My Benetech Permission Communications and Privacy Policy

Benetech respects your privacy. We only contact or send email to those individuals who have voluntarily requested communication from us. To further our commitment to user and visitor privacy, Benetech online fundraising and communications services have been designed from the ground-up for permission-based communications.

When visiting the My Benetech portion of our website, you may provide information to us, access and provide information to web services, or link to other websites or companies with which we do business. The only personal information Benetech has access to is what you provide voluntarily, and it is used only to provide communications and information you have requested. We use standards-based technologies to ensure private or confidential information is protected, and adhere to policies that prevent unauthorized use of your personal information—including the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and COPPA of 2000.

The My Benetech portion of our website and the associated email communications services are provided by Papilia, with whom Benetech has contracted for these activities.

The following terms govern the My Benetech portion of our website. These terms do not govern the websites or online properties of other parties to which we may only provide links, because Benetech is not responsible and cannot control the privacy practices or content of those sites. The main Benetech website has its own Privacy Policy, located at [link], which covers the rest of our website.

What personal information is collected, and how is it used?

Our registration forms allow supporters to give us contact information that may include name, email address, format preference (HTML vs. Text), address, interests and similar information. If you want to make an online donation, you are required to provide a credit card number, which is shared with and verified by VeriSign (see below). We never sell, share or trade any of our supporter information with other companies outside of what is specified here. Benetech does not store credit card numbers.

When possible, we collect the domain name and email address of visitors to the My Benetech website and the email addresses of those who communicate with us via email or register to the website. We also record information on the pages users visit; and information that is volunteered by our supporters (e.g., survey information and/or site registrations, name, address, telephone number and billing address when a donation is processed).

We use supporter information from the website and email communications (such as registration forms, interest category collected, etc.) to send supporter requested and relevant information about Benetech to our clients. We also collect voluntarily-provided personal information to:

Process and document donations
Grant access to a Benetech-hosted webinar or demonstration.
Customize the content you see
Contact you regarding our nonprofit projects, products and services (unless you elect not to receive such information)

If, for any reason, you would like to be removed from our email list, you can unsubscribe by clicking on the unsubscribe link present in any of our messages, or by replying to sender with "remove" in the subject line.

You can view your personal information that is collected by Papilia by logging into your My Benetech account from any eBulletin that is sent. See the information below on how to request any changes to this information.

We also collect anonymous information on portions of our website that visitors access or visit. We monitor and track information, including usage patterns of visitors to our website. We use this information to improve our website, operations and client services.

Benetech also collects information from our server logs including your IP address and information contained within cookies created by Benetech. We use this information to monitor the health of our servers, analyze trends, track user behavior, gather demographic information, and deliver a user experience on our site that is personalized. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.

Information Sharing

As part of our commitment to ensuring the privacy of subscribers, Benetech does not sell or rent names, email addresses or any other personally identifiable information with anyone. Benetech will share personal information about you or your organization ONLY when:

You provide your consent;
We need to share your information to provide a product or service you have ordered or requested;
We need to send the information to companies who have a business relationship with Benetech — or who work on Benetech’s behalf — to assist us with our activities (NOTE: These companies do not have any rights to use your personal information beyond the scope of what is necessary to assist us and are under contract not to disclose any personal information to anyone.);
We comply with and respond to court orders or other legal processes.

Information from Children

We do not seek to collect personal information about children through the My Benetech website. If a child submits information to us through any part of our website, and we know that the user submitting the information is a child, we delete the information as soon as we discover it and do not use it for any purpose, nor do we disclose it to third parties.

Use of "Cookies"

The My Benetech website, like most websites today, relies on cookies for various reasons. The My Benetech site can only access and edit cookies created for the My Benetech domain – we cannot access cookies created by other sites. Cookies allow Websites to “remember” information about its users. By taking advantage of the features of cookies, we can give convenience to our users and ease the task of personalizing the user experience.

Your browser is probably set to accept cookies. However, you can configure your browser to refuse cookies. By doing so, you may find that some areas of your My Benetech will not work as expected.

Choice/Opt-Out

Benetech provides users with the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us at any time. Benetech gives you the following options for removing your information from our database to not receive future communications.

You can e-mail us at [email protected]
You can click on the "Unsubscribe" link included at the bottom of your e-mail and follow the instructions on the webpage.
You can send us a letter to Information, Benetech, 480 S. California Ave, Suite 201, Palo Alto, CA 94306 USA.

Our unsubscribe requests are processed within five (5) business days. You are immediately excluded from all future promotional mailings of that specific list. Please note that this does not include transactional emails (such as donation acknowledgments, tax receipts and password reminders) that are sent as a result of future actions on your part.

You also have the ability to request Benetech correct, edit or erase your personal information at any time. To request a correction/deletion, please send email to [email protected]. Please allow up to 72 hours for changes to take effect.

VeriSign

VeriSign is our partner for online transactions, and we share with them only information that is required for an online transaction. VeriSign is the leading provider of Certificate Authority enabling secure (via SSL) e-commerce and communications. The VeriSign mark assures Internet security and provides robust SSL encryption for every site visitor. Benetech protects online transaction information using a VeriSign SSL Certificate. Note: If a website address starts with https, it is encrypted using SSL.

Share with Friends

If you elect to use our referral service for informing friends about Benetech, we ask you for the friend's name and email address. We will automatically send the friend a one-time email inviting them to visit the site. We store this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email. The friend may contact us at [email protected] to request the removal of this information from our database. We do not keep the friend’s information except if the friend registers and/or donates.

We support the Plaxo Address Book Widget which allows supporters to easily import their address book information from various third party sources into My Benetech. While using the Plaxo Address Book Widget, you may be prompted for authentication information to access your address book information from selected sources. All user information passed through the Plaxo Address Book Widget, including authentication information and address book information, is used only to import the your information into the My Benetech site. Plaxo does not permanently store of your information within the Plaxo service and that information is discarded once usage of the Plaxo Address Book Widget has been completed. For more information regarding the Plaxo Address Book Widget, please see http://www.plaxo.com/api.

One of the benefits of using this capability is to encourage mutual support of an organization among peers. Share with Friends allows the original friend to see what kind of activity his or her friends is generating, including number of donations and donation amounts. A Friend will be able to see the following metrics: Friends Invited, Friends Converted to Supporters, Conversion Rate, Number of Supporters that have used Share with Friends, Total Dollar Amount from Friends and Average Donation. It is important to note that all of these metrics are shown in aggregate and individually, and the original friend will be able to see their friends’ donation activities.

Surveys

We may conduct occasional online surveys via our website or via an email newsletter. These surveys are entirely voluntary and supporters may easily decline to participate. Participating in an online survey does not automatically add a name to the subscriber list for any mailings.

Privacy Policy changes

We maintain the option to change this privacy policy at any time by posting a new version of it to our website. Please review this privacy policy periodically to stay abreast of any changes that may have been made to it. Your continued use of our website after the date that such changes are posted will be deemed to be your agreement to the changed terms.

Questions regarding this privacy policy

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this website, or your dealings with this website, you can contact Benetech at:

480 California Ave, Suite 201
Palo Alto, CA 94306 USA.

We can be reached via email at [email protected] or by telephone at (650) 644-3400.