Prepare The Future Privacy Policy
Effective as of January 2007.
Welcome
Welcome to the website of Prepare The Future, an organization dedicated to ensuring quality public education for all children. We understand that your privacy is important, and we want you to be informed of what is going on when visiting Preparethefuture.org (“Site,” “We,” or “Us”). We are working to make your personal experience when visiting or using our Site as inspiring and informative as possible. To help us accomplish that goal, we will need to collect and use some information from you when you use our Site.
This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, and protect Personal Information we obtain from and about individuals both online and off-line. Personal Information is information that can be used to identify you or contact you, such as first and last name, email address, or mailing address. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully so that you will understand how we protect your privacy and how we may collect and use Personal Information.
Preparethefuture.org is a general audience website and does not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under 13 years of age. In the event that we learn that we have collected Personal Information from a child under 13 years of age without parental consent, we will delete such information from our database as quickly as possible.
Information We Collect
Personal Information We Collect
We collect Personal Information that you provide such as your name, email address, and contact information when you: 1) sign up to support and be a participant in Prepare The Future; 2) make donations to Prepare The Future; or 3) participate in various activities featured on Preparethefuture.org. We may also ask participants to provide us with information about specific topics they are interested in, so we can better tailor the content of the site to those interests. Prepare The Future participants also provide us with names and email addresses of others in order to invite them to become participants.
Personal Areas
Any Personal Information you post on discussion boards, chat rooms, public question and answer forums, or other public areas (“Public Areas”) of this Site will be disclosed publicly by virtue of your posting and thus is not governed by this Privacy Policy. We do not control the use and disclosure of such information. Personal Information that you post to a Public Area or communicate through a Public Area may be used by third parties to contact you or to communicate this information to others, including in other Public Areas of other websites. Please do not post any information, including Personal Information, in a Public Area that you do not want disclosed to the general public and used without limitation.
General Use of Site
You may use many features of our Site without registering or submitting any Personal Information. In that case, the only information we collect will be the log information our servers automatically record and that your browser sends whenever you visit a website. This log information may include your Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request, and the pages that you visit while on our Site.
How We Use Collected Informaion
Prepare The Future will not use Personal Information you have provided for purposes other than those for which the information was collected, without asking for appropriate permission prior to such use. Uses to which we may put your Personal Information with your permission may include: (1) processing your donations; (2) facilitating participation in Prepare The Future online activities, including discussion boards and chat rooms; (3) addressing requested emails and/or newsletters; and (4) providing information and resources specific to your region.
Prepare The Future participants invite friends to become participants in Prepare The Future by sending invitation emails via our automated invitation system. Inviting friends to join Prepare The Future will create the six pilot Action Trees composed of participants and their invitees who also choose to become participants. When a participant chooses to invite friends to participate in Prepare The Future, we email the friends on the participant’s behalf. Prepare The Future administrators will not contact invitees, until they respond to the invitation. Prepare The Future does not sell or share these email addresses.
Disclosure of Information
Disclosure of Your Personal Information
Except as set forth in this Privacy Policy or as specifically agreed to by you, we will not disclose any Personal Information you provide through our Site to any company or person outside Prepare The Future without obtaining appropriate permission prior to such disclosure.
Your Personal Information may be shared within our organization for the purposes of managing the invitation and response system, responding to any comments or questions you submit, and/or providing follow-up information about our organization.
Prepare the Future administrators will have access to the database of Personal Information generated by all six of the pilot Action Trees. The administrators of each individual Action Tree may be members of other organizations that support Prepare the Future and have agreed to sponsor an Action Tree. These administrators will have access to the Personal Information of only those within the individual action tree they are administering.
Disclosure for Legal Reasons
We may release Personal Information to third parties: (1) to comply with valid legalrequirements such as a law, regulation, search warrant, subpoena, or court order; or (2) in special cases, such as a physical threat to you or others, in which we believe it is reasonably necessary to investigate or prevent harm, fraud, abuse, or illegal conduct.
Disclosure to Operations and Maintenance Contractors
Third parties with which we contract to maintain or service the Site or assist with our operations sometimes have limited access to your Personal Information in the course of providing products or services to Us. These contractors include vendors and suppliers that provide Us with technology, services, and/or content related to better operation and maintenance of our Site and others such as companies that process mailings. Access to your Personal Information by these contractors is limited to the information reasonably necessary in order for the contractor to perform its limited function for Prepare The Future. We require that these contractors 1) protect the privacy of your Personal Information consistent with this Privacy Policy, and 2) not use or disclose your Personal Information for any purpose other than providing us with products and services.
Disclosure to Linked Sites
For your convenience Prepare The Future may provide links to websites operated by organizations other than Prepare The Future ("Third Party Websites"). Such websites are not governed by this Privacy Policy. Prepare The Future does not endorse and is not responsible for the privacy practices of these Third Party Websites. If you choose to link to one of these Third Party Websites, you should review the privacy policy posted on that Website to understand how that Third Party Website collects and uses your Personal Information.
Disclosure of Aggregate Information
Prepare The Future may provide non-Personal Information about you to third parties that does not allow you to be identified or contacted and that is combined with the non-Personal Information of other users (“Aggregate Information”). For example, we may inform third parties regarding the number of users of our Site and the activities they conduct while on our Site. We may not limit the third parties' use of the Aggregate Information, except that we may require third parties to whom we disclose Aggregate Information to agree that they will not attempt to make this information personally identifiable by combining it with other databases or otherwise.
Security
Prepare The Future uses reasonable administrative, technical, personnel, and physical measures to safeguard Personal Information in our possession against loss, theft and unauthorized use, disclosure, or modification. Prepare The Future requires its employees to treat all Personal Information as confidential. Though we use our best efforts to keep all data secure, we are not responsible for breach or misuse by others.
Protecting the safety of your credit card information is also important to us. We use SecureSocket Layer (SSL) technology to protect the security of your credit card information as it is transmitted to us. We also encrypt your credit card number when we transfer that information to participating merchants and maintenance contractors. In addition, we do not keep a record of your credit card number after we have submitted it to our processing center.
Online donations to Prepare The Future are processed by Authorize.Net. For more information about Authorize.Net’s security practices, please read their privacy policy, at http://www.authorize.net/company/privacy/.
Choice
Your Privacy Choices
You are not required to submit any Personal Information to Prepare The Future. However, Prepare The Future participants may provide us with names and email addresses of others in order to invite them to become participants.
You may opt out of receiving emails from Prepare The Future at any time by clicking “modify my account” on the Site and canceling your account.
Updating Your Personal Information and Contacting Us
If you wish to review, update, and/or delete the Personal Information you have provided us, or if you have questions or concerns about our Privacy Policy, you may contact us at: admin@preparethefuture.org.
Policy Changes
From time to time we may revise this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in the law, our information collection and use practices, the features of our Site, or technology. If we make revisions that change the way we collect or use your Personal Information, those changes will be posted in this Privacy Policy and the effective date will be noted at the beginning of this Policy. Therefore, you should review the Privacy Policy periodically so that you are up to date on our most current policies and practices. If we materially change our practices regarding collection or use of your Personal Information, your Personal Information will continue to be governed by the Policy under which it was collected unless you have been provided notice of, and have not objected to, the change.
