Beam Center Privacy Policy

Your Privacy Rights

Effective Date: November , 2022

This Privacy Policy describes the types of information gathered by Beam Center Inc. (“Beam Center”, “us” or “we”) in the process of providing https://www.beamcenter.org/ (which includes information, events, newsletters, updates and similar materials, collectively referred to as the “Site”), how we use the information, with whom the information may be shared, what choices are available to you regarding collection, use and distribution of information, and our efforts to protect the information you provide to us through the Site.

By using the Site, you consent to allow us to process information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Please also refer to our User Agreement here, which are fully incorporated in this Privacy Policy. 

This policy is subject to change. If our information retention or usage practices change, we will let you know by posting the Privacy Policy changes on the Site and/or otherwise making you aware of the changes. Your continued use of the Site following our notice of changes to this Privacy Policy means you accept such changes. Please refer to the “Effective Date” above to see when this Policy was last updated.

Territoriality

Regardless of where our servers are located, your personal data may be processed by us in the United States, where data protection and privacy regulations may or may not be to the same level of protection as in other parts of the world. By visiting the Site, you unequivocally and unambiguously consent to the collection and processing in the United States of any information collected or obtained by us through voluntary submissions, and, to the extent possible, that U.S. law governs any such collection and processing. 

This Privacy Policy may be subject to the provisions of the EU General Data Protection Regulation and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (collectively, the “GDPR”), and other applicable privacy laws. Under the GDPR, Beam Center is a data “Controller”. If you are an individual located in the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, the European Economic Area, or Switzerland (collectively, and for the purposes of this Privacy Policy, the “EEA”), you are a “Data Subject” with certain protected privacy rights concerning your “Personal Data.” We will take commercially reasonable steps to maintain compliance with GDPR. Your Personal Data may identify you as a person, and thus may be referred to in this Privacy Policy as Personally Identifiable Information ("PII").

1. Who Collects Your Information On Our Site?

We do. Under the GDPR, Beam Center is what is known as a “Controller” of the Personal Data that you provide us with.  We collect information from you on the Site, and we are responsible for protection of your information.

2. What Information Does Beam Center Collect?

A. Personal Information.  We collect certain personal information about you, which may be supplied when you make a donation, when you sign up for a newsletter, when you register for an event, when you use the Site, when you submit information to us, and from third parties. The types of personal information we collect and save include:

  • Name, physical or mailing address, phone number, email address, payment information; 

  • Location-based information; and

  • Technical information collected in our logs, such information may include standard web log entries that contain your IP address, browser history, first-party cookies (session and persistent), third-party cookies, notifications of when you have read an email that we sent you, web beacons, page URL, and timestamp.

You may provide us with information when you interact with us through email or through other use of the Site. We may retain such information in order to provide you with the functions or services of the Site.

The Site may be integrated with third party social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram (“Platforms”). If you choose to interact with the Platforms through the Site, the Platforms may make additional Personal Information about you available to us.

Although it may appear that we collect financial information, it is actually collected and processed through our third-party payment processor, Stripe. To understand how Stripe process your information, please visit Stripe’s privacy policy. Stripe may collect information such as banking information or credit card number, name, CVV code or date of expiration, from you through the use of the Site.  Beam Center cannot access and does not hold your financial information, but we may collect the personal information you entered in association with your payment and the payment amount for accounting and tax letter purposes.

B. Non-personal Information.  Non-personal information is non-personally identifiable or anonymous information about you, including but not limited to browser information, the pages accessed most frequently, how pages and features are used, time spent on a page, and similar non-personal data.

Automatically tracking Internet Protocol (IP) addresses is one method of automatically collecting information about your activities online and information volunteered by you. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your device whenever you surf the internet. Further, some functionality of the Site may utilize web beacons, pixel tags, third-party cookies, embedded links, and other commonly used information-gathering tools. 

If non-personal information is paired to any of your PII, we will treat the non-personal information as if it were also PII.

C. Aggregate Information.  We may also collect anonymous, non-identifying and aggregate information, the date and time of any request you make, your language preference, pages you visit, the referring website, the website you go to immediately after visiting our Site, and the domain name of your internet service provider.

3. Why Is My Information Being Collected?

We accept and gather information in an effort to provide the Site to you.  We need to collect your personal information so that we can respond to your requests for information or to be added to our email lists, process donations and event registrations, enforce our User Agreement, and otherwise provide the Site. We also collect aggregate information to help us better design the Site. 

4. How Do We Use the Information We Collect?

A. We use the personal information you provide for the purposes for which you have submitted it, including:

  • Internal Uses. We may use your PII to respond to your inquiries, to fulfill your requests for information, track usage trends, conduct usage experiments, develop and improve the Site and other offerings, and perform research and analytics.

  • Creating and Maintaining Your Profile. We may use your PII to create and maintain a profile for you to respond to inquiries and process donations.

  • Communicating With You About Our Site. We may use your PII to send you information about new services and other items that may be of interest to you.

  • Sending Administrative and Promotional Emails. We may use your PII to send you emails to: (a) confirm your account information and your other PII; (b) provide donation receipt (c) confirm registration; (d) provide you with information regarding the Site; (e) inform you of changes to this Privacy Policy, our User Agreement, or our other terms, conditions, or policies; or (f) provide you with information on our other services and products, or promotions related to the Site or our other services and products.

  • Donation Acknowledgments and Annual Report. We may use the information you provided in association with your donation to acknowledge your gift in our annual report. 

B. We may use anonymous information that we collect to improve the design and content of our Site. We also may use this information in the aggregate to analyze how our Site is used, as well as to offer you programs or services.  We may use any anonymous, aggregate information, which may include or be based on your information, without restriction.

5. Do We Share Your Personal Information?

We will not share your personal information except: (a) for the purposes for which you provided it; (b) with your consent; (c) as may be required by law or as we think necessary to protect our organization or others from injury (e.g., in response to a court order or subpoena, in response to a law enforcement agency request, or when we believe that someone is causing, or is about to cause, injury to or interference with the rights or property of another); or (d) with persons or organizations with whom we contract to carry out internal operations or activities. Upon notice to you, we may share your personal information with collaborating partners or event co-hosts.

We may also share aggregate information with others, including affiliated and non-affiliated organizations.

Finally, we may transfer your personal information to a third party, or our successor-in-interest, in connection with, or as the result of, an acquisition, sale, merger, reorganization or bankruptcy involving our company.

6. How Can You Access And Control Your Information?

You may revise or edit your information by sending us an email to contact@beamcenter.org. For instructions on how you can further access your personal information that we have collected, or how to correct errors in such information, please send an email to contact@beamcenter.org. We will also promptly stop using your information and remove it from our servers and database at any time upon your e-mail request to do so. To protect your privacy and security, we will take reasonable steps to help verify your identity before granting access, making corrections, or removing your information. You may opt-out of: our use of your information other than for the primary purpose for which you provided it; promotional emails (including via the unsubscribe link in any such promotional email from us); and from being included in an online directory, by emailing us at contact@beamcenter.org. 

7. How Do We Store and Protect Your Information?

A. After receiving your personal information, we will store it on our servers for future use. We have procedures in place to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and correctly use the information we collect in accordance with industry best practices.  Unfortunately, no data transmission over the internet or data storage solution can ever be completely secure. As a result, although we take industry-standard steps to protect your information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to or receive from us or that we store on our or our service providers' systems.

B. If you are using the Site from outside of the USA, you understand that your connection will be through and to servers located in the USA, and the information you provide will be securely stored in our servers and internal systems located within the USA.

C. We retain and store your PII until you request us to remove it from our servers. 

8. How Do We Use Cookies And Other Network Technologies?

A. To enhance your online experience with us, our web pages use "cookies." Cookies are text files that our web server may place on your computer or mobile device to store your preferences. Cookies, by themselves, do not tell us your e-mail address or other PII unless you choose to provide this information to us. Once you choose to provide PII, however, this information may be linked to the data stored in the cookie. Although it may be possible to turn off the collection of cookies through your device or browser, certain features of the Site may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

B. Our Site uses Google Analytics, provided by Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 (“Google”).  Google Analytics uses cookies and similar technologies to collect and analyze information about use of the Site and report on activities and trends.  This service may collect information regarding the use of other websites, apps and online resources.  For more information on how Google uses data when you use our Site please follow this link: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. You may be able to opt-out of some or all of Google Analytics features by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, available at, https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.  

C. Beam Center or its service providers may also use "pixel tags," "web beacons," "clear GIFs" or similar means (collectively, "Pixel Tags") in connection with some of our Site pages and HTML-formatted email messages for purposes of, among other things, compiling aggregate statistics about website usage and response rates. A Pixel Tag is an electronic image, often a single pixel (1x1), that is ordinarily not visible to website visitors and may be associated with cookies on visitors’ computers or mobile devices. Pixel Tags allow us and our service providers to count users who have visited certain pages of our Site, to deliver customized services, and to help determine the effectiveness of promotional or fundraising campaigns. When used in HTML-formatted email messages, Pixel Tags can inform the sender of the email whether and when the email has been opened.

D. As you use the internet, you leave a trail of electronic information at each website you visit. This information, which is sometimes referred to as "clickstream data”, can be collected and stored by a website's server. Clickstream data can reveal the type of computer and browsing software you use and the address of the website from which you linked to our Site. We may use clickstream data as a form of non-personally identifiable information to determine how much time visitors spend on each page of our Site, how visitors navigate through the Site, and how we may tailor our web pages to better meet the needs of visitors. We will only use this information to improve our Site.

E. Do Not Track. At present, the Site does not specifically respond to browser do-not-track signals.

9. Collection of Information by Others.

The Site uses third-party plugins to process donations, event registration, newsletters sign ups, and other functionalities. These plugins might collect, save, and share your information based on their privacy policy. This Privacy Policy is only applicable to our Site. 

10. ‘EEA’ Privacy Rights.

If you currently reside in the EEA, the GDPR applies to your PII and you are a Data Subject.  The GDPR requires that we, in our capacity as a Controller, have a legal basis to process your PII.  

A. We process your PII under one or more of the following legal bases: 

  • Processing is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests; 

  • To perform the contract that we are about to enter with you (e.g., our User Agreement); 

  • To comply with a legal obligation; and/or

  • If we have your consent to do so, such consent capable of being revoked at any time.

B. Under the GDPR, as a Data Subject you have certain rights. They are:

  • The right to be informed. This is your right to be informed about what we are processing, why, and who else the data may be passed to.

  • The right of access. This is your right to see what data about you is held by us.

  • The right to rectification. This is the right to have your data corrected or amended if what is held is incorrect in some way.

  • The right to be forgotten. This is the right to have your personal data to be deleted in the event that such data is no longer required for the purposes it was collected for, your consent for the processing of the data is withdrawn, or the data is being unlawfully processed.

  • The right to restrict processing. This is the right to ask for a temporary halt to processing of your personal data, such as in the case where a dispute or legal case has to be concluded, or the data is being corrected.

  • The right to data portability. This is the right to ask for your personal data to be provided to you in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format.

  • The right to object. This is the right to object to further processing your personal data if such processing is inconsistent with the primary purposes for which it was collected.

  • Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling. This is the right to not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing. The Site does not engage in automated decision making and profiling. 

You can find instructions for enforcing some of these rights elsewhere in this Privacy Policy. 

11. Children and Young People’s Information.

Our Site is designed to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), and associated Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) rules for collecting personal information of/from minors. Under COPPA, Beam Center is an “operator” and as such subject to certain obligations under COPPA with regard to Personal Information pertaining to children under the age of 13. We endeavor to not collect, use, or disclose the Personal Information of a child under the age of 13 without the consent of their parent.

Our Site will not knowingly accept Personal Information from anyone under 13 years old in violation of applicable laws, without consent of a parent. 

A parent may review, edit, object to additional processing, or request the deletion of their child’s Personal Information by emailing us at contact@beamcenter.org. We shall delete a child’s personal information in the event that we find it is collected, used, or disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent of COPPA’s requirements, or immediately seek the parent’s consent for the same. 

Please see the FTC's website (www.ftc.gov) for more information on COPPA.

12. Contact Information

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our Privacy Policy, please contact us via email at contact@beamcenter.org.