Last Updated: April 23, 2021
We are Speak for the Trees Boston (SFTTB), a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the size and health of the urban forest in Boston, with a focus on under-served and under-canopied neighborhoods. This Privacy Policy describes how we use and share the personal information we collect from or about you when you use our website (treeboston.org) and related portals, interact with us electronically, in person, at an event, or on the telephone.
We encourage you to read this Privacy Policy and to contact us at trees@treeboston.org if you have any questions or want additional information about our privacy practices.
How we collect and use your information
The personal information we collect about you depends on how and why you interact with us. We may collect personal information directly from you, automatically through our use of cookies and other data collection technologies on our website, or from other third-party sources, including other non-profit organizations’ annual reports. For example:
- If you participate in our Teen Urban Tree Corps Program with parental consent, we will collect your name, home address, phone number, email address, and payroll information. We use this information to process your participation in the Program. In addition, we may also collect your gender or race, if you decide to disclose this information to us, which we use only in the aggregate for our annual reporting purposes.
- If you apply for a volunteer position with us, we will collect your name, email address and phone number. We use this information to process your application and to maintain records of our volunteers.
- If you sign up for our newsletter, we will collect your name and email address. We use this information to add you to our mailing list for news and updates.
- If you participate in surveys or promotions conducted by SFTTB, we may collect your name, contact information, gender, and race. We use this information for community outreach, research on our community impact, and annual reporting.
- If you interact with us on social media, we may collect your social media handle, full name, and other information that you may permit to be shared through your social media settings.
- If you donate to SFTTB, we may collect your name, email address, phone number, home address, credit card number, and bank account information. This information is used to process donor payments and for annual reporting. We have engaged a third party to process your donations – SFFTB does not collect or store your payment card information.
- When you use our website, we may collect information about how you use the website and the device you use to access it. This includes information like your device IP address, device ID, type of browser/operating system, and information about the pages you viewed. We use this information to ensure our website can be viewed on your device, to personalize and tailor your experience on the website, and to improve the functionality of the website by understanding general usage traffic and trends.
In addition, we may use your personal information for our internal purposes, including to provide you with services you requested, send you administrative, transactional, or marketing communications, improving our services, content and web site offerings, and ensuring the security and integrity of our systems.
How we disclose your personal information
We may share your personal information with organizations or individuals outside of SFTTB in the following instances:
- We may share your personal information with organizations or individuals that provide services to us. These services may include, among other things, creating or maintaining our databases and website, payroll or payment processing, and marketing. It is our policy to not allow our service providers to use or disclose your personal information for any purpose other than for providing services to us.
- We may be required to provide your personal information in response to a court order, subpoena, government investigation, to comply with another legal process, or as otherwise required by law.
- We may share your personal information if we believe that doing so is, in good faith, reasonably necessary to enforce our policies, respond to or defend claims, to respond to an emergency, or to protect the rights, property or safety of SFTTB, our community, and/or the public.
- If SFTTB is acquired by or merged with or into another entity, or if all or substantially all of our assets are transferred to another entity, your personal information may be transferred to such entity as part of the transaction
If we need or want to share your personal information in any other circumstance, we will notify you before we do.
Cookies
“Cookies” are small text files that a web site transfers to a web site visitor’s hard disk or browser for added functionality, or for tracking website usage. We use cookies to improve your experience on our website, and measure the effectiveness of our online presence. For example, we use Google Analytics to collect and analyze information about our users’ demographics and interests in order to measure and improve our website. For more information about Google Analytics, please visit https://support.google.com/analytics.
Most internet browsers enable you to erase cookies from your computer hard drive, block all cookies or receive a warning before a cookie is stored. Please refer to your browser instructions or help screen to learn more about these functions. If you choose to disable or reject cookies, portions of the Platform may not be accessible to you or may not function properly.
Do-not-track requests
Our systems do not recognize browser “do-not-track” requests. Your web browser may have settings that allow you to transmit at “Do Not Track” signal when you visit various websites or use online services. Like many websites, our site is not designed to respond to “Do Not Track” signals received from browsers. To learn more about “Do Not Track” signals, you may wish to visit http://www.allaboutdnt.com/.
Your choices
You have choices about how we use the personal information we maintain about you. You may:
- Contact us to correct any incorrect personal information that we maintain about you. You can email us at trees@treeboston.org to request that we correct your personal information.
- Opt-out of receiving marketing emails from us by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link in any marketing email we send you. If you opt-out of marketing emails, you may still receive administrative or transactional emails from us.
Security
We have implemented reasonable security measures to protect against the unauthorized access, acquisition, loss, misuse, or alteration of the personal information under our control. These security measures are designed to safeguard personal information and any online transactions performed on the website. Despite the steps we take to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its security. Therefore, we urge you to keep your personal information in a safe place and to be aware of these risks when sending sensitive personal information to us.
Note to international users
We are located in the United States and we operate our website from the United States. If you are located outside of the United States, please be advised that (i) any information you provide to us or that we automatically collect will be transferred to the United States; and (ii) that by using our website or sharing your personal information, you explicitly authorize its transfer to and subsequent processing in the United States in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Third party links
SFTTB’s web site may contain links to other websites that we do not own or control. When you click on one of these links, you may be transferred to another organization’s website. Our Privacy Policy only addresses the use and disclosure of personal information we collect from you. To the extent that you disclose your information to other parties, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the personal information you disclose to them. Because SFTTB does not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to the privacy customs and policies of that third party website.
Updates to this privacy policy
We may need to update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to our privacy practices or in the law. If we update this Privacy Policy, we will change the Last Updated date above. We may also notify you through a banner on our website or via email (if we have an email address on file). Please periodically review this page for the most current version of our Privacy Policy.