Privacy Policy
Introduction
We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it through our compliance with this Policy. This Policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide to us when you visit the website https://instituteforfamily.org (our “Website”), and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting and disclosing that information.
This Policy applies to any information that we collect on and in connection with your use of the Website, including any information in any forms or electronic messages submitted by you to us through our Website. This Policy does not apply to any other information that we collect by any means.
Please read this Policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, you can choose not to use our Website. By accessing or using our Website, you agree to this Policy. This Policy may change from time to time. Your continued use of the Website after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes.
Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It
We may collect several types of information from and about users of our Website, including information by which users may be personally identified or information about a user that is maintained in personally-identifiable form (collectively “Personal Information”). Specifically, we may collect the following:
Your name.
Your job title.
Your company name.
Your e-mail address.
Your mobile telephone number.
Your mailing address.
Your IP address or mobile device ID.
With the exception of your IP address or mobile device ID (which we collect automatically as you navigate through or interact with our Website, as described below in the section titled “Traffic, Usage and Computer/Device Information”), we collect this information directly from you when you submit it to us in connection with registering to obtain additional information from us, completing a survey on our Website, reporting a problem with our Website, or otherwise contacting us about our Website.
Traffic, Usage and Computer/Device Information
Additionally, as you navigate through and interact with our Website, we may automatically collect certain traffic data, usage information, and information about your computer equipment or mobile device, such as your browser and operating system, your wireless carrier, configuration data, clickstream analytics and your actions and patterns when you use our Website. The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include cookies that are stored on the browser of your computer or mobile device, small embedded electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags and single-pixel gifs) and other types of embedded code. We collect this information to manage our content and improve users’ use of our Website; count and review the number of users of our Website and their usage patterns; to track key performance indicators such as pages accessed, frequency of access and other statistical information related to our Website (for example, recording the popularity of certain content and verifying system and server integrity); to identify the portion of users who accesses our Website via different web browsers; to recognize if user is a return user of our Website; to store information about a user’s visits; to remember a user’s preferences; and for similar purposes in connection with monitoring, maintaining and improving our Website.
How We Use Your Information
Generally
We may use the information we collect about you or that you provide to us, including Personal Information, to:
Provide our Website and its contents to you.
Provide you with information you request from us, including informational and promotional content and materials regarding the Website, our mission, our advocacy efforts and our other activities.
Present and receive surveys from you, which we use to improve our Website and inform our choices about form and substance of content delivered to our audiences in the future.
Provide you with support and to respond to your inquiries and customer service and support requests, including to investigate and address your concerns and to monitor and improve our responses.
Update and maintain subscription or e-mail lists.
Help maintain the safety, security, and integrity of our Website, databases and other technology assets and our business.
With respect to automatically-collected traffic, usage and device information, fulfill the purposes described in the section above titled “Traffic, Usage and Computer/Device Information.”
Create profiles of the types of individuals that have similar interests, hobbies or demographic characteristics as you and who may be interested in visiting our Website and learning more about our mission, and target our advertisements to other individuals who match up with these profiles on social media platforms (such as Facebook) and in other media.
Notify you about changes to our Website or this Policy.
Respond to lawful requests for information through court orders, subpoenas, warrants and other legal processes or obligations.
Enforce any contracts between you and us, or for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims.
Evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which information (including Personal Information) held by us is among the assets transferred.
Fulfill any other purpose for which you provide the information.
Serve any other purpose that we describe when you provide the information and for any other purpose with your consent.
AudPop Family Stories Film Challenge
We have partnered with AudPop to present the Family Stories Film Challenge. Please be aware: AudPop has their own privacy policy and terms of service. Any information (including any videos) you choose to share on the AudPop platform are not governed by or controlled by this Policy. You should carefully review any terms, conditions and policies of the AudPop platform before submitting any videos to them or supplying them with any Personal Information. We are not responsible for the privacy or security of any information you provide to the AudPop platform or the information practices of AudPop. We make no representations, expressed or implied, concerning the accuracy, privacy, safety, security, or the information practices of AudPop. The inclusion of a link to the AudPop platform on our Website does not constitute any type of endorsement of AudPop by us. We are not responsible for any loss or damage you may sustain resulting from your use of AudPop or any information you share with the AudPop platform.
For more information, including for links to the AudPop terms of service and privacy policy, please visit https://audpop.com/instituteforfamily/familystories.
Third-Party Websites
Our Website may include links to blogs, social media and third-party websites. These third-party sites have their own privacy policies and terms of use and are not controlled by this Policy. You should carefully review any terms, conditions and policies of such third-party sites before visiting them or supplying them with any personal information. If you follow a link on our Website to any third-party site, any information you provide to that site will be governed by its own terms of use and privacy policy and not this Policy. You may be able to use social media widgets (e.g., the Facebook “Like” button) while using our Website. These widgets will collect your IP Address and identify which page you are visiting on our Website and make your preference information available to third parties. The information collected by such widgets is controlled by third-party privacy policies.
Use and Disclosure of Aggregated or De-Identified Data
We may convert or combine some Personal Information of users into de-identified or aggregated data that does not disclose any of the Personal Information of any individual user. We may use and disclose to third parties any such de-identified or aggregated data (including traffic and usage data that does not identify you personally) for any lawful purpose.
Use of Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics to track and analyze certain traffic and usage statistics regarding the use of our Website, such as the number of visitors to our Website, how visitors are navigating to our Website, visitors’ general geographic region information, how long individuals are visiting our Website, and information about the equipment individuals are using to access our Website (e.g., browser version and operating system). Google Analytics may use a Google Analytics cookie and may collect your IP Address or Mobile Device ID as part of this service (but neither we nor Google Analytics otherwise collects or processes any of your Personal Information in connection with our use of the Google Analytics services). We use this traffic and usage information to gauge, internally, the effectiveness of our advertising efforts and to make improvements to our Website and our marketing and promotional efforts.
For more information, please review the following:
Information about Google’s use of cookies: www.policies.google.com/technologies/types
Information about Google’s use of information from sites or apps that use Google’s services: www.policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
Tracking and “Do Not Track”
Tracking involves the use of cookies, web beacons, or other embedded code or tracking technologies to collect, analyze and store information on a user’s behavior over time on multiple sites, including information on the sites visited, products viewed, products purchased and other online interactions. Tracking information can be used to enable companies to make interest-based (behavioral) advertising available to users on multiple sites that they visit.
We do not currently collect Personal Information about your online activities over time and across third-party sites for tracking purposes. However, we may provide certain of your Personal Information to other parties, including third-party advertisers, ad networks, ad servers, Internet service providers and mobile device providers, or such other parties may use on our Website certain tracking technologies or storage technologies such as cookies, web beacons or embedded code to collect Personal Information about your online activities over time and across third-party sites, and such other parties may use this information to provide measurement services or target ads to you or to others. With limited exceptions, we do not control these third parties’ tracking technologies or storage technologies or how they may be used. Be advised that our Website does not respond to any “DO NOT TRACK” signals sent by your browser or mobile device, and if your browser or mobile device sends a “do not track” signal to our Website, our Website will not treat you differently from users who do not send such signals. For information on how to disable certain third-party tracking technologies, please visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s Consumer Opt-Out page at www.optout.networkadvertising.org/ and the Digital Advertising Alliance’s Consumer Assistance page at www.youradchoices.com/choices.
Disclosure of Your Information
We do not share, sell or lease your Personal Information to any third parties, and we only permit use of your Personal Information internally by our own personnel, except in the following, limited circumstances:
We may disclose Personal Information to any contractors, service providers and other third parties who need to know such information to provide services to us that support our hosting, maintenance, operation and promotion of our Website and our permitted uses of Personal Information under this Policy. For example, we may use a third party cloud-hosting infrastructure service provider (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure) to store certain of your Personal Information securely, we may share certain of your Personal Information with our third-party advertising service providers such as Facebook or other social media platforms, and we use Google Analytics in connection with our Website as described above in the section titled “Use of Google Analytics.”
We may disclose Personal Information to (or permit Personal Information to be collected on our Website by) certain third parties as described in the section above “Tracking and Do Not Track.”
We may disclose Personal Information to a buyer or other successor to our business in the event of a sale of equity or assets, reorganization, merger or a similar corporate transaction, and any due diligence review with respect to any such proposed transaction.
We may disclose Personal Information to comply with any court order, law or legal process, including to meet national security and law enforcement requirements and to respond to any government or regulatory request or audit.
We may disclose Personal Information to enforce or apply any legal agreements between us and you, or if we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property or safety of our customers or others.
We may also disclose your Personal Information for any purpose disclosed when the information is provided, and for any other purpose with your consent.
Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information
You have certain choices regarding the Personal Information you provide to us. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies. If you choose not to accept cookies, you may be unable to access certain parts or pages of our Website, or certain parts, pages or features of our Website may not function properly. To learn more about cookies and how to disallow or manage them, go to: http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.
For information on how to disable certain third-party tracking technologies, please visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s Consumer Opt-Out page at www.optout.networkadvertising.org/ and the Digital Advertising Alliance’s Consumer Assistance page at www.youradchoices.com/choices.
If you do not wish to have your Personal Information used by us to contact you with informational or promotional content or messages, you may send us an email stating your request to information@instituteforfamily.org or you can opt-out by simply clicking on the “Unsubscribe” or “Updating your e-mail preferences,” link in the most recent e-mail you received from us and follow the prompts that appear. This opt-out does not apply to notifications about changes to our Website or this Policy.
Accessing and Correcting Your Information
You may send us an email at information@instituteforfamily.org to request access to any Personal Information that you have provided to us, or to correct or delete that Personal Information. For security reasons, we may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity before we correct, update or delete any Personal Information you provide us. We will evaluate such requests on a case-by-case basis. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.
Users Outside of the United States
Our Website is hosted in the United States and is provided from the United States. It is possible that certain information will be stored on servers in multiple other countries on the “cloud” or other similar distributed hosting platforms. If you are accessing the Website from the European Union, Asia or any other region with laws governing personal data collection, use, and disclosure that differ from United States laws, you are expressly and knowingly consenting to the transfer of your Personal Information from your home country to the United States and other jurisdictions as indicated above, and to our use of such Personal Information in accordance with this Policy.
California “Shine The Light” Disclosure
The California Civil Code permits California residents with whom we have an established business relationship to request that we provide a list of certain categories of Personal Information that we have disclosed to third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year. To make such a request, please send an email to information@instituteforfamily.org or otherwise contact us using the information set forth below. Please mention that you are making a “California Shine the Light” inquiry. Please note, however, that we do not currently disclose any Personal Information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes.
Children Under the Age of 16
Our Website is not intended for children under 16 years of age, and no one under age 16 may provide any information to this Website. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under age 16. If you are under 16 years of age, do not use or provide any information on this Website, make any purchases through this Website, or provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, email address, or any screen name or username you may use. If we learn we have collected or received Personal Information from a child under 16 years of age without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under age 16, please contact us at information@instituteforfamily.org.
Data Security
We have implemented measures designed to secure your Personal Information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration and disclosure. All information that you provide to us is stored on our servers behind firewalls, and certain Personal Information will be encrypted using secure socket layer (SSL) technology.
The safety and security of your information also depends on you. When we have given you (or when you have chosen) a password for access to certain parts of our Website, you are responsible for keeping that password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information over the Internet is not completely secure. Although we have implemented security measures that we think are adequate, we cannot guarantee the security of your Personal Information transmitted to our Website. Any transmission of Personal Information is at your own risk. We are not responsible for the circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Website.
Changes to Our Privacy Policy
We post any changes we make to our Policy on this page. If we make material changes to how we treat our users’ Personal Information, we will notify you through a notice on the Website home page. The date the Policy was last revised is identified at the top of the page. You are responsible for periodically visiting our Website and this Policy to check for any changes.
Contact Information
The Institute for Family is founded by Children’s Home Society of North Carolina, Inc., a North Carolina non-profit corporation. To ask questions or comment about this Policy and our privacy practices, you may contact us via e-mail at information@instituteforfamily.org, reach us via telephone at (800) 632-1400, or write to by mail at 604 Meadow Street, Greensboro, NC 27405.