Date last updated: July 8, 2025

This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) describes how Commit to Students, a 501(c)4 organization (“we” or “Commit to Students”) collects, uses, shares, and protects information when you interact with our website (https://www.committostudents.org/) and any social media webpage we establish that contains a link to this Policy (the “Site”). This Policy also addresses personal information that we collect or generate concerning individuals who reach out to us directly by email, telephone, or other means.

This Policy explains the following:

1.     The Information We Collect

2.     How We Use Your Information

3.     How We Share Your Information

4.     How We Protect and Store Your Information

5.     Our Retention of Your Information

6.     No Use by Children

7.     Links to Unaffiliated Third-Party Websites

8.     How to Contact Us

9.     Privacy Rights

10.  Updates to this Policy

1. The Information We Collect

We may collect information about you by the following means:

• Directly from you, such as when you provide information to us or interact with us, including when you contact us through the website or through one of our social media pages;

• Automatically from you, such as when you utilize or interact with our Site;

• From online advertising companies who may share information about the marketing and advertisements you have seen or clicked on, and other sources of publicly available data; and

• From other third party sources such as our vendors, suppliers, contractors or partners.

We may collect the following categories of information:

• Contact information and any other information you choose to include when you sign up to receive information about our organization, make a donation, or communicate with us via e-mail, mail, or other channels. This information may include name, e-mail address, company name, job title, mailing address, and phone numbers.

• Financial information if you make a donation to Commit to Students. We will collect payment information, such as your bank account information, to process your transaction.

• Social media information, such as social media identifiers and/or interests or opinions expressed, if you engage with us directly on social media platforms.

• Online user activity described in the next section.

• Legally Required Information that may be required by laws that apply to Commit to Students.

When you interact with the Site, certain information about your use of our Site may be automatically collected. This includes:

• Usage details about your interaction with our Site (such as the date, time, and length of visits, and specific pages or content accessed during the visits, search terms, frequency of the visits, referring website addresses);

• Device information including the IP address and other details of a device that you use to connect with our Site (such as device type, operating system, browser type, and mobile network information);

• Location information where you choose to provide the Site with access to information about your device’s location; and

• Site usage information. We collect information about your interaction with the Site, including the pages viewed and how you reached our Site.

Much of this information is collected through cookies, web beacons, and other similar technologies, which may be operated by our analytics and marketing partners who assist us in serving ads or providing other services to you.

In some cases, our third-party partners may process information collected by cookies and similar technologies through our Website. Please see our Cookie Policy  for more details. With respect to any social media platforms on which we have established a webpage, please see the privacy policies and any cookie policies of the applicable social media platform as to their automated data collection practices.

You may be able to change a web browser’s settings to block and delete cookies when you access our Site through the web browser. However, if you do that, the Site may not work properly; also, we will still receive basic information (such as last URL visited) when you navigate to the Site. The Site does not respond to browser do-not-track signals, except where required by law.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect from you for the following purposes, to:

• Provide our Site to you;

• Respond to your requests for updates, comments, and questions;

• Contact you for the purpose of raising funds for Commit to Students;

• Process your donation transaction;

• Monitor the performance of our Site including metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, and demographic patterns;

• Interact with you, including to notify you with updates regarding our programs and to inform you about important changes to this Policy;

• Tailor the content we display to you in our Site and communications, including advertising;

• Manage, operate, and improve the Site, including our understanding of our Site users and the effectiveness of our marketing, and diagnose or fix technology problems;

• Conduct audits, data analysis, recordkeeping, developing new programs, enhancing, improving or modifying our programs, identifying usage trends and determining the effectiveness of fundraising campaigns and program activities, and updating and expanding our organizational activities; and

• Comply with legal requirements and industry standards, detect, investigate, and prevent activities that may violate our policies or be fraudulent or illegal, and protect the rights of Commit to Students, you, or others.

We may use and share information in an aggregated or de-identified manner at our discretion, including for research, analysis, modeling, marketing, and improvement of our Site.

3. How We Share Your Information

• Vendors, Partners, and Service Providers. We may share information with service providers, volunteers, program partners, and other third parties that assist Commit to Students in furtherance of its goals and that we believe need the information to perform a research, organizational, or other professional function for us such as website operation, maintenance and hosting of our Site, processing your donation, business partners, accounting, auditing, and tax services, other professional services, and others with your consent.

• Social Media. If you engage with Commit to Students on a public, social media platform, you may be sharing your personal information with your friends associated with your social media account, to other website users, and to your social media account provider, in connection with your social sharing activity. Please note that any information you post within these public forums or social media pages may become public and may be read, collected, and used by anyone.

• Merger, sale, or other asset transfers. We reserve the right to transfer to another entity or its affiliates or service providers some or all information about you in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, acquisition, sale of assets, joint venture, change in ownership control, assignment, transfer, financing transaction or other disposition of all or any portion of our organization (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings). We cannot promise that an acquiring party or the merged entity will have the same privacy practices or treat your information the same as described in this Policy.

• Legal. We share information where necessary to comply with applicable law, to respond to requests from law enforcement agencies or other government authorities or third parties, as permitted by law and without your consent when it is necessary to protect our donors, employees, or property; to enforce our terms; in emergency situations; or to enforce our rights under our policies.

• Your Consent. In addition to the other disclosures described in this section, we may also disclose your information as you expressly authorize us to do so.

4. How We Protect and Store Your Information

We use a combination of physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to protect the information we collect through the Site. While we use these precautions to safeguard your information, we cannot guarantee the security of the networks, systems, servers, devices, and databases we operate or that are operated on our behalf.

5. Our Retention of Your Information

We will only retain your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal information for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or other requirements.

6. No Use by Children

We do not knowingly or intentionally gather personal information about children who are under the age of 16. If a child has provided us with personal information, a parent or guardian of that child may contact us at privacy@committostudents.org to have the information deleted from our records. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected the personal information of a child under 16, or equivalent minimum age depending on jurisdiction, we will take steps to delete the information as soon as possible and cease the use of that information in accordance with applicable law.

7. Links to Unaffiliated Third-Party Websites

The Site may contain links to unaffiliated third-party websites. This Policy does not apply to the practices of such other websites, and we are not responsible for the actions and privacy policies of the third parties that operate or interact with those websites.

8. How to Contact Us

If you have questions about this Policy or if you would like to make a suggestion about our privacy practices, please send an email to privacy@committostudents.org. 

9. Privacy Rights

Certain jurisdictions have specific legal requirements and grant privacy rights with respect to personal information, and we will comply with restrictions and any requests you submit as required by applicable law. For example, you may have the right to review, correct, and delete personal information we have about you, or to consent or withdraw consent to certain uses or sharing of personal information. You may also have the right to not be discriminated against for exercising your privacy rights. If you seek to exercise your rights, please contact us by using the contact information in the How to Contact Us section.

Please note that when you make a request, we may require that you provide information and follow procedures so that we can verify your identity (and the applicable jurisdiction). The verification steps we take may differ depending on your jurisdiction and the request. Where possible, we will attempt to match the information that you provide in your request to information we already have on file to verify your identity. If we are able to verify your request, we will process it. If we cannot verify your request, we may ask you for additional information to help us do so.

We will respond to your request within the time period required by applicable law. However, we may not always be able or required to comply with your request, in whole or in part, and we will notify you in that event.

10. Updates to this Policy

Our Policy may change from time to time. We will post any privacy policy changes on this page and, if the changes are material, we may provide a more prominent notice (including, email notification of privacy notice changes) for a reasonable period of time. Nevertheless, you should review this Policy from time to time to be sure you are aware of the most recent version.