SHELTERS FOR HOPE
PRIVACY POLICY
Introduction
The general principles that guide our use of information are derived from and informed by our organizational purpose and practices. We are dedicated to using our best efforts toward the protection of the migrant guests at our facilities. This encompasses their personal safety and security, as well as information about individual identities, locations of origin, and descriptions of individual circumstances. We are also conscientious stewards of resources that donors and others provide to help us in carrying out our mission.
The above serves as the foundation for our Privacy Policy governing information and e-commerce. That starts with collecting and maintaining the minimum necessary data elements to run our systems and the business aspects of our operations. We maintain this information in an encrypted form in a secure environment.
The Types of Information We Collect
When you visit our website, you may provide two types of information:
· Personal information you knowingly disclose that is collected on an individual basis.
· Website use information that we collect on an aggregate basis as you and others navigate our website.
More About the Types of Information Collected
Personal information:
You may voluntarily supply us with personal information, including your email address, postal address, home or work telephone number and other personal information for such purposes as correspondence, subscribing to our newsletter, placing an order, making a donation, requesting specific information, or participating in online surveys. If you choose to correspond with us through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received by mail and telephone.
Website Use Information:
As with other websites, our site may utilize a standard technology called "cookies" (additional detail below) and web server logs to collect information about how our website is used. Information gathered through cookies and server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our website, and the sites visited just before and just after ours. This information is collected on an aggregate basis. None of this information is associated with the identity of any individual user of our website.
Our Use of the Information You Provide
Generally speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, providing service and support, and making available other products and services to our website users and prospective users. Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about significant changes to our website, new services, or events and activities we think you will find meaningful. The lists used to send you product and service offers are developed and managed under our traditional standards designed to safeguard the security and privacy of all personal information provided by our users. You may, at any time, notify us of your desire not to receive these offers.
More About Cookies
Cookies are a feature of web browser software that allows web servers to recognize the computer used to access a website. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored by a user's web browser on the user's hard drive. Cookies can remember what information a user accesses on one web page to simplify subsequent interactions with that website by the same user or to use the information to streamline the user's transactions on related web pages. This makes it easier for a user to move from web page to web page and to complete commercial transactions over the Internet. Cookies are intended to make your online experience easier and more personalized.
Our Use of Information Collected from Cookies
We use website browser software tools such as cookies and web server logs to gather information about our website users' browsing activities, in order to continually improve our website and better serve our users. This information helps us to design and arrange our web pages in the most useful and user-friendly manner, and to improve how our website meets the needs of our users and prospective users. Cookies also help us collect important business and technical statistics. The information in the cookies lets us trace the paths followed by users to our website as they move from one page to another. Web server logs allow us to count how many people visit our website and evaluate our website's visitor capacity. We do not use these technologies to capture your individual email address or any personally identifiable information about you.
Notices of Changes and New Services
Occasionally, we may use the information we collect to notify you about significant changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. As a user of our website, you will be given the opportunity to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers by clicking on a response box when you receive such an offer or by sending us an email request to admin@sheltersforhope.org.
How we Secure the Transmission of Information
When you send confidential personal information (as in a financial transaction) to us on our website, secure server software that we have licensed encrypts all information you input before it is sent to us. The information is scrambled en route and decoded once it reaches our website. Other email that you send to us may not be secure unless we advise you that security measures will be in place prior to your transmitting the information. For that reason, we ask that you do not send confidential information such as Social Security, credit card, or account numbers to us through an unsecured email.
Our Security Practices – How we Protect your Information
· Information Security: We use encryption/security software to safeguard the confidentiality of your personal information from unauthorized access or disclosure and accidental loss, alteration, or destruction.
· Evaluation of Information Protection Practices: Periodically, our operations and business practices are reviewed for compliance with organization policies and procedures governing the security, confidentiality and quality of our information.
· Access, Training and Expectations of our Staff: Our organization values, ethical standards, policies and practices are committed to the protection of user information. In general, our business practices limit staff access to confidential information, and limit the use and disclosure of such information to authorized persons, processes, and transactions.
Our Information Disclosure and Sharing Practices
We may provide aggregate information about our transactions, website traffic patterns and related website information to our website host/service provider, affiliates or reputable third parties, but this information will not include personally identifying data. We do not provide our mailing list, or any of its personally identifiable elements, to third parties.
Your Ability to Access and Correct Information about You
You may request access to all your personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain in our database by emailing us at admin@sheltersforhope.org. We will apply the corrections that you suggest as soon as practicable.
Our Stance on Legally Compelled Disclosure of Information
We may disclose information when legally compelled to do so. This would apply only in instances when disclosure is clearly required by state or federal law, or in response to a valid court order.
Permission to Use Our Content, Images or Materials
The right to download and store or output the materials in our website is granted for the user's personal use only, and materials may not be reproduced in any edited form. Any other reproduction, transmission, performance, display or editing of these materials by any means mechanical or electronic without our express written permission is strictly prohibited. Users wishing to obtain permission to reprint or reproduce any materials appearing on this site may contact us directly at admin@sheltersforhope.org.
