Do-it-Yourself (DIY) Lowell is an unincorporated community service group dedicated to helping community members make small-scale projects and events happen together. We place a high value on privacy. This policy was created to explain what type of information is collected from website visitors, DIY Lowell participants, and donors and how this information is used.
What Personally Identifiable Information is Collected
Website users that register for our mailing list or submit a community improvement idea voluntarily provide us with contact information (such as name and e-mail address).
We utilize PayPal’s secure payment platform to process donations by credit card or PayPal account. They may collect information at the point of payment. Their privacy policy is here: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full. PayPal provides DIY Lowell with the date of payment, the amount donated, first and last name of the donor, and email address registered with PayPal. The user may also opt to share mailing address with DIY Lowell.
We also accept payment by check to our fiscal agent, Coalition for a Better Acre (CBA). CBA provides DIY Lowell with an image of the check and any correspondence included with the check. We retain the date of payment, the amount donated, first and last name of the donor, and the mailing address.
In all of the above cases, we use this information for communication via email or via United States Postal Service to thank the donor and to provide other information and updates about DIY Lowell. You may always “opt out” by emailing info@diylowell.org or mailing a letter to DIY Lowell c/o Coalition for a Better Acre, 517 Moody Street, Floor 3, Lowell MA 01854-4014 either now or at any time in the future if you do not wish to receive our messages.
Finally, DIY Lowell participants and volunteers may voluntarily provide additional personally-identifying information such as phone numbers, emergency contacts, and responses to surveys. This information is used only for the purposes stated at the time of collection, i.e., contacting you or a contact person in the case of an emergency that occurs during your volunteer work or evaluating our program and tailoring it to better serve participants. Emergency contact information is destroyed when volunteer work has been completed.
IP addresses
The website automatically collects IP addresses of visitors. We do not use this information to identify individual visitors. DIY Lowell uses your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, to administer www.diylowell.org, to protect against “spam” or fake users, and for statistical metrics used to track website visitor traffic.
Cookies
www.diylowell.org uses “cookie” messages to automatically help provide better services. They remind us who you are and your preferences for our website based on what you’ve done and told us before. The “cookie” is placed in your computer and is read when you come back to our website. Cookies let the website, for example, keep you logged in as you submit or edit DIY Lowell ideas. They also let us track your usage of www.diylowell.org, so we know which parts of our sites are most popular. You can reject cookies or cancel them by instructing your Web browser accordingly.
How Your Information May Be Used
We use your personal information to send e-mail alerts, respond to your questions or requests, and provide updates about our organization or the ideas you submitted. You may choose to opt out at any time, which will cease all communications from us.
We may also use your information to track visitation of our website. This lets us see which pages are the most popular so we can improve our program. It also lets us provide aggregate data about our traffic (not identifying you personally, but showing how many visitors used which features, for example) to outside parties such as grant-making organizations.
We will remove any personally-identifying information and aggregate any data provided via surveys we administer if we share that data with outside parties. For example, we may share how many respondents of a particular survey live in each Lowell neighborhood, but we would never share the neighborhood of residence of an individual respondent.
Contact Information Policy
DIY Lowell does not provide, sell, or rent names, email addresses, or postal addresses to anyone outside the organization.
External Links
www.diylowell.org includes links to external websites. These links do not fall under the www.diylowell.org domain, and DIY Lowell is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of external websites. Your use of any linked website is solely at your own risk.
Modifications
We may amend this privacy policy from time to time; please review it periodically. We maintain the option to modify this privacy at any time by electronic notice posted on our website. Your continued use of our website after the date that such notices are posted will be deemed to be your agreement to the changed terms.
