Your Privacy is Important.
At Bluffton Self Help we understand that privacy is important. We are strongly committed to protecting the privacy of our donors and visitors to our website. The following information is designed to help you better understand the information we gather from our website and through our services, how we protect the information once we gather it, and whether and how we disclose it to anyone.
We may, from time to time, make changes to this policy. By visiting this website, you are accepting the practices described in the current version of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy, we would encourage you to contact us and provide us your feedback. Your opinion is important to us.
Please note that this Privacy Policy applies only to this website and not to other companies’ or organizations’ websites, including any websites to which we link. You are advised to consult the privacy policies of other websites that you visit.
How and Why We Gather Non-Personal Data
Our primary goals in collecting personal information are to provide you with a smooth, efficient, and customized experience, to send you information upon your request, and to thank you for your generosity as a donor.
In general, we automatically gather about how www.bluffsonselfhelp.org is being accessed and used, such as the number and frequency of visitors to this website and what features of the website are most popular to our visitors.
This collective data helps us to determine how much our visitors use parts of the website, and to do internal research on our users’ demographics, interests, and behavior, so as to better understand and serve you.
How and Why We Gather Personal Data
If you make a donation we will request personally identifiable information about you, such as your name, address, phone number, email address and debit/credit card information. We seek such information primarily to facilitate donations and to communicate with you about them. In addition, we may use such information to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, analyze website usage, improve our content and product offerings, and customize our website’s content, layout and services. If you click “yes” when prompted, we may use personal information to contact you and send you information, such as through e-mail updates.
If you sign up for any of our services including which allow you to invite your friends to donate to us, we will not sell, share or rent your friends’ email addresses to anyone, nor use them for any purpose other than inviting them to donate to Bluffton Self Help at your request.
Unless you specify that a gift is “anonymous” or otherwise request that your name not be listed, we list the names of donors who give $1,000 and up in some brochures and benefit programs, so as to recognize their generosity publicly. We do not sell, share or rent our donor lists to anyone, nor do we include donor names in any direct mail solicitations.
We may use outside service providers to facilitate Bluffton Self Help’s website and overall operation and to perform functions on our behalf, such as sending postal mail and email, removing repetitive information from donor lists, analyzing data, processing credit card payments, and providing customer service. These third parties may have access to your personal information as needed to perform their functions, but they may not use it for any other purpose.
Social Networking Sites
Bluffton Self Help operates and maintains social networking pages and venues on websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and Flickr. Bluffton Self Help will, from time to time, import comments and posts from these third-party websites to this website. If you post to any of Bluffton Self Help’s social networking pages on third-party websites, you are providing information to the public and do so at your own risk. Further, Bluffton Self Help may use these postings on its website without further notice or compensation to you. Please visit the privacy policies of any third-party websites before posting to Bluffton Self Help’s pages there.
Cookies
“Cookies” are small files placed on your hard drive; each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser preferences allow it.
Cookies help us to provide customized services and information that is targeted to your interests. We use cookies to tell us how and when pages in our website are visited, what our users’ technology preferences are (such as what type of video player they use), and whether our Website is functioning properly.
You are always free to decline our cookies Doing so may require you to re-enter your password more frequently when you visit our site. If you decide to allow our cookies, a number of companies offer utilities designed to help you visit websites anonymously.
Security
We care about the security of your transactions and use standard industry practices to safeguard your information.
If you donate on our website, we will save your email in a cookie, but your credit card information is never stored on our website. In an effort to keep our donation process as safe as possible for our donors, we prefer to partner with Paypal and Pay Portal for any money-based or credit card transactions. These are both highly secure third-party sites. We do not control the use of cookies by third parties.
You should be aware, however, that “perfect security” does not exist on the Internet, and that third parties may be able to intercept private communications and/or access your personally identifiable information.
Sharing Information
In general, we will not sell, share or rent information about you in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement.
We do, however, cooperate with governments and private parties to enforce laws. Should there ever be an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, or other activity connected to this website that is illegal or may expose us or you to liability, we will disclose any information about you to government officials and private parties in accordance with state and federal laws.
Policy Towards Children
We are concerned about the safety and privacy of children who use the Internet. Although we encourage children to learn more about our organization and opportunities to serve their communities, we encourage that this is done with parental supervision.
Consistent with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”), we will never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 16 without prior verifiable parental consent. The Donation feature on our website invites children to participate in a charitable giving program. In compliance with COPPA, before collecting and storing any information from prospective participants, we take reasonable measures to verify their age. Users whom we establish to be under 16 will not be permitted to participate in the Donation program until we receive parental permission.
To obtain parental permission, we request that the child provide the email address of a parent. We then send an email to the parent seeking permission to collect the child’s information. The parent can revoke consent at any time by contacting us at privacy@blufftonselfhelp.org. This will cancel the child’s activities on the Gift Registry program and will result in the deletion of the child’s information from our files.
If we become aware that a child under 16 has provided us with personally identifiable information without verifiable parental consent, we will use our best efforts to remove such information from our files. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with personally identifiable information without verifiable parental consent, he or she should contact us at privacy@blufftonselfhelp.org.
Thank you for visiting our website. If you have any questions about our website or our Privacy Policy, please contact us at:
Bluffton Self Help
P. O. Box 2420
Bluffton, SC 29910
843-757-8000
843-757-6600 (fax)
Updated: (August 12, 2012)
