Donor Privacy Policy
About the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation
The Nature-Based Solutions Foundation (NBSF) is a nationally registered charity that helps safeguard Canada’s most endangered ecosystems by addressing key conservation funding gaps necessary for establishing new protected areas.
To achieve our goals, we communicate with a variety of project partners, supporters, and donors in different ways, such as through email, phone, and at events.
Purpose of this Policy
We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information and follow ethical privacy practices while conducting all of our activities. We provide this policy to the public to explain how your personal information is collected, used, and protected in adherence to the the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act, the Personal Information Protection Act, and other relevant Canadian legislation.
Collection of Information
Personal Information
Your personal information is any information that is identifiable to you as an individual. This may include, but is not limited to, your name, age, date of birth, preferred language of correspondence, mailing address, phone number, and email address. Your personal information doesn’t include your individual contact information at a place of business.
We may collect personal information from you if you have shown an interest in our activities and purpose. Examples of showing interest include making donations, attending events, and volunteering. We wish to continue sharing how we are protecting endangered ecosystems in Canada with you and to expand our support network.
We treat our obligation seriously with respect to the use and disclosure of your personal information. Generally, we will only use or disclose your personal information for the primary purpose for which it was collected or for a related purpose that you would reasonably expect. For example, if you make a donation and provide your email with your donation, we would use your email address to thank you for your contribution. We may also use your email to provide updates on NBSF projects and the impact that your donation contributed to. See Updating Consent for how to opt out of communications.
At your discretion, you may choose to provide us with your personal information or opt to withhold information. However, there are instances where we will require your personal information to accommodate your request. For example, in order to issue you a tax-deductible receipt for a donation you’ve made, it is required by law to get your full name and mailing address.
Information Storage and Security
Your personal information is stored in our database(s). We ensure that only authorized members of our team have access to this information. We use this information to better serve you and our other supporters, and to help expand our community of support. We will keep your data for as long as we consider it necessary to carry out our charitable activities, taking into consideration legal, taxation and accounting requirements. We will include you on a Do Not Contact list if requested.
Additionally, we use and may need to share information with a limited set of authorized third-party service providers—each of which have their own strict privacy policies—that help us with specialized services to meet our project goals, such as donation processing, donor service, email and limited mail distribution, outreach success monitoring, website hosting, and data processing.
Our financial records are stored using Intuit’s QuickBooks Online. See the Intuit Global Privacy Statement for more information on how Intuit protects your privacy.
We will NEVER sell or rent your personal information. Likewise, we do not purchase or retrieve any personal information through other organizations or services for newsletter or promotions. However, we may use publicly available information to help us identify potential supporters, businesses and other organizations with conservation interests.
Our conservation projects are only possible with the financial support of generous donors, and we therefore reach out to many potentially aligned individuals. Our goal is to reach out to those who may be interested in supporting work like ours, and the ability to phone or email you to explore that alignment is an essential part of what we do. You may opt out of these communications at any time by contacting info@naturebasedsolutionsfoundation.org.
Cookies and Data
Website usage information is collected through ‘cookies’ via common tools like Google Analytics. You can choose whether to accept cookies by changing the settings of your internet browser. For further information concerning Google Analytics, please see the Google Privacy Policy. Cookies do not store personally identifiable information and cannot read data from a computer hard disk or read cookie files created by other websites. Browsers do not share first-party cookies across domains.
Statistical information is collected through log files, which are primarily used to identify areas of a website that visitors view. This can help with developing content that resonates with you and other viewers.
Credit Card Information
If you make an online donation, you will typically provide credit card information. Online donations are done through our secure web portal that protect the data you enter through SSL-encryption. This ensures that your personal information stays safe.
Your credit card information is not stored by us but instead processed by a trusted third-party service provider called Stripe, which either processes your single gift or securely stores your data to be processed each month for monthly donations.
If you make your donation using your credit card, it will be securely stored through a third party service provider for processing. All providers that we work with to handle credit card information are certified as payment card industry compliant. These partners include:
Stripe (https://stripe.com/)
Benevity (https://causes.benevity.org/)
Bloomerang (https://bloomerang.co/)
CanadaHelps (https://www.canadahelps.org/)
PayPal (https://paypal.com/)
King Baudouin Foundation and their partners / subsidiaries (https://www.every.org/kbfus; https://support.every.org/hc/en-us/articles/5534174084627-How-do-you-protect-donor-data-; https://donate.transnationalgiving.eu/page/home; https://ingenico.com/)
Consent
We greatly value your right to manage your personal information. When you provide personal information to NBSF, it is considered “implied” consent that your information will be utilized as per the guidelines of this policy. Please get in touch with us if you would like us to change the way we use your information.
It is important to note that we must comply with Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CRA) regulations, and are unable to remove donation data from our internal records. Specific personal information is also required to provide you with particular offerings or details, such as charitable tax receipts.
Updating Consent
We do our best to ensure that all of your information is recorded accurately. If you notice any errors in our correspondence with you, if your personal information changes, or if you have any complaints, please let us know by contacting us at info@naturebasedsolutionsfoundation.org to update your information.
If you would like to stop receiving our newsletters, click the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our email newsletters. For other forms of communication, please email info@naturebasedsolutionsfoundation.org with your preferences.
Donor Privacy & Requests
We are committed to the following donor privacy rights and requests for information:
Your personal information will be handled with respect and confidentiality, subject to any legal restrictions that may exist.
You and details about your donation(s) have the right to remain anonymous.
We will honour any request from you, whenever possible, to avoid contacting you individually for the sole purpose of fundraising.
We will disclose NBSF’s legal name and our charitable status during all of our fundraising appeals.
You may request our most recent financial statements and a list of our Board of Directors to inform your decision to become a supporter of our conservation work.
If you are contacted about becoming a supporter, you have the right to request and be informed if the person you are speaking with is a volunteer, member of NBSF’s staff or board, or one of our service providers.
We are extremely grateful to all our supporters that make ecosystem conservation possible. We will do all we can to share a written or verbal acknowledgement of your gifts as soon as possible.
The vast majority of gifts made to the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation are eligible for tax deductible receipts. If your gift is eligible, your official tax receipt will be sent from the NBSF within the first 60 days of the New Year. All tax receipts will be sent to the email that we have on file unless other arrangements have been made.
For more information on eligibility for tax-deductible receipts, please visit our donation page or contact us at info@naturebasedsolutionsfoundation.org.
Policy Updates and Changes
We may occasionally update this policy. The current version of this policy will be reflected on this page.
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If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about the way your information is being used, please contact us at info@naturebasedsolutionsfoundation.org and we will help you as soon as possible.