Privacy policy

Last updated: 2026-08-11

Status: Headcount Buddy is in early development. Features, data practices, and this policy may change as the service evolves. Material changes will be announced via the service info page and, where appropriate, via SMS.

Headcount Buddy (“we”, “us”) provides an SMS-based assistant that helps amateur sports teams coordinate RSVPs and headcount. This policy explains what data we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and how to control or remove it.

What we collect

When you (as a player or organizer) interact with Headcount Buddy, we collect:

Phone number — the number you text us from, or the number an organizer enrolled for you.
Display name — provided by your organizer when they add you, or the name you give us.
Message content — the text of SMS messages you send to or receive from us.
Consent state — when you opted in (START) and, if applicable, when you opted out (STOP).
RSVP and attendance data — your responses to event invitations (yes, no, etc.) and any free-text notes you include.
Team membership — which team(s) you belong to, and your role (organizer, player).
For teams linked to PixieNet only — email address, gender, and USTA rating, sourced from PixieNet. We do not collect these for teams that use Headcount Buddy directly. See “Teams linked to a partner platform (PixieNet)” below.

As the service evolves, we may collect additional data necessary to operate new coordination features. Any new data type will be documented in this policy before we begin collecting it, and material changes will be announced as described under “Changes to this policy” below.

We do not collect location data, payment information from players, or any data beyond what is necessary to operate the service.

How we use it

We use this data to:

Send you SMS messages about your team’s events (only after you opt in by texting START).
Track RSVPs and headcount for your organizer.
Improve the quality of our automated responses through aggregated, de-identified analysis.

We do not use your data for advertising or sell it to third parties. We do not share or sell your phone number, your SMS opt-in/opt-out status, or any related consent data with third parties for marketing purposes. The only data sharing we do is operational, described in the next section — and for users who signed up through PixieNet that operational sharing includes your opt-in/opt-out status, as set out in the exception below.

To operate the service, we share data with:

Twilio, Inc. — our SMS delivery provider. Twilio sees the content and metadata of messages we send and receive on your behalf. See Twilio’s privacy policy at twilio.com/legal/privacy.
Anthropic, PBC — provides the AI that generates message responses. Message content (yours and ours) is sent to Anthropic for processing. Anthropic does not train its models on this data per their commercial terms. See Anthropic’s privacy policy at anthropic.com/legal/privacy.
Your team’s organizer(s) — organizers see their team’s roster, message history with their team, and RSVP state.

We do not share your data with anyone else. We do not share it for marketing purposes.

Exception — users who signed up through PixieNet. If you signed up through our partner platform PixieNet, we share a limited set of coordination data with them — including whether you have opted in or out of our SMS messages, so their app can show your team who is reachable. This is described in “Teams linked to a partner platform (PixieNet)” below and applies only to those users. We never share your data for marketing purposes, with PixieNet or anyone else.

Teams linked to a partner platform (PixieNet)

This section applies only if your team is managed through PixieNet. If you use Headcount Buddy directly — the way most of our teams do — nothing in this section applies to you, and nothing about your data changes.

Headcount Buddy provides team coordination for USTA league teams that subscribe through PixieNet, our partner platform. For those teams, PixieNet runs signup, membership, and billing, and we provide the SMS coordination.

How a team becomes linked. You sign up on PixieNet and join your USTA team there. During that signup PixieNet asks you to accept their terms and to agree that they may share your information with Headcount Buddy, and points you to this policy. If you had already used Headcount Buddy with the same phone number, we connect your existing account to your PixieNet membership rather than creating a second one.

What PixieNet sends us about you. Your name, email address, phone number, gender, and USTA rating, along with your team, roster membership, schedule, and subscription status. For linked teams these come from PixieNet rather than from us — including email, gender, and rating, which we do not otherwise collect.

What we send PixieNet. So they can show your team its own coordination inside their app, we share: your team’s coordination summary (RSVP and headcount state, and substitute-search status); your SMS opt-in/opt-out status — that is, whether you have texted START and are reachable by us, or texted STOP — so their app can show who on the team we can actually message; changes to events that were made by text through us; and a monthly per-team total of message and AI-processing volume used for billing between our two companies.

What we do not send PixieNet. The content of your SMS messages with Headcount Buddy, and our AI processing logs, are not shared. Your conversation with us stays with us.

You can give and withdraw consent on PixieNet, and we share its status with them. Permission to text you always comes from you, never from your organizer. If you sign up on PixieNet with a verified phone number, PixieNet asks you directly whether Headcount Buddy may text it — the prompt names us as the sender and links to these policies. That consent is optional (PixieNet works fully without it), and you can withdraw it on the PixieNet website at any time, or by replying STOP to any message from us. Texting START to our number yourself is the other way in. Whichever route you use, we keep the authoritative record of your consent, and we share your current opt-in/opt-out status with PixieNet so their app can show your team who is reachable. Opting out with us stops our messages; it does not close your PixieNet account.

Your rights are unchanged, but two systems hold data. You can ask us for a copy of, or deletion of, the data we hold, at help@headcountbuddy.com. Because PixieNet is the source for identity and membership on linked teams, we will also tell you what to ask them for; deleting data on our side does not delete your PixieNet account.

If the partnership ends, we continue coordinating your team only if it stays with Headcount Buddy directly, and data we licensed from PixieNet is deleted within six months.

Retention

We keep your data for as long as you have an active relationship with a team on our service. After you opt out (STOP), we keep a record of your opt-out (phone number + opt-out timestamp) indefinitely so we don’t accidentally re-message you. If your team’s organizer stops using the service or deletes their team, we retain associated data for a reasonable transition period (typically 30 days) before deletion, in case the organizer wants to resume. We will delete other data on request — see “Your rights” below.

Your rights

You can:

Opt out at any time by texting STOP to the team’s Headcount Buddy number — or, if you signed up through PixieNet, by withdrawing consent there.
Request a copy of your data by emailing help@headcountbuddy.com.
Request deletion of your data by emailing help@headcountbuddy.com.
Get help by replying HELP or INFO to any message from us.

Security

We use industry-standard practices to protect your data: encrypted connections to all services, encrypted-at-rest databases, and limited access for the small number of people who operate the service. No system is perfectly secure; in the event of a breach affecting your data, we will notify you promptly.

Age

Headcount Buddy is for adults: the service is not intended for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect data about them. If you believe we have data on someone under 18 — including through a team managed on PixieNet — contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the service evolves. Material changes will be announced via the service info page and, where appropriate, via SMS.

Contact

help@headcountbuddy.com