factual), so you must shred the receipt. Please note that once a donor receives a tax receipt rebate from the CRA, it is unlawful for us to refund any donation.
In cases where you suspect an unknown party defrauded (scammed) you, contact your bank at once, and notify RNGC through email asap so that we may quickly warn our other supporters. Your bank will report the incident to the police if they were able to collect from you any concrete evidence, such as emails or letters of where the fraud originated. Banks could potentially rebate your money if you have been able to give them emails and any other pertinent evidence regarding the fraud. *Please note that it is your responsibility in cases of fraud to contact your bank first, as it is the bank that investigates illegal activities of financial transactions.
Why is a prompt response needed to receive an approved refund?
You must contact us within 24 hours for any approved refunds, as we normally send funds overseas at once for greater accountability and because we are a not-for-profit organization. Working quickly perfects our ability to maximize our help to children overseas. As part of safeguarding public money entrusted to us, and since we are a not-for-profit organization, we require our overseas staff to spend the transferred money as soon as possible to ensure spending on the intended purpose of each month’s tightly pre-approved budget.
This quick turnover of money-handling practice is also to ensure we can collect all our overseas receipts, giving them less time to get lost, and so your donation is not sitting around on the overseas premises for too long, offering more chances to be unassumingly pilfered, lost, or stolen. In fact, we also work closely with our bank managers in Kenya, who pay our school fees, wages, grocery bills, and medical expenses, and our staff pays cash for necessary items such as food at the farmers’ markets, airtime, and transportation on the same day that our funds arrive in Kenya. Therefore, we find that working quickly and efficiently like this gives us reassurance and accountability that our staff dispatches our partners’ funds for the intended purpose of our activities in the most responsible way possible.
Further reasons why it is difficult to retrieve funds once they have gone overseas are due to the nature of the citizens’ harsh lifestyle we support. Their life is typically so distraught that there is a real possibility that the available funds can mean whether a child survives or not. Furthermore, if school fees are not paid on time, our children can be sent home from school. It is unnatural, according to their culture, to refund the money once it is voluntarily handed over, especially to pay a school, hospital, rent, school uniforms, health insurance, water bills, grocery store, and food or clothing in the markets. So, in fact, once your funds leave this country to be spent in a developing country, it is unfortunately next to impossible for us to retrieve that money. Often, in less than a week, your funds could very well be on their way to making the needed difference on the other side of the earth, and it is then out of our hands.
Additional reasons for it not being possible for charities to return your funds once gifted are because we could never ask a vulnerable child or an impoverished community for the money back, as due to incomprehensible needs, it would have already been spent and would be inhumane to ask for it back, as the discouragement for a child or the village would be unbearable and damaging to their wellbeing and thus counterproductive to our purpose. The request would also ruin the reputation of our local organization, so that they may never be trusted or welcome to help their children in the community again.
Refunding Costs:
If our service provider cannot refund the money and the donation is from our bank, it is expensive for us to refund money, as we need to pay our contracted accountant to do all the investigating and transferring any pending money back to the donor. All our books are audited, and we send our returns annually to the CRA. All donations must be recorded with a proper paper trail. In this case, we will need to ask you to help us out with those expenses, as we are a small organization, and even then, there may not be enough funds in our account. The cost of resolving a funds transfer can be equal to or greater than $70.00, depending on the complexity and how time-consuming the issues are to resolve the rebate needed.
As you donate, we try to make it as easy as possible to save time for you by only asking for your email address at the time of your donation. If the email address has not been recorded correctly, or has changed, or there’s an error with your transaction, we hope that you use other means for us to contact you, like adding your phone number or postal address, in case we must contact you directly to alert you to an issue with your refund or bank account details.
Sponsorship Cancelation:
Monthly sponsorship can be cancelled at any time. Sponsorships are normally non-refundable, but if you have made an error in your membership selection or have changed your mind about joining RNGC, it is your responsibility to contact us to stop your preauthorized payments. Otherwise, we are working under the premise that you are still sponsoring the child, thus draining our public funds unnecessarily, while during that time, we could have been searching for another sponsor to cover those costs or helping another child.
We ask that you let us know at least 3 months before stopping any committed monthly sponsorship to give us time to adjust our monthly pre-approved budgets and to source another committed sponsor for your child; otherwise, our charity will experience financial strain to keep your nominated project running or to keep that child in school, fed, and given clean water.
Privacy Policy
Use and disclosure of personal information:
RNGC respects and appreciates the privacy of all individuals, companies, and community organizations who donate money and/or goods in support of our work. Personal information gathered through donations is entered into a secure database for direct receipting and for communication purposes between you and us.
Only under certain circumstances could your personal information be shown to bonded, certified, and secure external service providers engaged by RNGC to fulfill their service obligations to the firm. IT service providers who aid in managing servers, platforms, research, and networks may need to access client data to support our servers, platforms, and networks. For example, your personal contact and ID information may need to be integrated into an approved exterior system owned by an exterior provider to make this payment gateway convenient and available for you.
Where personal information is shown to a certified and approved external third party, RNGC Canada always takes steps to ensure that the external party treats such information confidentially and follows the PIPEDA Act 2000. At no time do we approve the use of your data overseas, except if you are fully aware, or if we need to outsource certified, bonded, and reputable companies to partner in our work. If you suspect any misuse of your personal details entrusted to us, please let us know at once so we may partner with you to rectify the situation. This will stop further misuse or mistakes quickly so that no other partners, including RNGC Canada, will be adversely affected. We appreciate knowing if errors have been made so we may make the necessary adjustments. Normally, even the use of a sponsor’s name is not disclosed to a sponsored child or Action Project. We use the generic word “sponsor” for your protection, and in case sponsors change from time to time, to avoid hurting a child in any way, as they get attached to their sponsors, reading their letters over and over, as these letters are sometimes the only hope a child holds for a brighter future.
We will keep your personal information protected, confidential, and treated as sensitive information. Therefore, we will never reveal, give, or sell your information that you have entrusted to us to any organization or person without your full knowledge and permission. RNGC takes assertive action to ensure your personal information is protected from unauthorised access, exposure, loss, misuse, disclosure, or alteration. We take measures to remove personal information from our databases when it is no longer needed, or if we need to de-identify or re-designate under certain circumstances, like if a sponsor wants a newsletter but not a direct marketing appeal, or prefers no correspondence whatsoever, but to continue to give anonymously.
Generally, you have no obligation to provide any information that we request. However, without this information, we may not be able to provide you with your tax receipts or finalize your credit card transaction, update you on how your money has made a difference in lives, or send you a prize or gift if you win an occasional competition. The Canadian government requires us to maintain a complete, current, and accurate database. For our financial accountability to you, it is the best business practice for us to store all contact details in case we are audited and the CRA asks where our funds are from, requiring a paper trail. It also allows us to give you superior services in cases such as a special Christmas event or a Child Christmas present appeal, or if there have been any electronic errors in your transaction.
Access to your personal information:
If you need to update your personal information or have access to your personal information for any reason, please email RNGC bookkeeping to make those arrangements at robinsnestcanada@gmail.com so we may help you make any necessary changes. Your personal details are your property, and we respect that. There may be times we will use your comments and reviews for the limited purpose of promoting our project in helping oppressed children and their communities.
Automated Analysis Systems:
From time to time, Automated Analysis Systems, such as cookies, may be used through technology by our service provider only for marketing purposes and are not used directly by RNGC. If you notice a pop-up indicating that ‘Cookies’ are being used, you will always have an option to decline this option. Cookies, in our case, are anonymous and do not identify you. Please know that your name is never attached to the information upon collection, and cannot take any info from your own hard drive, so it is a safe marketing tool to use. They are strictly used to collect data to improve their service performance for visitor traffic to their clients’ sites. Cookies, automated systems, and algorithms are an effective way for our service provider to create new features and functionalities that will determine the success of their websites and marketing campaigns. Automated systems also check for spam, malware, and illegal content. It can also help to organize related photos and personalize ads for the convenience of all parties. This process of collecting marketing data similarly helps RNGC to be better stewards of the donations that are gifted to us by determining our online effectiveness. The analysis normally takes place as content is sent, received, and stored, but rest assured that you can turn it off at any time in your Ads Settings, and you are free to decline cookie pop-ups. In turn, your voluntary participation helps us increase our personal service to you, and keep our expenses low so we can send more money to the entitled children where it belongs.
Privacy Act:
Personal data that is given or obtained by RNGC is handled sensitively, securely, and in accordance with PIPEDA, which sets out rules for how businesses can collect, use, and disclose personal information for commercial purposes. You may read about PIPEDA in depth by clicking on gc.ca.
Declining a donation:
RNGC reserves ultimate discretion to decline a donation. There are significant reasons why we cannot accept a donation, such as if we suspect the source of the funds to be of a suspicious, unsound, or unethical nature by our charity’s mandatory Counter-Terrorist Policy, or if we cannot honour the requirements that you need from us by accepting such a donation. For example, we cannot accept a donation if we are aware that we cannot keep that promise to ease such high or expensive demands, or if there are stringent requirements for the use of the funds, such that we may not be able to keep that promise in such a challenging and developing country. As such, if someone donated funds for a cow but we know we cannot pay for the maintenance or give proper care for such a gift, or if the donor cannot pay for the maintenance of that cow, then we cannot accept the funds for that cow. In conclusion, we cannot accept a donation if we do not have the necessary ability, time, energy, staff, or funds in the field to be accountable for your funds.
Tax Receipt:
You are meant to receive an emailed tax credit receipt the moment you make any donation through CanadaHelps. If you do not receive your tax receipt, please contact us at once so that we may easily source and reactivate this.
Your commitment to us:
It is your responsibility to ensure that:
1. Your designated account can accept direct debits (your financial institution can confirm this).
2. That you have given us your correct email, bank account, or card information.
3. On the withdrawal date, there are sufficient cleared funds in the designated account.
4. You advise us within five (5) working days of any changes to banking details if your designated account is transferred or closed (for ongoing contributions only).
5. If an automatic contribution item is returned to us unpaid by your financial institution due to insufficient funds, we will contact you for permission to resubmit this item.
6. If you are under 18 years of age, you have consent from your parent or guardian to make automatic financial contributions.
7. NSF: We reserve the right to cancel your automatic contribution if two or more direct debits are returned to us unpaid by your financial institution. We will recommend that you arrange an alternative contribution method.
8. You agree to be contacted by RNGC and our designated third parties by email and text messaging for direct marketing purposes regarding RNGC services only. You may unsubscribe at any time by contacting us at robinsnestcanada@gmail.com or from our RNGC website.
Contact Us:
Please direct all enquiries or matters with your name to RNGC Canada at robinsnestcanada@gmail.com. Especially if there is a problem with your donation, please notify RNGC within 24 hours to ensure your funds do not travel overseas and so that we may easily source and resolve the situation with you asap. Our postal address is Robins Nest Global C.H.I.L.D. Canada 842 Frankford Rd, Quinte West, ON K0K 2B0. In case of emergency, phone (613) 922 – 3721.
ACN 164 793 266
ABN 36 164 793 266
Updated 10/11/2021