Please Note: We are a nonprofit, charitable legal services organization. We are not affiliated with the DC Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) or CFSA's Kinship Navigator.

DC KinCare Alliance Privacy Policy

Your privacy is important to us. It is DC KinCare Alliance’s policy to respect your privacy and comply with any applicable law and regulation regarding any personal information we may collect about you, including across our website, https://www.dckincare.org, and other sites we own and operate.

Personal information is any information about you which can be used to identify you. This includes information about you as a person (such as name, address, and date of birth), your devices, payment details, and even information about how you use a website or online service.

In the event our site contains links to third-party sites and services, please be aware that those sites and services have their own privacy policies. After following a link to any third-party content, you should read their posted privacy policy information about how they collect and use personal information. This Privacy Policy does not apply to any of your activities after you leave our site.

This policy is effective as of January 1, 2024

Last updated: August 8, 2024

SMS/Mobile Information

No mobile information will be shared with third parties/affiliates for marketing/promotional purposes. All other categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.

Information We Collect

Information we collect falls into one of two categories: “voluntarily provided” information and “automatically collected” information.

“Voluntarily provided” information refers to any information you knowingly and actively provide us when using or participating in any of our services and promotions.

“Automatically collected” information refers to any information automatically sent by your devices in the course of accessing our products and services.

Log Data

When you visit our website, our servers may automatically log the standard data provided by your web browser. It may include your device’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, your browser type and version, the pages you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on each page, and other details about your visit.

Additionally, if you encounter certain errors while using the site, we may automatically collect data about the error and the circumstances surrounding its occurrence. This data may include technical details about your device, what you were trying to do when the error happened, and other technical information relating to the problem. You may or may not receive notice of such errors, even in the moment they occur, that they have occurred, or what the nature of the error is.

Please be aware that while this information may not be personally identifying by itself, it may be possible to combine it with other data to personally identify individual persons.

Device Data

When you visit our website or interact with our services, we may automatically collect data about your device, such as:

  • Device type
  • Geo-location data

Data we collect can depend on the individual settings of your device and software. We recommend checking the policies of your device manufacturer or software provider to learn what information they make available to us.

Security of Your Personal Information

When we collect and process personal information, and while we retain this information, we will protect it within commercially acceptable means to prevent loss and theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification.

Although we will do our best to protect the personal information you provide to us, we advise that no method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure and no one can guarantee absolute data security.

You are responsible for selecting any password and its overall security strength, ensuring the security of your own information within the bounds of our services. For example, ensuring you do not make your personal information publicly available via our platform.

How Long We Keep Your Personal Information

We keep your personal information only for as long as we need to. This time period may depend on what we are using your information for, in accordance with this privacy policy. For example, if you have provided us with personal information such as an email address when contacting us about a specific enquiry, we may retain this information for the duration of your enquiry remaining open as well as for our own records so we may effectively address similar enquiries in future. If your personal information is no longer required for this purpose, we will delete it or make it anonymous by removing all details that identify you.

However, if necessary, we may retain your personal information for our compliance with a legal, accounting, or reporting obligation or for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific, or historical research purposes or statistical purposes.

Children’s Privacy

We do not aim any of our products or services directly at children under the age of 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information about children under 13.

Disclosure of Personal Information to Third Parties

We may disclose personal information to:

  • a parent, subsidiary or affiliate of our company
  • third-party service providers for the purpose of enabling them to provide their services, including (without limitation) IT service providers, data storage, hosting and server providers, ad networks, analytics, error loggers, debt collectors, maintenance or problem-solving providers, marketing providers, professional advisors, and payment systems operators
  • our employees, contractors, and/or related entities
  • our existing or potential agents or business partners
  • credit reporting agencies, courts, tribunals, and regulatory authorities, in the event you fail to pay for goods or services we have provided to you
  • courts, tribunals, regulatory authorities, and law enforcement officers, as required by law, in connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings, or in order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights
  • third parties, including agents or sub-contractors who assist us in providing information, products, services, or direct marketing to you
  • third parties to collect and process data
  • an entity that buys, or to which we transfer all or substantially all of our assets and business

Third parties we currently use include:

  • Constant Contact
  • Donorbox
  • Paypal
  • Zelle

Your Rights and Controlling Your Personal Information

Your choice: By providing personal information to us, you understand we will collect, hold, use, and disclose your personal information in accordance with this privacy policy. You do not have to provide personal information to us, however, if you do not, it may affect your use of our website or the products and/or services offered on or through it.

Information from third parties: If we receive personal information about you from a third party, we will protect it as set out in this privacy policy. If you are a third party providing personal information about somebody else, you represent and warrant that you have such person’s consent to provide the personal information to us.

Marketing permission: If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by contacting us using the details below.

Access: You may request details of the personal information that we hold about you.

Correction: If you believe that any information we hold about you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant, or misleading, please contact us using the details provided in this privacy policy. We will take reasonable steps to correct any information found to be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or out of date.

Non-discrimination: We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights over your personal information. Unless your personal information is required to provide you with a particular service or offer (for example providing user support), we will not deny you goods or services and/or charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties, or provide you with a different level or quality of goods or services.

Notification of data breaches: We will comply with laws applicable to us in respect of any data breach.

Complaints: If you believe that we have breached a relevant data protection law and wish to make a complaint, please contact us using the details below and provide us with full details of the alleged breach. We will promptly investigate your complaint and respond to you, in writing, setting out the outcome of our investigation and the steps we will take to deal with your complaint. You also have the right to contact a regulatory body or data protection authority in relation to your complaint.

Unsubscribe: To unsubscribe from our email database or opt-out of communications (including marketing communications), please contact us using the details provided in this privacy policy, or opt-out using the opt-out facilities provided in the communication. We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity.

Use of Cookies

We use “cookies” to collect information about you and your activity across our site. A cookie is a small piece of data that our website stores on your computer, and accesses each time you visit, so we can understand how you use our site. This helps us serve you content based on preferences you have specified.

Please refer to our Cookie Policy for more information.

Business Transfers

If we or our assets are acquired, or in the unlikely event that we go out of business or enter bankruptcy, we would include data, including your personal information, among the assets transferred to any parties who acquire us. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any parties who acquire us may, to the extent permitted by applicable law, continue to use your personal information according to this policy, which they will be required to assume as it is the basis for any ownership or use rights we have over such information.

Limits of Our Policy

Our website may link to external sites that are not operated by us. Please be aware that we have no control over the content and policies of those sites, and cannot accept responsibility or liability for their respective privacy practices.

Changes to This Policy

At our discretion, we may change our privacy policy to reflect updates to our business processes, current acceptable practices, or legislative or regulatory changes. If we decide to change this privacy policy, we will post the changes here at the same link by which you are accessing this privacy policy.

If required by law, we will get your permission or give you the opportunity to opt in to or opt out of, as applicable, any new uses of your personal information.

Additional Disclosures for U.S. States Privacy Law Compliance.

The following section includes provisions that comply with the privacy laws of these states (California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Virginia, and Utah) and is applicable only to the residents of those states. Specific references to a particular state (in a heading or in the text) are only a reference to that state’s law and applies only to that state’s residents. Non-state specific language applies to all of the states listed above.

Do Not Track

Some browsers have a “Do Not Track” feature that lets you tell websites that you do not want to have your online activities tracked. At this time, we do not respond to browser “Do Not Track” signals.

We adhere to the standards outlined in this privacy policy, ensuring we collect and process personal information lawfully, fairly, transparently, and with legitimate, legal reasons for doing so.

Cookies and Pixels

At all times, you may decline cookies from our site if your browser permits. Most browsers allow you to activate settings on your browser to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. Accordingly, your ability to limit cookies is based only on your browser’s capabilities. Please refer to the Cookies section of this privacy policy for more information.

California Privacy Laws – CPPA

Under California Civil Code Section 1798.83, if you live in California and your business relationship with us is mainly for personal, family, or household purposes, you may ask us about the information we release to other organizations for their marketing purposes. In accordance with your right to non-discrimination, we may offer you certain financial incentives permitted by the California Consumer Privacy Act, and the California Privacy Rights Act (collectively, CCPA) that can result in different prices, rates, or quality levels for the goods or services we provide. Any CCPA-permitted financial incentive we offer will reasonably relate to the value of your personal information, and we will provide written terms that describe clearly the nature of such an offer. Participation in a financial incentive program requires your prior opt-in consent, which you may revoke at any time.

Under California Civil Code Section 1798.83, if you live in California and your business relationship with us is mainly for personal, family, or household purposes, you may ask us about the information we release to other organizations for their marketing purposes. To make such a request, please contact us using the details provided in this privacy policy with “Request for California privacy information” in the subject line. You may make this type of request once every calendar year. We will email you a list of categories of personal information we revealed to other organisations for their marketing purposes in the last calendar year, along with their names and addresses. Not all personal information shared in this way is covered by Section 1798.83 of the California Civil Code.

California Notice of Collection

In the past 12 months, we have collected the following categories of personal information enumerated in the CCPA:

  • Internet activity, such as your interactions with our service.
  • Geolocation data.

For more information on information we collect, including the sources we receive information from, review the “Information We Collect” section. We collect and use these categories of personal information for the business purposes described in the “Collection and Use of Information” section, including to provide and manage our Service.

Right to Know and Delete

You have rights to delete your personal information we collected and know certain information about our data practices in the preceding 12 months. In particular, you have the right to request the following from us:

  • The categories of personal information we have collected about you;
  • The categories of sources from which the personal information was collected;
  • The categories of personal information about you we disclosed for a business purpose or sold;
  • The categories of third parties to whom the personal information was disclosed for a business purpose or sold;
  • The business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling the personal information; and
  • The specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details provided in this privacy policy.

Shine the Light

In addition to the rights discussed above, you have the right to request information from us regarding the manner in which we share certain personal information as defined by applicable statute with third parties and affiliates for their own direct marketing purposes.

To receive this information, send us a request using the contact details provided in this privacy policy. Requests must include “Privacy Rights Request” in the first line of the description and include your name, street address, city, state, and ZIP code.

Contact Us

For any questions or concerns regarding your privacy, you may contact us using the following details:

Marla Spindel
[email protected]

Who we are

Our website address is: https://www.dckincare.org.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

Who we share your data with

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Your contact information

Additional information

How we protect your data

What data breach procedures we have in place

What third parties we receive data from

What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data

Industry regulatory disclosure requirements