Last Updated: June 2021
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The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (“ACEEE”, “we”, or “us”) wants you to be familiar with how we collect, use, and disclose donor information. This Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information that we collect from our current and prospective donors (“Donors”) through:
- Websites operated by us from which you are accessing this Privacy Policy (the “Websites”);
- HTML-formatted email messages that we send to you that link to this Privacy Policy or other communications with you; and
- Offline business interactions you have with us.
Collectively, we refer to the Websites, emails, and offline business interactions as our “Fundraising Services.”
This Privacy Policy covers only the processing of personal information about current and prospective donors (“Donors”) in the context of making a donation to ACEEE. For more information about our other processing practices, please review our Website Privacy Policy.
Personal Information
“Personal Information” is information that identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable individual. The Fundraising Services collect Personal Information, including:
- Name
- Title
- Organization
- Postal address
- Telephone number
- Email address
- Credit and debit card information
- Information about your donation (e.g., the date and amount of your donation or the conference you choose to support)
- Prospective donor information (e.g., publicly available information on recent donations to other charities)
- Information you choose to share if you inform ACEEE about intended estate gifts
- If you choose to donate stock to ACEEE, we also collect:
- Name of the security;
- Number of shares transferred;
- Name and city of your brokerage;
- Name and telephone number of your broker; and
- Date you spoke with your broker about the donation, or the expected date of transfer.
Collection of Personal Information
We and our service providers may collect Personal Information in a variety of ways, including:
- Through the Fundraising Services:
- We collect Personal Information through the Fundraising Services, such as, when you make a donation on our Website.
- From Other Sources:
- We receive your Personal Information from other sources, for example, publicly available databases, providers of demographic information, or social media platforms.
Where we collect Personal Information, we note which Personal Information you need to share with us so that we can process your donation. If you do not provide the required information, we may not be able to process your donation. If you disclose any Personal Information relating to other people to us or to our service providers in connection with the Fundraising Services, you represent that you have the authority to do so and to permit us to use the information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Use of Personal Information
We and our service providers use Personal Information for the following purposes:
- Processing your donations and fulfilling your requests.
- To process your donation to ACEEE.
- To respond to your inquiries and fulfill your requests, when you contact us via one of our online contact forms or otherwise, for example, when you send us questions, suggestions, compliments or complaints, or when you request donation-related information.
- Sending you donation-related emails or other materials.
- To send you donation-related emails and other news about ACEEE.
- To facilitate social sharing functionality that you choose to use.
- Analyzing Personal Information for business reporting and personalization.
- To analyze or predict Donors’ preferences in order to prepare aggregated trend reports on Donors and their use of our Fundraising Services, so we can improve our Fundraising Services.
- To better understand your preferences so that we can deliver content via our Fundraising Services that we believe will be relevant and interesting to you.
- Aggregating and/or anonymizing Personal Information.
- We may aggregate and/or anonymize Personal Information so that it will no longer be considered Personal Information. We do so to generate other data for our use, which we may use and disclose for any purpose, as it no longer identifies you or any other individual.
- Accomplishing our business purposes.
- For data analysis, for example, to improve the efficiency of our Fundraising Services;
- For audits, to verify that our internal processes function as intended and to address legal, regulatory, or contractual requirements;
- For identifying usage trends, for example, understanding which parts of our Fundraising Services are of most interest to Donors; and
- For determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns, so that we can adapt our campaigns to the needs and interests of Donors.
Disclosure of Personal Information
We do not sell, trade, or share Personal Information with third parties for their own fundraising or marketing purposes, nor do we use Personal Information we collect to send fundraising or marketing mailings on behalf of other organizations, except as indicated in this Privacy Policy.
We may disclose your Personal Information to our third party service providers, to facilitate services they provide to us, such as, website hosting, data analysis, payment processing, information technology and related infrastructure provision, customer service or related benefits (including special promotions), email delivery, auditing, and other similar services.
Other Uses and Disclosures
We may also use and disclose Personal Information as we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) to comply with applicable law, to respond to requests from public and government authorities, to cooperate with law enforcement, or for other legal reasons; (b) to enforce our terms and conditions; and (c) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you, or others. We may use, disclose or transfer your information to a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our assets or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings).
SECURITY
We seek to use reasonable organizational, technical, and administrative measures to protect Personal Information within our organization. Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us in accordance with the “Contacting Us” section below.
CHOICES AND ACCESS
Your choices regarding our use and disclosure of your Personal Information
We give you choices regarding our use and disclosure of your Personal Information for marketing purposes. If you no longer want to receive marketing-related emails from us on a going-forward basis, you may opt out by emailing register@aceee.org or using the ‘Unsubscribe’ option on our website available here.
Please note that if you opt out of receiving marketing-related emails from us, we may still send you important administrative messages, from which you cannot opt out.
How you can update your Personal Information
If you would like to update your Personal Information, you may contact us in accordance with the “Contacting Us” section below. We will respond to your request consistent with applicable law.
In your request, please make clear what Personal Information you would like to have updated. For your protection, we may only implement requests with respect to the Personal Information associated with the particular email address that you use to send us your request, and we may need to verify your identity before implementing your request. We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable.
Please note that we may need to retain certain information for recordkeeping purposes and/or to complete any transactions that you began prior to requesting a change or update (e.g., when you make a donation, you may not be able to change or update the Personal Information provided until after the donation is processed).
THIRD-PARTY SERVICES
This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for the privacy, information, or other practices of any third parties, including any third party operating any website or service to which the Fundraising Services link. The inclusion of a link on the Fundraising Services does not imply endorsement of the linked site or service by us or by our affiliates.
In addition, we are not responsible for the information collection, use, disclosure, or security policies or practices of other organizations, such as Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, or any other app developer, app provider, social media platform provider, operating system provider, wireless service provider, or device manufacturer, including with respect to any Personal Information you disclose to other organizations through or in connection with social media platforms.
THIRD PARTY PAYMENT SERVICE
The Fundraising Services may provide functionality allowing you to make payments to ACEEE using third-party payment services with which you have created your own account. When you use such a service to make a payment to us, your Personal Information will be collected by such third party and not by us, and will be subject to the third party’s privacy policy, rather than this Privacy Policy. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, this third party’s collection, use, and disclosure of your Personal Information.
USE OF FUNDRAISING SERVICES BY MINORS
The Fundraising Services are not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and we do not knowingly collect Personal Information from individuals under thirteen (13).
JURISDICTION AND CROSS-BORDER TRANSFER
Your Personal Information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers. The Fundraising Services are controlled and operated by us from the United States and are not intended to subject us to the laws or jurisdiction of any state, country, or territory other than that of the United States.
SENSITIVE INFORMATION
Unless we request it, we ask that you not send us, and you not disclose, any sensitive Personal Information (e.g., Social Security numbers, information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health, biometrics or genetic characteristics, or criminal background) on or through the Fundraising Services or otherwise to us.
UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
The “Last Updated” legend at the top of this Privacy Policy indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Fundraising Services.
CONTACTING US
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at register@aceee.org or ACEEE, 529 14th St. N.W., Ste. 600, Washington, D.C. 20045. Because email communications are not always secure, please do not include credit card information or other sensitive information in your emails to us.