MinyanMinder helps a shul run its minyan. To do that, it has to know who you are, when you're coming, and what you've agreed to do. This page explains exactly what that means in practice.
The short version:
- We do not sell your information, and we never will.
- There are no advertisements, no ad networks, and no third-party analytics or tracking software in this app.
- We do not track your location. The app knows where your shul is, because that's how it calculates zmanim. It does not know where you are.
- Your information is visible to your own community, not to other communities.
Who we are
MinyanMinder is operated by the MinyanMinder team. You can reach us at [email protected] about anything on this page.
Each community's own leadership (its Gabbaim) administers that community inside the app. They decide who is a member, what the schedule is, and what information is shown there.
What we collect
Your account
Your name, email address, and gender. Optionally, your phone number, your Hebrew name and your father's Hebrew name (used to call you up for an aliyah), a profile photo, and an avatar color. Gender is used only for minyan quorum counting and role eligibility in communities that observe those distinctions; it is never displayed publicly, and it carries no meaning at all in a community configured as egalitarian.
Your participation
Your RSVPs and attendance history, any standing schedule and personal blackout dates you set, your stated willingness to lein, lead davening, or give a dvar torah, your leining preferences and limits, any attendance goals you set for yourself, and the assignments you've been given or have requested.
Personal dates you choose to add
Your Hebrew birthday, the parsha you leined at your bar or bat mitzvah, and any yahrzeits you enter — including the name of the person being remembered, their parent's name, and any note you attach. All of this is optional. You add it because you want the app to remind you and, if you choose, to let your community mark the occasion with you. You can remove any of it at any time.
What you write and upload
Messages, group conversations, polls, reactions, photos and files you share, dvar torah drafts you submit for review, announcements you post as a Gabbai, support requests you send us, and any feedback you give when the app asks how it's going.
Technical information
A push notification token for each device you enable notifications on, and which platform it is, so reminders reach the right phone. A record of which reminders were sent to you, so the app doesn't send duplicates. Standard server logs on our hosting providers.
What we do not collect
- Your location. The app contains no location tracking. A minyan's own address is set once by its Gabbai — either by searching for it, or by a one-time "use my current location" shortcut on that setup screen — and is stored as a property of the minyan, not of any person. It is never read in the background and never associated with a member.
- Advertising or tracking data. No advertising identifiers, no ad networks, no cross-app or cross-site tracking, no third-party analytics software of any kind.
- Your contacts, photos, microphone, or health data. Photos you deliberately choose to upload are the only exception, and only the ones you pick.
- Payment information. No purchases happen in the app, and we never see card details.
How your information is used
- To show your community who is coming and whether the minyan will have a quorum.
- To send the reminders and notifications you've turned on, at times computed from your minyan's schedule and zmanim.
- To let Gabbaim assign roles fairly — which is why the app knows when you last leined or led, and what you've said you're willing to do.
- To remind you and, at your option, your community about your yahrzeits and Hebrew birthday.
- To operate, secure, and support the service, and to respond when you contact us.
We use your information for these purposes and no others. We do not use it to build a profile of you, and we do not use it to train machine learning models.
Who can see what
This is usually the real question, so here it is plainly.
- Other members of your minyan see your name, your avatar or profile photo, your RSVP for upcoming services, and any role you've been assigned. They see a yahrzeit or birthday note only if you chose to make it public.
- Your Gabbaim see the above plus your contact details, your attendance history, your stated willingness and preferences, whether you've ever signed in, and any private notes they themselves have written about you. If your minyan is not egalitarian, they see the gender marker used for quorum counting.
- Private to Gabbaim only: a Gabbai may leave a private 1–5 star note to themselves about how a past chazzan assignment went. This is never shown to the person it's about.
- Other communities see nothing. Communities are fully separated from one another.
- Guests who RSVP through a shared link provide a name and contact detail for that one service, and see nothing else.
- We can access community data when we need to in order to provide support, fix a problem, or keep the service running. We don't browse it otherwise.
Service providers
We keep this list short on purpose. We share information with these providers only so they can perform their function for us, and none of them are permitted to use it for their own purposes.
- Supabase — stores the database, uploaded files, and handles authentication and account emails.
- Railway and Cloudflare — run our servers and serve the website.
- Apple Push Notification service and the standard web push services in your browser — deliver notifications to your device.
- Hebcal — provides zmanim, the Jewish calendar, and the Torah reading schedule. It receives a minyan's location. It receives nothing about any individual.
- Open-Meteo — provides the weather forecast used for weather-related alerts. It receives a minyan's coordinates and nothing else.
We do not share your information with anyone else, and we do not sell it.
Retention and deletion
We keep your information for as long as you're a member of a community using MinyanMinder.
Your Gabbai can deactivate you at any time, which removes you from RSVPs, reminders, and assignments while leaving the community's historical attendance records intact.
To delete your account outright, email us from the address on your account (the full steps are on Delete your account). We will delete your personal information — your profile, contact details, yahrzeits, personal dates, preferences, and notification tokens. Content that is part of a shared record, such as a message in a group conversation or a community's historical attendance totals, may remain in a form that no longer identifies you. We'll confirm when it's done.
If a community stops using MinyanMinder, we delete its data after a reasonable wind-down period.
Your rights
You can view and correct most of your own information directly in the app, under Profile. For anything else — a copy of your information, correction of something you can't edit yourself, or deletion — email us and we'll take care of it. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under laws such as the GDPR or the CCPA; we honor these requests regardless of where you live.
Children
MinyanMinder is intended for use by adult members of a community and by young adults participating in its services. Accounts are never created by children on their own — every account is created by a community's leadership or through a link they share. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children under 13. If you believe a child's information has been added without appropriate consent, contact us and we will remove it.
Security
Information is encrypted in transit and at rest with our hosting providers, and access to a community's data is restricted to that community's members and administrators. No system is perfectly secure, but we treat this data as what it is: personal information about people's religious practice, their families, and their dead. We handle it accordingly.
Changes to this policy
If we make a meaningful change, we'll update the date at the top of this page and notify community administrators. Continuing to use MinyanMinder after a change means you accept the updated policy.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about your own information: [email protected].