Privacy Policy & Compliance

1. Who we are

Find My Nursery is owned and operated by Find My Nursery (Pty) Ltd ("Find My Nursery," "we," "us," or "our"), a South African business operating the directory platform at findmynursery.net and the associated Find My Nursery Centre for school owners.

For the purposes of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA"), Find My Nursery is the Responsible Party for the personal information described in this policy — we determine why and how personal information is processed on this platform.

2. Information Officer

3. What personal information we collect, and why

3.1 Enquiries

When you send an enquiry about a nursery through the site, we collect your name, email address, phone number (optional), your child's age (optional), and your message. This is passed to the nursery you enquired with so they can respond to you, and a copy is sent to our support team as a fallback if the nursery doesn't respond. It's stored in your enquiry history and visible to that nursery in its Nursery Centre, then permanently deleted 90 days after you submitted it.

3.2 Tour bookings

When you book a tour, we collect your name, email, phone number, your child's age, your message, and the requested date/time. This is used to confirm your booking with the nursery, send you reminders, and let the nursery manage its booking calendar. Booking history is permanently deleted 90 days after you submitted the request, whatever its outcome (pending, confirmed, or declined).

3.3 Reviews

When you leave a review, our platform (via WordPress's built-in comments system) stores your email address and IP address alongside your review text, for moderation purposes only. Your email and IP address are never displayed publicly — only your review text and the name you choose to show.

3.4 Newsletter sign-up

If you tick the separate, unchecked-by-default box to subscribe to nursery tips and local updates, your email address is passed to our email platform, Klaviyo (see section 5 below), and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send. We do not subscribe you unless you actively opt in.

3.5 Claiming a school listing

If you claim a nursery listing as its owner or an authorised representative, we collect your name, your role at the nursery, your email, phone number, and your message describing your connection to the listing. This is used to verify your claim and set up your Nursery Centre account. If we cannot verify your claim from what we already hold, we may email you a private, one-time link asking for proof that you are connected to the school. You choose what to send: a registration number, one document (for example an ECD or NPO registration certificate, a business registration, a municipal letter, or a utility bill or lease showing the school address), a photo of the front of the school, your role and a phone number. We do not ask for your ID document. Files are checked by our staff only, stored privately (not on a public web address), and have location data removed from photos. Once your claim is decided, we permanently delete these files and the details you gave for verification after 30 days. Once approved, setting your password to activate the account collects only what's needed to secure that account. We keep a log of claim-related emails sent to you (approvals, rejections, resend requests) for 365 days after your claim request was resolved, after which it's permanently deleted. See also our owner privacy notice if you go on to become an account holder.

3.6 "For Brands" partnership enquiries

If you enquire as a brand or supplier, we collect your name, company, email, stated area of interest, and message, to respond to your enquiry.

3.7 "For School Networks" enquiries

Same as above, for enquiries from multi-site nursery groups or networks — name, company/network, email, interest, and message, used to respond to your enquiry.

3.8 Payments

When you or a nursery pays through the platform (via PayFast), payment notification data is logged against your payment reference and account, and may include your name or email depending on what PayFast sends us. We don't collect or store card numbers ourselves — that happens on PayFast's own secure payment page. 90 days after a payment reaches a final status, the raw PayFast payload (which can contain your name or email) is permanently blanked out; the payment reference, amount and status are kept indefinitely for our accounting records.

3.9 Nursery Centre team accounts

If you're invited as staff to manage a nursery in the Nursery Centre, we collect your name, email, role, and access permissions to run that invite and account.

4. Legal basis for processing

We only process personal information where POPIA allows it. In practice, for this platform that means:

• Necessary to take steps at your request (POPIA s11(1)(b)) — this covers enquiries, tour bookings, claim requests, brand/network partnership enquiries, and reviews: in each case you've actively asked us to do something, and we only use your details for that. No separate consent checkbox is required for these.
• Consent (POPIA s11(1)(a)) — this is the basis for the newsletter/marketing opt-in only, which is a genuine, unchecked-by-default tick-box you control, and for any Klaviyo-hosted popup you interact with separately.
• Performance of a contract / legitimate business interest — this covers payment processing and Nursery Centre staff account administration, which are necessary to run the paid service a nursery has signed up for.

5. Third parties we share data with

We use a small number of external service providers to run the platform. Each only receives the data it needs to do its job:

• Klaviyo — our email marketing platform. Receives your email address only if you opt in to the newsletter, or interact with a Klaviyo-hosted popup on the site.
• PayFast — our payment processor. Handles the actual card/payment details for any payment made through the platform; we never see or store your full card details ourselves.
• Google Analytics — used to understand overall site traffic and usage patterns. This is aggregated/statistical use, not used to identify you individually.
• TikTok Pixel — used for advertising measurement, so we can understand how our ads perform.

We do not sell personal information to any third party.

6. How long we keep your information

We only keep personal information for as long as necessary for the purpose it was collected for, in line with POPIA's retention principle (s14). Automated deletion runs nightly:

• Parent enquiries — permanently deleted 90 days after submission.
• Tour booking requests — permanently deleted 90 days after submission.
• Claim verification documents and details (files, registration number, role, phone and note you send when asked for proof) — permanently deleted 30 days after the claim is approved, rejected or closed. A claim still open is never deleted automatically. A proof link that is not used closes the claim after 14 days.
• Claim requests and their related email log — permanently deleted 365 days after the claim was resolved. Pending (unresolved) claims are never automatically deleted.
• "For Brands" / "For School Networks" partnership enquiries — permanently deleted 365 days after submission.
• PayFast payment log — the raw payload (which can contain your name or email) is blanked out 90 days after a payment reaches a final status; the payment reference, amount and status are kept indefinitely for our accounting records.

A short internal grace window applies before permanent deletion on some of the above, to guard against accidental loss — it doesn't change how long your information is realistically kept, only how it's technically removed.

7. Your rights

Under POPIA, you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you.
• Correct any information that's inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date.
• Request deletion of your personal information, where we're not required to keep it for another lawful reason.
• Object to our processing of your information, including withdrawing consent for marketing at any time.
• Complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) if you believe your information has been mishandled — inforegulator.org.za.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at admin@findmynursery.net, and we'll respond within a reasonable time.

8. Cookies

Our platform uses two first-party cookies to operate its own on-site search analytics:

• fmn_vid — an anonymous visitor identifier (a randomly generated ID, not tied to your name), stored for one year. It lets us recognise repeat visits to our own search and browse pages for our own site analytics.
• fmn_sid — a session identifier, cleared automatically when you close your browser. It groups the searches and clicks you make on our site within one visit, so we can understand what search results actually led somewhere useful.

Both are used only for Find My Nursery's own first-party search analytics — for example, understanding which searches on our site aren't finding a matching nursery, and (only if you go on to send an enquiry or book a tour) linking that outcome back to the search that led to it. Neither cookie is used for third-party advertising, and neither is shared with anyone outside Find My Nursery.

We also use analytics and advertising cookies/pixels associated with Google Analytics and the TikTok Pixel, described in section 5 above. You can control cookies through your browser settings; blocking some cookies may affect how parts of the site work.