Terms of use
What this is
Fathom Staff is a staff engagement survey run by Fathom LLC, a Minnesota limited
liability company (“Fathom”, “we”). Using the site means accepting these terms.
What the results are — and are not
Results are a diagnostic aid based on self-reported perception. They
are not a professional assessment of your organisation or of any individual, not a
clinical or psychological instrument, not an employment decision tool, and not a
substitute for legal, HR or safeguarding advice. Do not use a score to discipline,
evaluate or dismiss anyone — and note that the suppression thresholds exist
precisely so results cannot be read down to a person. If a response suggests someone is
at risk, act on the substance, not the number.
Scores, stage labels and ranked measures follow standard survey practice and the
methods we publish on the methodology page. What they mean
for your camp, and what you do about them, is your judgement to make. Results describe
perceptions at a point in time: they do not establish cause, and a change between two
reads may reflect who answered as much as what changed. Where a finding carries a real
consequence for someone, corroborate it before you act on it.
What “anonymous” means
When we call the surveys anonymous, we mean that a camp, including its director and
anyone it shares results with, cannot know who answered: not who took a survey, not who
gave any answer, and not any one person’s answers. Results are shown only for groups
of three or more. We do not keep staff names or email addresses. An email address is used
to send a one-time code and is kept only as a one-way code that cannot be turned back into
it; that code lets us count one response per person and connect a person’s answers
across a season and from one season to the next, without knowing who they are. If a staff
member asks for a leader to follow up with them and gives an email address, that address
is shared with their camp’s director, separately from their answers. The
privacy policy sets out exactly what is kept and for how long.
Fair use
Take the survey honestly, do not attempt to submit responses on someone else’s
behalf, and do not try to re-identify responses or defeat the suppression thresholds.
Do not scrape, overload or attempt to breach the service.
Your content
Notes and action-plan items you write in a camp account remain yours. You grant us the
limited right to store and display them back to the people you have given access to.
Survey responses may be used in aggregate research as described in the
privacy policy.
Our content
The framework, questions, scoring and written material are © Fathom Staff.
You may use the survey with your own staff and quote results in your own reporting
with attribution. You may not resell it or present it as your own instrument.
Availability
The service is provided as-is. We will try to keep it up and keep your data intact,
but we do not warrant uninterrupted availability, and our liability is limited to the
fullest extent the law allows.
Export anything you would be upset to lose.
Changes and contact
We may update these terms; material changes will be dated here. Questions go to
the contact form.
Privacy policy
The short version. The survey is anonymous: your camp never knows who
you are. Your answers are stored against a one-way code, never your email address. Your camp sees results only for groups of three or more and never
sees an individual answer. We don’t sell data, show ads, or use cookies or tracking.
Who we are
Fathom Staff is run by Fathom LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company. Questions about this policy or your data go to hello@fathomstaff.com, or use the contact form and pick “Privacy or data deletion”.
If you take a survey
Your email address, used once. We use it to send you a six-digit code, then keep only a one-way code made from it. The code is specific to your camp: the same address at two camps produces two unrelated codes. Our email provider keeps a short record of the message it sent.
A recovery key. Your initials and birthday (month and day, no year), so you are recognised next season even if your email changes. It is stored with your one-way code, and nobody at your camp can see it.
Your answers and your profile. Your answers, plus your role, the seasons you have worked and whether you live on site. The profile is kept so you aren’t asked again. Facts about the camp itself, such as its type, season length, region and size, come from the camp’s own profile, not from you.
Your age, gender identity and race or ethnicity. Asked once, with your profile, and “Prefer not to answer” is always an option. Age is kept as a range, such as 18–26, never your birth date. We use these only to check that the survey works the same for everyone. They are stored apart from everything your camp can see, and your camp never sees them, not even as group results.
What your camp sees. Group results only, never for fewer than three people, and never an individual answer, a comment, or who took part. Comparisons with other camps never draw on fewer than five camps.
If you ask for a follow-up. Some surveys end with questions about whether you plan to come back next season, and the last one asks whether you would like a leader to follow up with you. Only if you say yes and give an email address, that address is stored, apart from your answers, and your camp’s director can see it so someone can reach out. It is the only way your camp ever sees an email address, and nothing links it to what you answered.
Nothing is left on the device. On a camp survey link, nothing about you is stored in the browser, so a shared camp laptop is safe to use.
If you run a camp account
When you subscribe: your name, work email, camp name, plan and staff count, and the billing address Stripe asks for. Payments are taken by Stripe, by card or from a bank account. We never see your card or bank account number; Stripe keeps your billing details. We also keep a record that you read and accepted these terms and this policy: when, which version, and the IP address and browser you accepted from.
While you use it: the camp profile you fill in, the survey windows you open, your reminder settings, and the notes you write on your dashboard. Notes are private to your camp: we don’t read them, use them in research or show them to anyone else. Your sign-in is remembered in your browser until you sign out. We email you sign-in links, a welcome and a getting-started note when you join (and, if no survey is set up a week later, a short check-in from one of us), survey reminders and billing notices.
Your camp’s team: if someone at your camp invites you as an admin or a viewer, we keep your name, email, role and when you last signed in, and your camp’s owner and admins can see them.
Which features get used: we count, in our own database, which parts of the dashboard and send page your camp uses: for example, that a tab was opened or the PDF saved on a given day, and by which login. It tells us what helps and what to improve. Nothing is counted on staff survey pages, and no outside analytics service is involved. The counts are deleted with your camp’s account.
If you contact us
Contact and demo-request forms send your name, email, camp, the staff count if you give it, and your message to our team inbox and to our customer records. If you book a demo on our booking calendar, which Cal.com runs for us, your name, email and any answers you give go to Cal.com, and the meeting, with a Google Meet link, goes on the calendar of the founder you meet.
Technical data and your browser
Our hosting and database providers keep standard server logs, such as IP address, browser type and time, to run and secure the service. We use no outside analytics, advertising trackers or cookies; the feature counts above stay in our own database.
A few preferences are kept in your browser’s own storage and never sent to us: your choice on the privacy banner, dashboard display settings (like dark mode), whether you have seen the current offer, and whether you have taken the dashboard tour. If you preview the sample survey while signed in, your preview answers stay in your browser too.
What we do with it
Run the surveys and show each camp its group results. Build benchmarks and norms from aggregated, de-identified data, and publish research only for groups of at least ten camps. Run accounts and billing, and send the emails you asked for.
We don’t sell your information, we don’t use it for advertising, and we never give a camp anything that would let it work out who said what. We won’t use identifiable survey answers to train any machine-learning model without the camp’s written agreement.
Who else handles it
These providers run parts of the service for us, and each sees only what its job needs.
Service providers and what each holds
| Provider | What it does | What it holds |
|---|
| Supabase | Our database and sign-in, hosted on Amazon Web Services | Survey answers, one-way codes and recovery keys, camp accounts, and our customer records, including messages from the contact and demo forms |
|---|
| Netlify | Hosts the website and runs its server functions | Server logs |
|---|
| Resend | Sends codes, sign-in links, reminders, and form messages to our team | Email addresses and form messages, briefly, in its sending records |
|---|
| Google Workspace | Our own email, documents and calendars, demo bookings and Google Meet | Messages from the contact and booking forms; the name and email on a demo booking |
|---|
| Slack | Only if your camp connects it: posts the survey link and reminders your camp sends to the one staff channel it picked | Those messages, in your camp’s own Slack. We keep the workspace and channel name and the address that posts there, and can’t read your Slack |
|---|
| Cal.com | Runs the demo booking calendar on our website | The name, email and answers on a demo booking, and when the founder taking demos is busy |
|---|
| Stripe | Takes payments | Billing contacts, billing addresses and card details |
|---|
| Intuit QuickBooks | Our bookkeeping | Camp names and billing contacts on invoices and payments |
|---|
How long we keep it
How long each kind of information is kept
| Information | Kept for |
|---|
| Survey answers, codes, recovery keys, and follow-up emails you chose to give | While the camp subscribes, and up to 24 months after its last survey window, so a returning camp keeps its trends. Sooner if the camp asks: within 90 days of a written request |
|---|
| Your own answers, if you ask us to delete them | Deleted within 30 days of your request |
|---|
| Aggregated, de-identified benchmarks | As long as they are useful. They identify no one, and deleting a camp’s data doesn’t change benchmarks already built from it |
|---|
| Camp accounts, and the notes written in them | The subscription, plus 3 years |
|---|
| Invoices and payment records | 7 years, for tax purposes |
|---|
| Contact and booking messages | 2 years after we last heard from you, or sooner if you ask |
|---|
| Backups | 7 days |
|---|
How we protect it
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access is limited to the people who need it, and the database is backed up daily. Inside Fathom, only the person who runs the platform can see any camp’s survey results; the rest of our team sees response counts, never scores or answers, and needs two-step sign-in to reach our customer records. If a security incident affects your information, we will tell the affected camp without undue delay and, where the law requires it, tell you.
Your rights
Ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it: contact us and pick “Privacy or data deletion”. We find your survey answers by making the same one-way code from your email address, so we can remove them without ever having stored the address. Nobody at your camp can do that lookup.
If you are under 18
Camp staff are often 16 or 17. The survey asks a minor for nothing more than anyone else. It never asks for your name, and we never store your email address unless you ask for a follow-up and give one. Taking part is voluntary, and your camp cannot tell whether you did.
Changes
If we change something material we will date it here and say what changed, rather than quietly swapping the text. Camp account holders get an email at least 30 days before a material change takes effect.
