Privacy Policy · Next Steps

Next Steps (“Next Steps,” “we,” “us”) provides engagement analytics and follow-up tooling for churches that use Planning Center. This policy explains what we collect, why, and the choices you have. We built this product to help churches care for their people, and we treat the data that makes that possible with the same seriousness.

Who controls the data

Your church is the data controller of the member information in your account. Next Steps is a data processor: we process that information on your behalf and under your instructions to provide the service. We do not sell member data, and we do not use it to train third-party advertising models.

What we collect

Account data. Your name, email, church name, role, and authentication identifiers, handled through our auth provider (Clerk).
Planning Center data you connect. With your explicit OAuth authorization, we sync people, check-ins, giving, groups, forms, workflows, registrations, and Services/team data needed to power your dashboards and follow-up rules. You choose which Planning Center account to connect and can disconnect at any time.
Google data you connect (optional). If you connect Google, we access only the Sheets, Drive file metadata, and Google Analytics (GA4) scopes you authorize, to import attendance and website metrics you point us to.
Messaging data (optional). If you connect Clearstream, we record outbound message metadata and inbound replies/opt-outs to attribute follow-up outcomes. We do not store SMS content beyond what is needed for that audit.
Billing data. Subscription status and customer identifiers from our payment processor (Stripe). We never receive or store full card numbers — Stripe handles payment details directly.
Usage data. Standard logs (timestamps, request paths, error diagnostics) used to operate, secure, and debug the service.

How we use it

To provide the dashboards, follow-up queues, and reports you configure.
To generate AI summaries and headcount estimates. For these features we send the minimum necessary data to our AI provider (Anthropic) to produce the result; it is not used to train their models.
To send transactional and product email you would expect as an account holder.
To secure the service, prevent abuse, and meet legal obligations.

How we protect it

Tenant isolation. Every church’s data is separated by row-level security in the database, enforced on every query.
Encryption. Connection tokens are encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM). Traffic is encrypted in transit (TLS).
Access control. Role-based permissions (admin / staff / viewer) gate who can see and act on member information.
Signed integrations. Incoming webhooks are verified by cryptographic signature before we act on them.

Sharing

We share data only with the sub-processors required to run the service — currently our hosting/database provider, authentication provider, payment processor, email provider, and the integrations you choose to connect (Planning Center, Google, Clearstream) and our AI provider for the AI features. We do not sell personal data.

Retention & deletion

We retain your data for as long as your account is active. You can disconnect an integration at any time, and you can request export or deletion of your church’s data by emailing us. When you delete your account we remove or anonymize personal data within a reasonable period, except where we must retain it to meet legal or accounting obligations.

Your choices

Disconnect any integration from settings at any time.
Request a copy of, or deletion of, your data.
Manage who in your church can access the account via roles.

Children

Churches may track check-in data for minors as part of normal ministry operations. That data is provided and controlled by your church. Next Steps is not directed to children and does not knowingly create accounts for them.

Changes

We’ll update this policy as the product evolves and revise the “Last updated” date. Material changes will be communicated to account admins.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Email hello@nextstepschurch.app.