ChildFund International Privacy Notice

Effective Date: December 2024

We at ChildFund International are grateful to our sponsors, donors, and supporters who help us do our work, and we value your trust and the relationship we have with you. We respect your concerns about privacy and knowing how your information is used and safeguarded. We believe that transparency enhances the quality of our programs, our accountability, and the trust you place in us. As such, we have drafted this Privacy Notice to share how we collect and use your information and how we intend to respect your privacy preferences. 

This Privacy Notice (“Notice”) describes ChildFund International, USA’s (“ChildFund,” “we,” or “us”) practices in connection with the information we collect from visitors to our websites, our sponsors, donors, and supporters (“you”) through www.childfund.org (“Site(s)”) and through offline interactions that we may have with you (collectively the “Services”).  

We encourage you to read this Notice carefully to get a clear understanding of how we collect, use, protect, or otherwise handle certain information we collect from you. By visiting the Site or using any of our Services, you are accepting the practices described in in this Notice. If you do not agree to all the information contained in this Notice, you should not use the Site or Services. 

Your use of our Site or Services and any dispute over privacy are subject to this Notice and our General Terms and Conditions, available at www.childfund.org/legal/, including its applicable limitations on damages and the resolution of disputes. Your registration on our Site and subsequent use of or access to web pages accessible only by registered users is further governed by our Restricted Sites Terms and Conditions available at www.childfund.org/legal/. The General Terms and Conditions and the Restricted Sites Terms and Conditions are incorporated by reference into this Notice.

 

You May Always Change Your Preferences or Opt Out by Contacting Us

Although we’d hate to see you go, we understand everyone has different preferences and we want to honor your exact wishes. Below are the various ways you may opt out of receiving marketing communications from us. Please be aware that we may contact you for administrative purposes or to respond to your inquiries, even if you opt-out as described below.

Email and Text Messages

You may opt out of receiving text messages and emails by following the instructions in those text messages and emails. You may also make your request by contacting us at www.childfund.org/contact/. Please allow at least 10 business days for us to respond to your request to unsubscribe from receiving emails.

Personal Information Sharing with Other Organizations

In order to enhance our fundraising strategies and reduce our costs, ChildFund exchanges portions of our donor lists (names, home address, and giving history) with select nonprofit organizations via membership in certain nonprofit “cooperatives”.  These exchanges help us fundraise and reach new supporters. Please note that you will automatically be included in these data-sharing exchanges unless you opt out. You may, at any time, choose to opt out, on a going forward basis, of sharing your information with such cooperatives by calling us at (800) 776-6767 or emailing us at

questions@childfund.org with “do not share” in the subject line of the email. Please include your full name and address in your email so we can properly identify your record. In every case we will do our best to promptly respond to your request. 

Direct Mail

You may, at any time, choose to opt out of receiving mail from us by calling us at (800) 776-6767 or emailing us at questions@childfund.org. Please allow at least 30-60 days for your address to be removed from any mailings that are currently underway.

Telemarketing

You may, at any time, choose to opt out of receiving phone calls from us by calling us at (800) 776-6767 or emailing us at questions@childfund.org.  Please allow at least 10 business days for us to respond to your request.  

 

Information We Collect

The information we may collect includes information you provide us directly, as well as information provided by third parties or automatically through your use of our Site. 

Information you provide us directly:

Although you may freely visit our Site anonymously and without giving us any personal information, certain Services, requests, and features may require you to provide us or our service providers with certain information such as your name, email address, postal address, phone number, and mobile number, username and password, credit card or other payment information and the contribution amounts of our donors and sponsors on file, or similar information that identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable person (collectively, “Personal Information”).  

You may provide us your Personal Information in a variety of ways, including over the phone, in email, through a face-to-face conversation, or through offline or online forms on the Site, such as those used to subscribe to newsletters and blogs; sign up for specific projects, initiatives or events; survey supporters; sponsor a child; make a donation; sign a petition or letter; and other similar forms that you populate to allow you to be contacted in furtherance of ChildFund’s activities. It is entirely up to you to decide what, if any, Personal Information you provide. We may supplement the information we collect from you with information we collect from and about you from other online and offline sources, such as public databases, social media platforms and from people with whom you are friends or otherwise connected on social media platforms, and third-party postal address, phone number, email address products, and other sources to provide and collect accurate and updated contact information.

Information that is automatically collected when you visit and interact with the Site:

When you visit and interact with the Site, certain information that does not reveal your specific identity or does not directly relate to an identifiable individual may be collected automatically, including your computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) address; your browser type and operating system; the web pages you were visiting immediately before and after you came to the Site; activities within community discussions; web pages and advertisements that you view and links that you click on within the Site; your bandwidth speed and information about the software programs that are installed on your computer; aggregated data about email click-through rates and user video viewing standard server log information; and information collected through HTML cookies, Flash cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies (collectively, “Other Information”). For more information, please see our discussion of Cookies and Other Technologies below.

How We Use the Personal Information We Collect

We use the Personal Information we collect to support our charitable mission, including in the following ways:

Email Communications

When you ask us to send you email such as a free email newsletter, you may provide us with certain information such as your email address so we can fulfill your request. You may choose to provide additional information as well, such as your postal address and phone number.

Send a Postcard to a Friend

If you take advantage of our Send a Postcard to a Friend feature, we ask for your friend’s and your first name and email addresses. We use your friend’s name and email address only to send the information you requested that we forward. We don’t keep your friend’s email address or use it for any other purpose.

My Correspondence

If you take advantage of our My Correspondence feature to send and receive Digital Communications to your sponsored child(ren), ChildFund may screen Digital Communications in your My Correspondence Account consistent with ChildFund’s internal policies, including but not limited to its policies on child sponsorship correspondence and child protection. Consistent with its application of such policies, ChildFund reserves the right to remove, edit, or refuse to transmit or refuse to facilitate transmittal of

Digital Communications. ChildFund, may in its sole discretion, store any Digital Communications in your My Correspondence Account for a commercially reasonable period following the end of your sponsorship relationships through ChildFund. You should review the Restricted Sites Terms and Conditions for additional important information regarding the content you upload using the My Correspondence feature.

Donations

When you make a donation through our Site (for example, by sponsoring a child), we may ask you to submit certain Personal Information so we can process your donation. The credit card information you provide is used only to fulfill the transaction you have requested. We maintain your contact information in our records so we can contact you to provide ChildFund program information and information on additional giving opportunities.

Questionnaires and Surveys

We occasionally may ask visitors to our Site to complete online surveys and opinion polls about their activities, attitudes, and interests. These surveys help us understand the needs of our visitors. We do not keep any Personal Information about you in connection with your participation in a Site survey unless you specifically agree to provide this information.

Contests and Games

Our site occasionally may contain notices of contests or games we are conducting through other sites, which you may enter electronically in some cases. We use the information you provide to conduct the contest or game (for example, to contact you if you are a winner). We won’t use the information you have provided to enter the contest or game for any other purpose unless you’ve agreed otherwise.

To Fulfill Your Requests or Respond to Your Inquiries

You may choose to contact us through a variety of means as described below in “How to Contact Us” or by visiting www.childfund.org/contact/. We provide our contact information and online forms so you may, for example, ask a question, update your address, or request more information. We use the information you provide to fulfill your requestor respond to your inquiries.

Providing Personalized Services

We may use your Personal Information to personalize the content, improve the navigability of the Site, and customize your experience on the Site, including targeted content, offers, and advertising on the Site, or via email or text message. We may also use it to notify you about special programs, offers, products and services that we believe will be of interest to you, either from ChildFund or on behalf of our affiliates or other third parties. We will provide personalized services either with your consent or because we have a legitimate interest.

For our Internal Purposes

We may use your Personal Information to protect the security or integrity of the Site or Services and ChildFund, such as by protecting against fraud, unauthorized transactions, claims and other liabilities, and managing risk exposure, including by identifying potential hackers and other unauthorized users. We may also use it to analyze data, identify usage trends, develop promotional campaigns, audit, monitor or prevent fraud, or Site or Services’ enhancement, interaction improvement, or operating and expansion purposes. Lastly, we may use it to enforce our General Terms and Conditions, our Restricted Sites Terms and Conditions, or other program terms. 

Additional Uses

We may use your Personal Information as otherwise described to you at the point of collection.

 

How We Use and Disclose Other Information We Collect

We may use and disclose Other Information for any purpose, except where we are required to do otherwise under applicable law. If we are required to treat Other Information as Personal Information under applicable law, then we may use it for all the purposes for which we use and disclose Personal Information. In some instances, we may combine Other Information with Personal Information. If we do, we will treat the combined information as Personal Information as long as it is combined. We may share aggregate or de-identified information about users with third parties for marketing, advertising, research, or similar purposes.

 

How We Disclose Personal Information

Your Personal Information may be disclosed:

• To our service providers who provide services such as website hosting, data analysis, payment processing, information technology and related infrastructure provisions, customer service, email delivery, auditing, and other similar services.
• To enhance our fundraising strategies and reduce our costs, we are members of certain nonprofit database “cooperatives”. We may occasionally share your name, address, and giving history with these cooperatives for marketing purposes.
• To your friends associated with your social media account, to other website users and to your social media account provider, in connection with your social sharing activity, such as if you connect your social media account to your Site account or log-into your Site account from your social media account. By connecting your Site account and your social media account, you authorize us to share information with your social media account provider, friends associated with your social media account, and other website users, and you understand that the use of the information we share will be governed by the recipients’ privacy policy(ies). If you do not want your Personal Information shared with other users or with your social media account provider, please do not connect your social media account with your Site account, and do not participate in social sharing on the Sites.
• By you, on message boards, chat, profile pages, blogs, and other services (including social media pages) to which you are able to post information and materials. Please note that any information you post or disclose through these services will become public and may be available to users of the Site and to the general public. We urge you to be very careful when deciding to disclose your Personal Information, or any other information, on the Websites.
• 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 operations, or assets including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings.
• In addition to the scenarios identified above, we may share Personal Information for any other purposes disclosed to you at the time we collect the information or pursuant to your consent, including if we notify you on the Site that the information you provide will be shared in a particular manner and you provide such information.

In addition, we may disclose your Personal Information (i) if we are required to do so by law, (ii) in response to a request from law enforcement authorities or other government officials, (iii) when we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical harm or financial loss or in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual illegal activity, or (iv) to our affiliates or subsidiaries. 

 

Access to Your Personal Information 

You may modify Personal Information that you have submitted by logging in to your account and updating your profile information. Please note that copies of information that you have updated, modified or deleted may remain viewable in cached and archived pages of the Site for a period of time.

 

Third-Party Payment Processor

ChildFund does not collect or store credit card or other payment information. We use a third-party payment service to process payments made through the Site. If you would like to make a payment through the Site, your Personal Information will be collected by such third party and will be subject to the third party’s privacy policy, rather than this Notice. Please review their terms of use and privacy policy when processing payment, such as https://stripe.com/privacy.  ChildFund has no control over, and is not responsible for, this third party’s collection, use and disclosure of your Personal Information. 

 

Cookies and Other Technologies

We use cookies and other tracking mechanisms to track information about your use of our Site or Services. We may combine this information with other Personal Information we collect from you. Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer’s hard drive through your web browser for record-keeping purposes. Some cookies allow us to make it easier for you to navigate our Site and Services, while others are used to enable a faster login process or to allow us to track your activities at our Site and Service. There are two types of cookies: session and persistent cookies.

• Session Cookies. Session cookies exist only during an online session. They disappear from your computer when you close your browser or turn off your computer. We use session cookies to allow our systems to uniquely identify you during a session or while you are logged in to the Site. This allows us to process your online transactions and requests and verify your identity after you have logged in and as you move through our Site.
• Persistent cookies. Persistent cookies remain on your computer after you have closed your browser or turned off your computer. We use persistent cookies to track aggregate and statistical information about user activity.

Third-Party Cookies.

We may also engage third parties to track and analyze non-personally and personally identifiable Site data. We use the data collected by such third parties to help us administer and improve the quality of the Site and to analyze Site usage. Such third parties may combine the information that we provide about you with other information that they have collected. This Notice does not cover such third parties’ use of the data.

Disabling Cookies.

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but if you prefer, you can edit your browser options to block them in the future. The Help portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your computer from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie or how to disable cookies altogether. Visitors to our Site who disable cookies will be able to browse certain areas of the Site, but some features may not function.

Clear GIFs, pixel tags and other technologies.

Clear GIFs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on your computer’s hard drive, clear GIFs are embedded invisibly on web pages. We may use clear GIFs (a.k.a. web beacons, web bugs or pixel tags), in connection with our Site to, among other things, track the activities of Site visitors, help us manage content and compile statistics about Site usage. We and our third-party service providers also use clear GIFs in HTML emails to our customers, to help us track email response rates, identify when our emails are viewed and track whether our emails are forwarded.

 

Do Not Track

At this time, we do not respond to Do Not Track requests.

Third-Party Analytics.

We use automated devices and applications, such as Google Analytics, to evaluate usage of our Site. We also may use other analytic means to evaluate our Site or Services. We use these tools to help us improve our Site and Services, performance and user experiences. You can learn about Google’s practices by visiting www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners, and you may opt out by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. 

 

User-Generated Content.

We invite you to post content on our Site. If you post content to our Site, all of the information that you post will be available to all visitors to our Site (except, for example, content posted to Restricted Sites using the My Correspondence feature). If you post your own content on our Site (including our Restricted Sites) or Services, your posting may become public and ChildFund cannot prevent such information from being used in a manner that may violate this Notice, the law or your personal privacy.

 

Links to Other Sites

Occasionally we provide links to other sites for your convenience and information. These sites operate independently from our site and are not under our control. These sites may have their own privacy notices in place, which we strongly suggest you review if you visit any linked sites. We are not responsible for the content of these sites, any products or services that may be offered through these sites or any other use of these sites.

 

How We Protect Your Information

We take the security of your personal information seriously and implement a variety of measures to ensure its protection. We use industry-standard encryption to protect your data during transmission, ensuring that your information is secure and cannot be accessed by unauthorized parties. Access to your personal information is restricted to authorized personnel only, with strict access controls and regular reviews of permissions. Credit card information entered on the website is not stored in a readable format. Your data is stored on secure servers protected by firewalls and other advanced security technologies, and we use secure backup solutions to ensure your information is safe in the event of a disaster.

We conduct regular security audits and assessments to identify and address potential vulnerabilities in our systems, helping us stay ahead of potential threats. Our employees receive ongoing training on data protection best practices and are required to adhere to our strict security policies, ensuring that everyone in our organization understands the importance of protecting your information. In the unlikely event of a data breach, we have a comprehensive incident response plan in place, including steps to quickly identify, contain, and mitigate the impact of the breach, as well as notifying affected individuals and authorities as required by law.

We are committed to maintaining the highest standards of data protection and continuously improving our security measures to keep your information safe.

 

Our Commitment to Children’s Privacy

We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from Site visitors that are under the age of 13. If we learn that we have collected any Personal Information on our Site from a Site visitor that is under the age of 13 without verifiable consent from a parent or guardian, we will delete that information from our database as quickly as possible. If you believe that we may have collected information from a Site visitor that is under the age of 13, please contact us at www.childfund.org/contact/.

 

California Privacy Rights

If you are a California resident and have provided Personal Information to us within the previous calendar year, you may be entitled by California law to request information regarding certain categories of Personal Information that we share with third parties for their direct marketing purposes (if any). Your request should be submitted to: 

ChildFund International

Attn: Director Supporter Experience

2821 Emerywood Parkway

Richmond, VA 23294 

In your request, please attest to the fact that you are a California resident and provide a current California address for your response. Within 30 days of receiving such a request, we will provide a response listing the categories of Personal Information disclosed to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes during the previous calendar year along with the names and addresses of those third parties. This request may be made no more than once per calendar year. 

 

Visitors from Outside the United States

The Site is controlled and operated by us from the United States and is not intended to subject us to the laws or jurisdiction of any state, country, or territory other than that of the United States. If you are accessing the Site or Services from outside the United States, please be advised that your Personal Information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, a jurisdiction whose data protection laws may not provide equivalent legal protections for your Personal Information as do the data protection laws in your jurisdiction. By using this Site, you expressly consent to the transfer of your Personal Information to, and the processing of it in, the United States.

 

Updates to This Privacy Notice

We may change or update portions of this Notice at any time and without prior notice to you. Please check back from time to time so you are aware of any changes or updates to the Notice. We will indicate above the effective date of the Notice.

 

How to Contact Us

If you have any questions about our privacy practices, please contact us by visiting www.childfund.org/contact/  or calling us at (800) 776-6767 or (804) 756-2700.