Privacy Policy

Last updated 7 August 2026 · Applies to iskconkirtanministry.com

This website is published by the ISKCON Kirtan Ministry. We are a devotional service ministry, not a commercial business. We ask for as little information as we can while still being able to reply to you, send you the festival news you asked for, and publish the sankirtan reports devotees send us from around the world.

This page explains, in plain language, exactly what we collect, why we collect it, who can see it, and how you can ask us to change or remove it. If anything here is unclear, please write to iskconharinamsankirtanministry@gmail.com and we will explain.

1. What information we collect

We only receive information that you type into a form on this site, together with a small amount of technical information that every website receives automatically.

Contact form

• Your name, email address and phone number
• The message you write to us

Newsletter sign-up

• Your email address — and, on the sign-up boxes that ask for it, your name

World Holy Name Festival 2026 Kirtan Report form

• Your name, email address and contact number
• Whether you are submitting as an individual, a community or a temple
• Your temple or community name, continent, country, state or province, and the city where the events were held
• Type of programme, date of the event, number of events, total participants and total hours chanted
• Your written description of the celebration, and an optional video link
• Up to five photographs that you choose to upload

Technical information

• Your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you visit, the page that referred you, and the date and time — recorded in ordinary server logs and, where website analytics is switched on, in aggregated visit statistics
• A small number of cookies (see section 4)

We do not collect payment card details, bank credentials or government identity documents through this website, and we never buy, rent or exchange mailing lists.

2. Why we collect it

• To read and reply to your message or enquiry
• To send you kirtana news and World Holy Name Festival updates, if you asked for them
• To review, verify and — once approved — publish your celebration report so devotees worldwide can be inspired by it
• To count global participation for the festival Live Dashboard
• To protect our forms from automated spam
• To keep the website secure, available and working properly

3. Reports and photographs are published publicly

Please read this section carefully, because it is the most important one on this page.

• Nothing is published automatically. Every report submitted through the Kirtan Report form goes into a moderation queue and is reviewed by the Ministry team first.
• If your report is approved, it becomes public. Your temple or community name, city, country, the type of programme, the numbers you reported, the description you wrote and the photographs you uploaded are published on this website, where anyone on the internet can see them. Approved reports also feed the totals shown on the festival Live Dashboard.
• Submitting a report gives us permission to publish your photographs. By uploading photographs you confirm that you have the right to share them, and you give the ISKCON Kirtan Ministry permission to publish, reproduce and share them — on this website, in festival summaries, newsletters, presentations and Ministry social media — for World Holy Name Festival and Ministry preaching purposes. No payment is made or due for this use.
• Your email address and phone number are never published. They are used only so that the Ministry can contact you about your report.
• Please do not upload photographs of people who would not want to be shown. If you, or anyone appearing in a photograph, would like it taken down, email us and we will remove it.

4. Cookies and analytics

This site sets a small number of cookies:

• WordPress cookies — set only if you log in to the site as an administrator or editor.
• Caching and delivery cookies — used by our LiteSpeed caching layer and our host’s content delivery network so that the correct, fastest version of a page is served to you.
• Google reCAPTCHA — loads on pages that carry a form, to tell real devotees apart from spam robots.
• Analytics cookies — when Google Analytics is switched on for this site, it sets cookies that count visits and measure which pages and downloads are useful. This data is looked at in aggregate; we do not use it to identify you personally.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings at any time. The site will still work, though some pages may load a little more slowly.

5. Services we use

We use a small number of trusted service providers to run this website. They process information on our behalf and only for the purpose listed here.

We do not sell, rent or trade your information to anybody, and we do not use it for advertising.

6. How long we keep it

• Contact form messages — kept while we need them to answer you and for our records, normally no longer than about two years.
• Newsletter subscriptions — kept until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove you.
• Approved reports and their photographs — kept as part of the permanent festival archive on this website, unless you ask us to remove them.
• Reports that are not approved — deleted from the site, along with their uploads, once the festival cycle is complete.
• Server and analytics logs — kept for the limited period set by our hosting and analytics providers.

7. Who can see your information

• The small Ministry team who administer this website (site administrators and editors, each with their own account) can see form submissions in the WordPress admin area.
• The service providers listed in section 5, strictly to provide their service to us.
• Everyone, in the case of an approved report — its text and photographs are public.
• Nobody else, unless we are required to disclose something by law.

8. Your rights and choices

You may at any time ask us to:

• tell you what information we hold about you;
• correct anything that is wrong;
• delete your information, or take down a published report or photograph;
• stop sending you the newsletter (every newsletter also carries an unsubscribe link);
• withdraw the permission you gave us to publish your photographs.

Write to iskconharinamsankirtanministry@gmail.com with “Privacy request” in the subject line. We will do our best to respond within 30 days. Where a report has already been published, we may keep a simple record that a submission was made, without your personal details.

9. Children

This website is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16 through our forms. Children take part in kirtan and often appear in the photographs devotees send us. If you submit photographs that include children, please make sure a parent or guardian is happy for those photographs to be published. If a parent or guardian asks us to remove a photograph of their child, we will remove it promptly and without question.

10. Donations

Donations to the Ministry are made by direct bank transfer using the account details shown on our Donate page. No card details or banking credentials are entered on this website, and this website does not process payments. If you email us your transfer details to request a receipt, we keep that email only to acknowledge your offering and for our accounts.

11. Security

This site is served over an encrypted HTTPS connection. Form submissions and uploads are stored in our WordPress installation, and administrative access is limited to the Ministry team using individual accounts. No website can promise perfect security, but we take reasonable and ongoing care to protect what you share with us.

12. Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle information, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Significant changes will also be mentioned in the newsletter.

13. How to contact us

For anything at all relating to your privacy, or to this policy, please write to iskconharinamsankirtanministry@gmail.com. You can also reach us through the Contact page.