Privacy Policy

Effective Date: 09-Jun-2026  ·  Last Updated: 17-Aug-2026

Recent update (17 Aug 2026): We have updated Sections 3, 5, 7 and 9 to describe our use of Apollo.io, a business-audience tool that identifies the organisation — not the individual — associated with visitors to our educator and partner pages. It runs only on those pages, only where you have accepted advertising cookies, and never on student registration pages or the participant platform. The 10 Aug 2026 update covered our cookie categories, the providers involved, and how to give or withdraw consent at any time via Cookie settings at the bottom of any page.

1. Introduction

Stellr Education (“Stellr,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) operates STEM competitions and an online community for high school students. We are committed to protecting the privacy of all participants, including minors. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use and protect it, and your rights regarding that information.

By registering for a Stellr competition or creating an account on our platform, you (and, where applicable, your parent or guardian) agree to the practices described in this Policy.

This Privacy Policy applies to:our website, competition registration portals, and online community platform (collectively, the “Services”).

2. A Note About Minors, COPPA, and FERPA

Our Services are directed to school students, many of whom are under the age of 18, and some of whom may be under the age of 13. We comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and, where applicable, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

• Participants under 18: When an individual under 18 registers for a Stellr event, we require verifiable parental or legal guardian consent before confirming their participation. We collect this consent electronically via DocuSign, a FERPA-compliant electronic signature provider. A consent form is automatically sent to the parent or guardian email address provided at registration. We will not confirm participation for a minor until this consent is received.
• Participants under 13: We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 without the verifiable parental consent described above. If we discover we have collected such information without consent, we will delete it promptly. Parents or guardians may contact us at privacy@stellreducation.org to review, correct, or request deletion of their child’s information.
• Parent and guardian data:When we collect consent, we collect the consenting parent or guardian’s full name and email address. This information is used solely to administer the consent process and is not used for marketing or shared beyond what is necessary.
• FERPA — school-facilitated registrations:When a school, teacher, or student manager registers a group of students, the data involved (student names, school affiliation, grade level) may constitute education records under FERPA. Stellr acts as a “school official” in these circumstances and processes education records only for the purpose of administering competition participation. We enter into a data processing agreement with schools before processing their students’ education records. Our electronic consent provider, DocuSign, is bound by a FERPA-compliant data processing agreement with Stellr.
• Participants aged 13–17 in individually-registered events: We encourage parents and guardians to review this Policy and discuss it with their child. The DocuSign consent process described above applies to all minor participants regardless of whether registration was individual or school-facilitated.

3. Information We Collect

We collect the following categories of personal information:

3.1 Identity and Contact Information

• Full name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Mailing address (where required for in-person events or prize delivery)
• Discord ‘handle’ (i.e. username)

3.2 Academic and School Information

• School name and address
• Year level / grade
• Teacher or faculty sponsor name and contact details
• Team or group affiliations

3.3 Account and Login Credentials

• Username
• Encrypted password
• Account preferences and settings
• Login activity and session data

3.4 Age and Date of Birth

• Date of birth or age range (used for age-group eligibility verification and COPPA compliance)

3.5 Health and Medical Information

• Medical conditions, allergies, or requirements disclosed for in-person event safety purposes (e.g., EpiPen requirements, chronic conditions requiring accommodation)
• This is sensitive personal information and is collected only when necessary for participant safety

3.6 Dietary Requirements

• Dietary restrictions or preferences disclosed for catered in-person events (e.g., vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher, nut allergy)

3.7 Billing and Payment Information

• Competition registration fees: name on card, billing address, and last four digits of payment method
• Transaction history and payment status
• Full payment card numbers are never stored by Stellr — payments are processed by Stripe, our third-party payment processor(s)

3.8 Photos and Videos

• Competition event photographs and recordings in which you may appear
• Profile photographs uploaded to your account
• Submitted project videos or presentations

3.9 Technical and Usage Data

• IP address, browser type, and device information
• Pages visited and features used within our platform
• Cookies and similar tracking technologies (see Section 9)
• The organisation— for example a school, district, or company — associated with your IP address. This is inferred on our educator and partner pages only, and only where you have accepted advertising cookies. It tells us that “someone at this school district read our educators page,” not who you are (see Section 9.2)

3.10 Parent and Guardian Information (Consent Records)

• Full name of the consenting parent or legal guardian, as provided at registration or in the emergency contact fields
• Email address of the consenting parent or legal guardian
• Electronic consent records — the executed consent form, signing timestamp, IP address of the signing device, and envelope status — generated and held by DocuSign on Stellr’s behalf

Parent and guardian information is collected solely for the purpose of obtaining and recording consent for a minor’s event participation. It is not used for marketing and is not shared beyond what is necessary to administer the consent process.

4. How We Collect Information

We collect personal information in the following ways:

• Directly from you when you register, create an account, complete forms, or communicate with us
• From parents or guardians providing consent or registering on behalf of a minor
• Via electronic consent forms sent to parents or guardians through DocuSign when a minor participant registers; the executed form and signing metadata are returned to us by DocuSign upon completion
• From schools and educators facilitating group registrations
• Automatically through cookies and analytics tools when you use our platform
• From payment processors who provide transaction confirmation data

5. How We Use Your Information

We use collected information for the following purposes:

We do not sell your information to third parties, and we do not use it in automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects.

We do not use the information you give us — your name, email, registration details, or anything in your account — for targeted advertising. Where you have accepted advertising cookies, we measure our advertising using cookie identifiers only, in aggregate, to understand which campaigns bring people to our programmes. Registration and education records are never used for this purpose (see Sections 7.7 and 9).

6. Legal Basis for Processing

We process personal information on the following legal grounds:

• Consent — for sensitive data (medical, dietary) and for users under 13 (parental consent)
• Contract performance — to fulfil competition registration and service agreements
• Legitimate interests — for platform improvement, security, and fraud prevention, where these do not override your rights
• Legal obligation — to comply with applicable laws including COPPA and FERPA

7. Sharing Your Information

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. We may share information only in the following circumstances:

7.1 Service Providers

We engage trusted third-party vendors to assist in delivering our Services. Our current subprocessors include:

All providers are contractually required to handle your data securely, use it only as directed by us, and not disclose it to third parties for their own commercial purposes. Data processing terms apply to each provider in one of two ways: an agreement executed directly between that provider and Stellr, or the provider’s own standard data processing addendum, which governs our use of their service. Where the arrangement is specific to Stellr, the table above says so.

Two providers are worth naming directly. Our business-audience provider Apollo.io operates under its standard GDPR data processing addendum, published at apollo.io/dpa. Our electronic consent provider DocuSign is bound by a FERPA-compliant data processing agreement executed with Stellr, described in Section 7.7.

7.2 Schools and Educators

With the school or teacher who registered a student, limited to information relevant to competition participation (e.g., registration status, results).

7.3 Competition Partners and Sponsors

Competition results, participant names, and school affiliations may be shared with co-organising institutions or sponsors where you have been notified and consented at registration.

7.4 Public Recognition

Unless you opt out, competition results, names, school affiliations, and photographs may be published on our website, social media channels, or press releases. We will seek explicit consent before publishing identifiable photographs of minors.

7.5 Legal Requirements

We may disclose information when required by law, court order, or to protect the safety of participants or the public.

7.6 Business Transfers

In the event of a merger, acquisition, or transfer of assets, personal information may be transferred to a successor organisation, subject to the same privacy protections described here.

7.7 FERPA — Education Records

When a school or teacher registers a group of students for a Stellr event, the student data involved (including names, school affiliation, and grade level) may constitute education records under FERPA. In those circumstances:

• Stellr processes education records solely for the purpose of administering competition participation — a legitimate educational interest consistent with FERPA.
• We do not use education records for advertising, product development, or any purpose beyond what is necessary for the event.
• We enter into a school official data processing agreementwith the registering school or institution before processing their students’ education records. This agreement specifies how data may be used and prohibits unauthorised disclosure.
• Our electronic consent provider, DocuSign, is bound by a FERPA-compliant data processing agreement with Stellr and is prohibited from using education record data for any commercial purpose.
• Schools and parents may exercise their FERPA rights by contacting us at privacy@stellreducation.org.

8. Sensitive Information

We treat the following categories as sensitive and apply heightened protections:

• Medical and health information — collected solely for participant safety; accessible only to staff with a direct need; never shared with sponsors, partners, or the public; deleted promptly after the relevant event
• Dietary requirements — used only for event catering logistics; not retained beyond the event
• Date of birth — used for eligibility and COPPA compliance; not displayed publicly
• Payment data — handled exclusively by our payment processor Stripe; Stellr retains only transaction confirmations and last-four-digit references

9. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use cookies and similar technologies to:

• Keep you logged in to your account
• Remember your preferences
• Collect aggregate analytics on how our platform is used
• Measure whether our advertising reaches the students, families and educators it is meant to reach — only if you accept advertising cookies
• Recognise which schools, districts and organisations are reading our educator and partner pages, so we can follow up with those exploring a partnership — only if you accept advertising cookies

9.1 Categories We Use

9.2 Business-Audience Identification

Stellr works with schools, districts, universities, and sponsoring organisations as well as with students. To understand which of those organisations are interested in partnering with us, we use Apollo.io on our educator and partner pages. It matches the IP address a visit comes from against a database of business networks and tells us the organisation that address belongs to.

We want to be precise about the limits of this:

• It identifies organisations, not people. It tells us that someone at a given school district or company visited a page. It does not tell us your name, your email address, or anything about you as an individual, and we do not attempt to combine it with registration data to work out who you are.
• It runs on a limited set of pages only — our educator, host-an-event, mentor, network, volunteer, impact, and why-Stellr pages. It is not loaded on competition registration pages, on the participant platform, or anywhere a student is signing up or logged in.
• It requires your consent. Apollo.io is an advertising-category cookie and does not load at all until you accept advertising cookies. If you decline, or later withdraw, it is never loaded.
• Home and school networks are generally not identifiable in this way. The matching relies on business network records, so most residential connections return no organisation at all.

9.3 Your Choices

When you first visit, we ask whether to enable advertising cookies. Until you accept, advertising and remarketing tags are disabled — we use Google Consent Mode, so the choice is enforced on the tags themselves rather than only recorded.

You can change your mind at any time. Select Cookie settings at the bottom of any page to reopen the banner and turn advertising cookies on or off. Withdrawing takes exactly as many clicks as giving, and takes effect immediately — no further advertising data is sent from that point, and on your next visit those tags do not load at all.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use advertising cookies to build profiles of individual students. Advertising measurement is used to understand which campaigns bring people to our programmes in aggregate. Disabling non-essential cookies does not affect your ability to register for or take part in any Stellr event.

10. Data Retention

We retain personal information only as long as necessary:

You may request earlier deletion subject to Section 12.

11. Data Security

We implement reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect your information, including:

• Encryption of passwords and sensitive data at rest and in transit (TLS/SSL)
• Restricted staff access on a need-to-know basis
• Regular security reviews of our platform
• Prompt notification to affected users in the event of a data breach, as required by applicable law

No system is completely secure. If you believe your account has been compromised, contact us immediately at privacy@stellreducation.org.

12. Your Rights

All Users

• Access — request a copy of personal information we hold about you
• Correction — request correction of inaccurate information
• Deletion — request deletion of your information (subject to legal retention requirements)
• Withdrawal of consent — withdraw consent for processing based on consent (e.g., for publication of photos)
• Opt-out of communications — unsubscribe from non-essential emails at any time

Parents and Guardians (COPPA Rights)

• Review personal information collected from your child under 13
• Request correction or deletion of that information
• Refuse further collection or use of your child’s information
• Contact us at any time: privacy@stellreducation.org

Schools and Educators (FERPA Rights)

Schools whose students’ education records are processed by Stellr have the right to:

• Inspect and review education records held by Stellr relating to their students
• Request correction of inaccurate education records
• Request deletion of education records upon withdrawal from an event
• Receive a copy of any data processing agreement between Stellr and DocuSign covering student education records

Contact us at privacy@stellreducation.org with the subject line FERPA Request.

California Residents (CCPA/CPRA)

California residents have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act:

• Right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared, or sold
• Right to delete personal information
• Right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. We do not sell personal information.Where you have accepted advertising cookies, technical identifiers may be disclosed to our advertising and business-audience providers in a way that CPRA treats as “sharing” for cross-context behavioural advertising. You can opt out at any time by selecting Cookie settings at the bottom of any page
• Right to non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights
• Right to correct inaccurate personal information
• Right to limit use of sensitive personal information

To exercise any of these rights, contact privacy@stellreducation.org. We will respond within 45 days.

13. Third-Party Links

Our platform may contain links to third-party websites or resources (e.g., partner organisations, competition hosts). We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those sites and encourage you to review their policies independently.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will post the revised version on our website with an updated “Last Updated” date. For material changes, we will provide notice via email or a prominent platform notification. Continued use of our Services after notice constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.

15. Contact Us

For questions, concerns, or to exercise your privacy rights, please contact:

Stellr Education — Privacy Team
Email: privacy@stellreducation.org

For urgent concerns involving a minor’s data, please mark your email URGENT: Minor Data.