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Privacy Policy

Children’s Aid understands your concerns about privacy and your interest in knowing how your information is used and safeguarded, and we want to provide you with more information on these topics.  This Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”) describes the practices, policies and procedures related to our website located at www.childrensaidnyc.org, (the “Website”), including the types of personal information we collect on the Website, how we may use that information and with whom we may share it.  This Website is operated by Children’s Aid, (hereinafter referred to as “Children’s Aid,” or “we” or “us”).  Please note that this Privacy Policy applies only to Children’s Aid’s online information-gathering and sharing practices occurring on the Website, and does not apply to any of our practices conducted offline.  By visiting this Website, you are accepting the practices, policies and procedures described in this Privacy Policy, and you are further indicating that you agree to be bound by the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy, please do not visit or use any of the links on this Website.  We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, so please check this Privacy Policy periodically for changes. The date this Privacy Policy was last updated is stated at the end of this document. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please do not hesitate to contact us at webmaster@childrensaidnyc.org.
 
SUMMARY
The notifications provided by this Privacy Policy include:

  • What personally identifiable information we collect from you through the Website.
  • How we use the information we collect.
  • With whom the information may be shared.
  • The kind of procedures we employ in an effort to hinder the unauthorized access, use or disclosure of information you provide to us.
  • Information related to third-party websites.
  • The laws that apply to those accessing our Website from outside of the United States.
  • How you can learn about changes to our privacy policies, practices and procedures. 

THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT
Personal Information You Provide And How It Is Used: You may freely visit our Website anonymously and without being required to provide us with any personal information, and without being required to register. However, certain services, requests and features do require that you provide us with some personally identifying information (including, but not limited to, name, address, email), or to register, as more particularly described below; availing yourself of any of these services, requests and features is voluntary. Personal information is data that can be used to identify or contact you.  Please do not send confidential information to us directly through this Website, or by email to any of the contact email addresses listed on this Website. 
 
Email Signup: If you opt to sign up for our email newsletter, we will ask you to provide certain personally identifying information, including your email address, first and last name.  You may unsubscribe from these emails at any time by using the link provided in the footer of all such emails.
 
Donate: If you make a donation through the Website via the “donate” button, you will be asked to provide certain personally identifying information, such as your name and home address, as well as your credit card billing information, in order to process the donation. The credit card information that you provide at the time of donation is used only to process your donation and will not be stored or used for any other purpose.  However, if you opt to make a recurring donation, your credit card information will be stored and used for the purpose of processing your recurring donation.
 
Honoree Donation: If you make a donation in honor of another person, you will be required to provide the information detailed above related to your donation, and if you opt to notify the person for whom you are “honoring,” we will ask that you provide us with their email address; please note that the email address may provide us with personally identifiable information about such person. 
 
Volunteer: We provide you the opportunity to volunteer in your community in an effort to help support children.  If you choose to volunteer, you will be required to register with us and, and in doing so you will be required to provide us with personally identifiable information.  You will also be required to complete a volunteer application, which will ask that you provide a variety of additional personally identifiable information.  As an alternative to registering with us, you also have the option of  “signing in” with us via your Facebook or LinkedIn credentials.  Please note that if you choose to login using your Facebook or LinkedIn credentials, we will have access to certain information associated with those accounts.  
 
Contact Us: The Website provides a number of “contact us” links for questions related to the work we do, including questions related to volunteering, donating, adoption/foster care, etc. If you contact us through any of these contact forms, we will collect your email address and any other personal information that you provide to us. We will use the information you provide to contact you back and to respond to any requests and/or questions.
 
Special Events:  From time to time, we may provide information and links to special events that support or relate to Children’s Aid.  If you choose to register for any such events, we will require that you provide us certain personally identifying information, which may include your name, email, company email, home address, work address, home phone number, company phone number and country of origin.  Additionally, participation in some events may require a fee, in which case we will also collect information related to processing such transaction, as further detailed herein.

Content You Submit:  We collect the content you submit on the Website. This includes your posts and comments including saved drafts. Your content may include text, links, images, gifs, audio, and videos. Your content may be shared across Children’s Aid web properties and may be used by the agency for advertisement, publicity, and/or information distribution.

 
Non-Personal Information We Collect by Automated Means And How We Use It: We also collect certain non-personal information (data in a form that does not support direct association with any specific person or individual) by automated means when you visit the Website.  Much of this information is collected through the use of third-party tracking services, which includes Google Analytics. The information collected may include usage information, such as the numbers and frequency of users to the Website, pages visited, web browsing histories, your location and device, social networking activities and similar data. When gathered, this data is used in the aggregate, and not in a manner that is intended to identify you personally. This type of aggregate information may be shared with third parties at any time, including advertisers and marketers.  In addition to the third-party tracking services mentioned above, we also collect this information through various other means, including "cookies," "web beacons" and IP addresses, as further explained below. In conjunction with advertisements that we may serve on the Website, we also may use “ad pixels” and/or “trackers” that follows and tracks your activities from an ad placement to specific website use/activities.
 
Cookies; Scripts - A cookie is a piece of information that a web server may place on your computer when you visit a Website. Cookies are commonly used by websites to improve the user experience.  Many cookies last only through a single Website session, or visit. Others may have an expiration date, or may remain on your computer until you delete them. We may use "session cookies" in order to enhance the user experience and for other web-related purposes.  These session cookies are not linked to personally identifiable information.  We may also use cookies for other purposes, including to maintain continuity during a user session, to gather data about the usage of our Website for research and other purposes, or to store a user name or related login credentials so that you do not have to provide this information every time you return to our Website. We may also employ the use of scripts on the website.  Scripts are small computer programs embedded within web pages that give those pages extra functionality. 
 
Most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookie/scripts, how to be notified when you receive a new cookie/script, and how to disable existing cookies/scripts. You can also increase your control over scripts and cookies with a multitude of browser plug-ins such as NoScript, Ghostery, Lightbeam and Do Not Track Plus. Please note, however, that without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of all the features on our Website. 
 
Web Beacons – Our Website may contain "web beacons" (also know as Internet tags, pixel tags and clear GIFs). These web beacons allow third parties to obtain information such as the IP address of the computer that downloaded the page on which the beacon appears, the URL of the page on which the beacon appears, the time the page containing the beacon was viewed, the type of browser used to view the page, and the information in cookies set by the third party. Web beacons also may be used to track whether you have opened an HTML email. When the email is opened, a part of the code that makes up the HTML page calls a web server to load the web beacon that then generates a record showing that the email has been viewed. Web beacons may also recognize when the email was opened, how many times it was forwarded and which URLs (links within the email) were clicked.
 
IP Addresses - When you visit and interact with the Website, third parties with whom we have contracted to provide services for us may collect Internet Protocol addresses (each an "IP Address"), as well as browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and page navigation. An IP Address is a unique identifier number that certain electronic devices use to identify and to communicate with each other on the Internet; your Internet Service Provider automatically assigns an IP Address to the computer that you are using.  We gather this information to track Website visitor movement in the aggregate, and to gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. Our goal in gathering this information is to learn how our customers and the public are using our service. We may use this information to enhance our Website or for other lawful purposes.
 
HOW WE MAY SHARE YOUR INFORMATION
We may disclose all of the information (described herein) that we collect, as stated in this Privacy Policy including in accordance with the terms set forth in this section. Children’s Aid works with a variety of third-party partners in order to allow us to make the Website available to you, to host and store the information we collect from you, and to provide certain functionality and features, such as to process payment/donation transactions.  As an example, in order to process payment/donation transactions that occur on our Website, we work with Blackbaud and CyberSource, and therefore both companies may have access to the information you provide to us.  Except as stated in this Privacy Policy, we do not reveal personally identifiable information about you to third parties for their independent use unless: (1) you expressly authorize Children’s Aid to do so, (2) it is necessary to allow Children’s Aid and its service providers or agents to provide services on Children’s Aid’s behalf, (3) it is to provide products or services to you, (4) it is disclosed to entities that perform marketing or data aggregation services for Children’s Aid, (5) it is necessary in connection with a sale of all or substantially all of the assets of Children’s Aid or the merger of Children’s Aid into another entity or any consolidation, share exchange, combination, reorganization, or like transaction in which Children’s Aid is not the survivor, (6) Children’s Aid is required or permitted to do so for any or all of the following reasons: (i) to comply with a subpoena, legal process, government request or any other legal obligation, (ii) to prevent, investigate, detect, or prosecute criminal offenses or attacks on the technical integrity of the Website or our network, and/or (iii) to protect the rights, privacy, property, business, or safety of Children’s Aid, its partners and employees, the visitors of the Website, the children or families that we serve, or the public.
 
CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
We do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose personally identifiable information about visitors to our Website that are less than 13 years of age. If you are under the age of 13, you must ask your parent or guardian to assist you while accessing/viewing this Website.  If you are the parent or guardian of a child under 13 years of age and believe that they have disclosed personally identifiable information to us, please contact us at webmaster@childrensaidnyc.org, and be sure to include in your message the same user name and password and/or e-mail address that your child submitted, if applicable. 
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THIRD PARTY WEBSITE
We also provide links to – and share functions with - a variety of third-party social media sites and/or websites – such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ - and others as a service to you, in order to provide you i) additional information and/or content related Children’s Aid, or ii) additional venues in which you can learn about and discuss the activities of Children’s Aid.  Please note that we have no affiliation with these other parties, and cannot control and are not responsible for the information collection, use, and disclosure practices of such third parties; we encourage you to review and understand their privacy practices and policies, if any, before using providing any personally identifying information to them.  We are not responsible for the content or information of these websites, any products or services that may be offered through advertisers or third parties, or any other use of the linked website.
 
HOW WE ATTEMPT TO SAFEGUARD YOUR INFORMATION
We maintain – and ask that any third-party partners who may store information on our behalf to maintain - administrative, technical and physical safeguards for the Website designed to protect your personal information against theft, loss, misuse or unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or destruction of the personal information that we collect from you.  We restrict access to personal information collected about you on the Website to our employees, our affiliates' employees, those who are otherwise specified in this Privacy Policy, or others who need to know such information to provide services to you or in the course of conducting our business operations or activities. However, no website, application or transmission can guarantee security. Thus, while we have established and maintain what we believe to be reasonable procedures to protect the confidentiality, security, and integrity of personally identifying information obtained through the Website and we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us.  When you link to one of our social media venues, the personal information you share is visible to other users and can be read, collected, or used by them. You are responsible for the personal information you choose to submit in these instances,  and understand, acknowledge, and agree that you transmit certain personal information over this Website at your own risk.
 
YOUR INFORMATION AND YOUR CHOICES
To the extent required by law, we provide you with reasonable access to the personally identifiable information you provide to us. Upon appropriate written request we will update or amend your information, but we reserve the right to use any information previously obtained to verify your identity or take other actions that we believe are appropriate and lawful. We will endeavor to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable. We may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, are impractical, or for which access is not otherwise required by local law. Please note we may need to retain certain information for record keeping purposes, and there may also be residual information that will remain within our databases and other records, which will not be removed from such locations. Finally, please note that we are not responsible for removing or deleting information from the databases of third parties (such as service providers) with whom we have shared information about you.
 
USE OF THE WEBSITE FROM OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES
We do not represent or warrant that the Website, or any part thereof, is appropriate or available for use in any particular geographic location. If you choose to access our Website, you do so on your own initiative and at your own risk, and are responsible for complying with all local laws, rules, and regulations applicable in your jurisdiction. Please note that the Website is hosted in the United States and is governed by United States law. If you are visiting the Website from outside the United States, please be aware that your information will be transferred to, stored and processed in the United States where our servers are located and our central database is operated. The data protection and other laws of the United States and other countries might not be as comprehensive as those in your country. By using the Website, you consent to your information being transferred to our facilities and to the facilities of those third parties with whom we share it as described in this Privacy Policy.
 
PRIVACY QUESTIONS AND CONTACTING US
If you have any questions or concerns about our Privacy Policy or data processing, please contact us at webmaster@childrensaidnyc.org.
 
CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY
We reserve the right to revise this Privacy Policy at any time. Please check back regularly to see if there have been any changes to this policy, which you can determine by reviewing the Effective Date listed below. By continuing to use the Website after those changes become effective, you consent and agree to be bound by the revised Privacy Policy.  
 
PRIVACY POLICY EFFECTIVE DATE
This Privacy Policy is effective as of December 12, 2016.

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