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South African Equity Fund

Privacy Policy

This notice explains how the South African Equity Fund (SAEF) handles personal information submitted through this website.

SAEF processes personal information to operate this website, respond to enquiries, review Equity Contribution Bridge applications, collect supporting documents, and communicate about application progress.

Information we collect

  • Contact details such as name, email address, phone/mobile number, and organisation name
  • Enquiry and application information, including business and funding context you submit
  • Supporting documents you upload (for example registration, identity, financial, tax, B-BBEE, or funding documentation), stored as private files with associated metadata
  • Application status interactions and responses to information requests
  • Technical information such as browser type and aggregate usage analytics

Purpose of collection

  • Responding to enquiries and providing support
  • Receiving and reviewing Equity Contribution Bridge applications
  • Collecting and reviewing supporting evidence for assessment workflows
  • Communicating about submissions, information requirements, and milestone updates
  • Maintaining an operational audit trail for authorised SAEF operators
  • Maintaining security, preventing abuse, and improving website reliability
  • Meeting lawful operational and record-keeping needs

Application information

Application fields are treated as confidential business information and used for intake and related assessment workflows. Application records are stored in secured cloud infrastructure (including Google Cloud / Firebase) with access restricted to authorised SAEF systems and Founder/Admin operators. Internal notes, risk flags, priority, and audit detail are for authorised operators only and are not exposed on applicant status views.

Supporting documents

Uploaded documents are stored privately by default. Public clients cannot browse Storage objects. Downloads for authorised parties use short-lived, server-issued signed URLs. Document contents are not stored in Firestore; only metadata is retained alongside the application. Uploaded files are not executed by SAEF systems.

Email notifications

SAEF may send transactional emails (via Resend or similar) to acknowledge submissions, request additional information, or notify applicants of applicant-safe status milestones. Emails do not include internal operator notes.

Secure applicant status access

Applicants may access applicant-safe status information through a secure magic link sent to the email address on the application. Application IDs alone are not sufficient to access records. Tokens expire and may be revoked.

Analytics

SAEF uses Google Analytics (measurement ID configured for this site) to understand aggregated website usage and conversion funnel steps (for example application started or submitted). Analytics events are configured to avoid sending names, email addresses, phone numbers, registration numbers, document filenames, or detailed funding narratives.

Fraud and abuse prevention

Public forms and status-link requests use server-side validation, sanitisation, origin checks, honeypot fields, and rate limiting to reduce automated abuse. SAEF does not use a third-party CAPTCHA provider on this website.

Storage and disclosure

SAEF may use trusted providers for hosting, database storage, private file storage, email delivery, authentication, and analytics. Information is disclosed only as needed for those purposes, where required by law, or with your instruction.

Access controls

Founder/Admin access to the operations area uses Firebase Authentication with server-side allow-list checks. Applicants access only their own applicant-safe views via secure tokens. Public clients do not have direct Firestore or Storage read access to application data.

Retention

Information is retained for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described above, including operational follow-up, security, and legal or audit requirements, after which it may be deleted or anonymised where practicable.

Your rights

Subject to applicable law (including POPIA where applicable), you may request access to personal information SAEF holds about you, or request correction of inaccurate information. Contact SAEF using the details below and include enough information to identify your enquiry or application.

Contact

Email: funding@saef.co.za
Telephone: +27 12 0048 728
Mobile: +27 72 070 8467

Last updated: August 2026