This Privacy Policy explains how Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington (“us”, “our”, or “we”) processes personal information when you interact with us online, via our website, and offline, in person at our volunteer opportunities, events, and through our recruiting and onboard process, service programs, shelters, school, and other help or programs we may provide (collectively, “Services”).
How Do We Collect Personal Information
From you. We may collect personal information and other information that you voluntarily provide when you take certain actions, such as when you fill out and submit a program registration form, register for and/or receive our Services, sign up for emails, make a donation, contact us, sign up to volunteer, register to attend an event, apply for a job, stay with us at a shelter, visit one of our clinics, attend our educational facilities, or otherwise use our Services.
From devices you use when you interact with us online. This includes information collected through our Services and automatically from devices you use to connect to our Services. For more information about this, please see our “Cookies and similar technologies” section below.
From third parties and publicly available sources. This includes personal information we collect from other public sources, including, but not limited to, government sources, websites that enable social sharing, social media sites, and websites from our service providers, our affiliates, or other individuals and businesses.
From you in person.
Consent and phone numbers provided for SMS purposes will not be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing purposes.
SMS Terms and Conditions
Some Catholic Charities’ programs use text messaging to share information, including updates to services. Users have the option to opt-in. By opting-in, you confirm your entry into the text messaging services and might receive text messages to a designated phone number. Message and data rates might apply from your mobile carrier.
Users will have the option to opt-out of the service by texting “STOP” or “QUIT.” For assistance, text “HELP.”
Consent and phone numbers provided for SMS purposes will not be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing purposes.
The Types of Personal Information We May Collect From You
Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect the following information:
- Contact Information, such as your name, zip code, address, email address, telephone number, or other similar identifiers.
- Biographic and Demographic Information, such as age, gender, and citizenship.
- Financial and Payment Information, such as credit card details, bank account number, financial information, and payment preferences.
- Activity Information, such as information we collect when you access and interact with our Services, including browser or device model and settings, operating system, and unique identifiers, clickstream data, cookies, browsing history, search history, web-based location, IP address, geolocation, and any other Internet usage information our Services may automatically record when you visit. For more information about cookies and similar technologies, please refer to the section “Cookies and Similar Technologies” below.
- Other Personal Information you provide, such as the content provided in volunteer application, a job application, or in your communications with us, including interactions with us online, in person, or on the phone.
How We Use Your Personal Information
We may use your information for the following reasons, depending on your relationship with us:
- To provide you the information and/or Services requested.
- To communicate with you.
- To provide, market, and develop our services, including to maintain our website, troubleshoot, provide customer and technical support, conduct data analysis, test and research, and better understand the interests of those who view and use our website and Services.
- To conduct marketing research.
- To understand how you interact with or use our Services.
- To maintain the safety, security, and integrity of our Services. This may include online security.
- To debug our systems, to secure our online services, including our website, and to debug our online services.
- To send you information, such as news and/or marketing communications (by phone, email, or text) subject to your market preferences and choices, donation solicitations, and volunteer opportunities.
- To conduct market research and develop quality assurance, including to study, develop, and improve our Services. This may include measuring and analyzing online audience traffic, including tracking user interests, trends, and patterns.
- To aggregate data in an anonymized/de-identified manner.
- To comply with legal requirements and/or to investigate or address claims or disputes relating to your use of our Services. This would include the use of your information to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, to defend ourselves in litigation and investigations, and to prosecute litigations.
- To collect analytics in order to understand how our Services are used and to improve them over time.
- To process and complete transactions, including collecting payment and contact information to process your charitable donations.
How We Disclose Personal Information
We may disclose some or all of the personal information collected from or about you with any of the following entities and for any of the following purposes:
- Service Providers, Service Locations. We may provide personal information to vendors, payment processors, contractors, and business and service providers who provide services to us in furtherance of our mission and to help us offer our Services. We may also disclose some or all of your information to our various Service locations as applicable.
- Government, regulatory, or law enforcement agencies. We reserve the right to disclose your information to respond to valid information requests from government authorities and judicial requests, to investigate potential fraud, or where otherwise required by law. We may disclose your personal information where we believe the disclosure is necessary or appropriate to comply with regulatory or legal requirements, or to protect the safety, rights, or property of ourselves and others and to exercise, establish, or defend our legal rights.
- At your direction. We may disclose your personal information at your direction or with your consent.
- The General Public. We may disclose personal information with the general public if you choose to disclose personal information when contributing content to our Services through videos, interviews, or promotional material.
- Aggregate Data. We may disclose your personal information in an aggregated or non-identifying form or otherwise in a form that cannot reasonably be used to identify you.
Links to Third Party Websites
We may provide links to websites and other third party content (e.g., social media platforms) that are not owned or operated by us. The websites and third party content to which we link may have separate privacy notices or policies. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these websites.
If you provide any personal information through a third party site, your interaction and your personal information will be collected by and controlled by the privacy policy of that third party site. We recommend that you familiarize yourself with the privacy policies and practices of any such third parties, which are not governed by this Privacy Policy.
Information Security
We use commercially reasonable administrative, technical, personnel, and physical measures designed to safeguard information in its possession against loss, theft, unauthorized use, disclosure, or modification. However, the confidentiality of information transmitted over the Internet cannot be guaranteed. We urge you to exercise caution when transmitting personal information over the internet. WE CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTIES WILL NOT GAIN ACCESS TO YOUR INFORMATION; THEREFORE, WHEN SUBMITTING PERSONAL INFORMATION TO US, YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Cookies and Similar Technology
We and our providers use various tools to collect data when you visit our sites and apps, including cookies, pixels, and other similar technologies. Some of these technologies store data in the browser or on your device. Other technologies may use network-related or other information to recognize your device (e.g., IP address). Our Services use these technologies, for example, when you first request a web page and data is then stored on your computer or other device so the website or mobile application can access personal information when you make subsequent requests for pages from that Service. These technologies may also be used to collect and store information about your usage of the Services, such as pages you have visited, other content you viewed, and search history. Additionally, we may these technologies to collect analytics and measure the use of our Services.
We and our providers may also use these technologies to gather personal information about how you view and use our Services and content and to connect your activity with other data we store about you. We and our providers may collect your personally identifiable information about your online activities over time and across different websites when you use the Services. The use of these technologies helps us serve you better by understanding what you are interested in, tracking trends, measuring the effectiveness of ads, saving your preferences, and storing information you may want to retrieve on a regular basis. We also allow specific, approved providers to collect data from your browser or device for measurement purposes using their own similar tools.
Your web browser can be set to allow you to control these technologies, such as whether you will accept cookies, reject cookies, or to notify you each time a cookie is sent to your browser. If your browser is set to reject cookies, websites that are cookie-enabled will not recognize you when you return to the website, and some website functionality may be lost. The Help section of your browser may tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting these technologies, such as cookies. To find out more about cookies, visit www.aboutcookies.org. Depending on the make and model of your phone, you may be able to use device settings to opt out of the use of certain device IDs for targeted advertising. For more information about Google Analytics, please review the site “How Google uses data when you use our providers’ sites or apps,” located at www.google.com/policies/privacy/providers/. To opt out of Google Analytics specifically, please go to https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Some browsers permit the user to send a “Do Not Track” (“DNT”) preference to websites that the user visits indicating that the user does not wish to be tracked over time and across websites. Because there is not yet a common understanding of how to interpret DNT, we do not currently respond to the DNT signal on our website.
Your Marketing Preferences
We may periodically send promotional materials, including requests to make charitable donations, or notifications related to our Services. If you no longer wish to receive promotional marketing materials from us, you may opt out of receiving such materials. You may unsubscribe from receiving marketing or other commercial emails from us by following the instructions included in the email.
There are certain service notifications and other non-promotional emails that you may not opt out of, such as notifications of changes to our Services or policies.
Updates to the Policy
We may update this policy from time to time. To the extent permitted by law, any changes to our Privacy Policy will be posted to the websites and will become effective upon posting. Any changes will be effective only after the effective date of the change and will not affect any dispute arising prior to the effective date of the change.
Contact Us
We welcome all requests, suggestions and questions concerning our use of your personal Information. All such communication should be directed to:
924 G St. NW, Washington, DC 20001
202-772-4300