# Data & Privacy

Under **Settings → Data & Privacy**, an Administrator can confirm your church's data
responsibilities, download a full copy of your church's data, request deletion, and review
a log of who's changed Member and Giving records recently. This screen exists because your
church's records — who your members are, what they give, sometimes information about
minors — deserve to be handled carefully, and a church should be able to see and control its
own data without waiting on us.

## Confirming your church's data responsibilities

Church records can reveal someone's religious affiliation, and may include information about
minors (a children's or youth ministry, for example). Most data protection laws treat this
kind of information as sensitive, and several of them — recognizing that a church's
relationship with its own members is different from an ordinary business's — give religious
organizations more room to hold it, as long as the church itself has a proper basis (such as
the consent of its members or, for a minor, a parent or guardian) for the records it keeps.

The first time your church signs up, an admin confirms this once. If it's still outstanding —
because your church was set up another way, or simply hasn't gotten to it yet — you'll see a
**"Confirm your church's data responsibilities"** card on the [Dashboard](#/dashboard) until
someone does. It only takes a click, and it's the church's own responsibility either way, not
something HolyCRM decides on your behalf.

## Exporting your church's data

**Export data** downloads everything belonging to your church — members, groups, events,
giving, and everything else — as a single spreadsheet file (.xlsx), with one tab per part of
your data. It opens directly in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers; there's nothing to convert
or import first. An **Info** tab up front lists what's in each other tab and how many rows it
has, and tabs for parts of your church with no data yet are simply left out rather than
included empty.

Where one record refers to another — a gift's category, a member's small group — the
spreadsheet shows the actual name (not just an internal reference) so it reads naturally, with
the underlying reference kept in a second column for anyone who wants to cross-check between
tabs.

## Requesting deletion

**Request deletion** is exactly that — a request, not an instant, irreversible delete. Once
requested, our team processes it within a reasonable window; you can **cancel the request**
at any time before that happens, right from this same screen. If you have questions about a
pending request, reach out to **support@holycrm.app**.

## Recent activity

A read-only log of recent changes to **Member** and **Giving** records — who created, edited,
or deleted what, and when — kept for security review. If something in one of these records
looks like it changed unexpectedly, this is the first place to check.

## Who can see this

Data & Privacy is visible to **Administrators only** — it doesn't appear in the menu for Coordinators,
Volunteers, or Members.

## What's not built yet

- Deletion is a request today, not a self-service instant delete — see above.
- Recent activity currently covers Members and Giving only, not every module.
- A record that refers to something with no name of its own (a handful of internal,
  structural records do this) shows its internal reference instead of a name — this is a
  known limitation, not a bug report we need repeated.