Paul Carlson Partnership Privacy Policy

This site is published and copyrighted by the Paul Carlson Partnership for the purpose of informing site users about the programs and activities of the organization, along with conditions and issues affecting the places where we work. Through the site we also invite users to respond in voluntary ways, including joining our e-mailing list, reading and learning, participating in a blog, visiting websites that advocate for the needs of people in places where we work, inquiring about possible volunteer participation in our programs, and donating financially.

Your privacy
We are committed to protecting your privacy to the best of our ability. We do not give or sell information about your individual visits to this site, or any personally identifiable information that you may give us, such as your name, address, or e-mail address, to any other organization or agency. There are no exceptions, outside of legal necessity.

The information we collect
We do not collect personally identifiable information from you unless you provide it to us voluntarily and knowingly. This includes names, addresses, postal codes, e-mail addresses, and such. We do not require you to register or provide any information to us in order to view our site. You may voluntarily submit such information in the course of responding to material on the site, such as if you make a comment to the blog, make a donation online, sign up for our e-mailing list, e-mail to us with a question or comment on the site, including a question for the FAQ section of the Family Room portion of the site, or inquire about possible volunteer participation in our programs.

As with any website operator, we analyze our website logs to constantly improve the value of our website. We use an external service to provide real-time reporting of browser accesses to our site. This reporting includes page views, unique views, unique visitors, repeat visitors, frequency of visits, and peak-volume traffic periods. We do not use this service to gather, request, record, require, collect, or track any Internet user's personally identifiable information.

How we use the information
As stated above, we do not use or disclose information about your individual visits to this site, or personally identifiable information that you may give us, to any other organization or agency, for any reason.

The only exceptions to that policy are in cases of legal necessity. The Paul Carlson Partnership may disclose personal information if we are compelled by law or a regulatory authority. In addition, we may need to disclose personal information in special cases where we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury or interfering (either intentionally or unintentionally) with our rights or property, our website users, or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities.

The Paul Carlson Partnership maintains an e-mailing list to keep our supporters and other interested persons informed about news and activities of the organization as well as news pertaining to the places where we work. Sign-up for the list is voluntary, and you may ask to be removed from the list at any time by sending an e-mail from the relevant e-mail address to pcpinfo(at)paulcarlson.org. If you provide other optional information, such as your mailing address, you may also occasionally receive materials via the U.S. mail. We will not contact you by telephone without some further relationship between you and the organization.

As stated above, the Paul Carlson Partnership, as with any website operator, regularly reviews our website logs to improve the value of our site. We use this information to improve our marketing and communication efforts, to improve the content of our site, and in our continuing effort to make the site helpful, user-friendly, and attractive.

Donating to the Paul Carlson Partnership
We are committed to pursuing the highest standards of stewardship excellence. We will always strive to be responsible in our management, truthful in our advertising, and cost effective in our fund-raising.

We will exert every effort to honor any designation you specify for your gift. If a project has been fully funded or cannot be carried out as you expected, the funds will be used for the next most urgent needs in the program area you have chosen (health, microenterprise, infrastructure, education).

Credit card security
It is extremely important to us to protect the security of your credit card information .  The Paul Carlson Partnership’s online donation process has security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse, or alteration of this information while it is under our control. We make every effort to ensure the secure collection and transmission of sensitive user information, including credit card information, by using high grade encryption and https security protocol to communicate with your browser software. We do not keep your credit card information after your gift is processed. The only exception is if you choose to give a regular, recurring gift through the donation process on this website.

You are welcome to give by check if you prefer to do so. Please send it to the Paul Carlson Partnership, 5101 N. Francisco Ave., Chicago, IL 60625.

Participating in the blog
The blog that appears on this website is a moderated blog. Its purpose is to encourage discussion of issues related to the work and activities of the Paul Carlson Partnership. The organization reserves the right to edit and/or remove any content at any time.

By your participation in this site and the blog related to it, you agree that you will not post any material that is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any international or United States federal law. You also agree not to post any copyrighted material unless you own the copyright or you have written consent from the owner of the copyrighted material. Spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations are also forbidden. If you believe a posted message is objectionable, please contact us at pcpinfo(at)paulcarlson.org.

The Paul Carlson Partnership does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any comment made by a user of this website. All posted comments express the views of the author, and not necessarily the views of the organization, its staff, or its directors.

Children's privacy
The safety and privacy of children online is of utmost importance to the Paul Carlson Partnership. Our standard is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA).   [ link: http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/privacyinitiatives/childrens.html ] COPPA and its accompanying FTC regulation establish United States federal law that protects the privacy of children using the Internet. We encourage parents to be aware of the provisions of COPPA anytime a child views or participates in any website.

The Family Room section of the website invites participation by children and their parents together through submitting questions to be answered in the FAQ section. Any such participation by a child under the age of 13 must come from a parent or legal guardian as well. We may at our discretion take steps to verify that a parent or guardian has been involved and given consent for the child's participation. No child under the age of 13 will be identified on this site in any way other than a first name. We do not ask any further information on any children. In some cases further information may be provided by the parent or guardian, such as in voluntarily reporting some activity the child has been involved in that is supportive to the work of the Paul Carlson Partnership; but the organization will not publicly reveal any such information without the express consent of the parent.

Use of materials published here
The content of this site is protected by copyright and trademark laws and is the property of the Paul Carlson Partnership . Unless noted otherwise, you may access the materials on this site only for your personal use or the use of a local church or other voluntary organization. This means you may download posted materials for personal, noncommercial home or church use only, so long as you do not change or delete any author attribution, trademark, legend, or copyright notice. Downloading copyrighted material does not give you any ownership rights to it.

Some resources offered on this site are designated as available for you to download, copy, and use for the purpose of publicizing the work of the Paul Carlson Partnership. You may not modify or adapt those materials or use them for any other purpose, and you may not in any other way exploit the content of the site. All other materials are restricted from personal or commercial use. Only if you obtain prior written consent from us - and from all other entities with an interest in the relevant intellectual property - may you publish, display or otherwise use those materials.

All photographs that are published on this site or on the Flickr page are copyright by the Paul Carlson Partnership. (Exceptions are photos accompanying linked news stories on other websites.) You may download and print our photos for the purpose of publicizing the work of the Paul Carlson Partnership, or for educational use related to Congo and the conditions of life there, but not for any other purpose, whether personal, commercial, or charitable.

Questions or concerns
If you have any questions or concerns about the Paul Carlson Partnership's privacy policy, please send us an e-mail at pcpinfo(at)paulcarlson.org or write to us at the Paul Carlson Partnership, 5101 N. Francisco Ave., Chicago, IL 60625. We are committed to reading and responding to all such concerns.  

Changes to our policy
We may make changes to our privacy policy at any time without prior notice to our site users. We encourage you to check this statement now and then if you want to be sure you are up to date. This policy was last updated on March 30, 2010.