Privacy and Donor Rights

Policy Adopted by board action: 10/21/2020

About the American Indian College Fund

The mission of the American Indian College Fund is to raise scholarship funds for American Indian and Alaska Native students at accredited tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) and to generate broad awareness of those institutions and the College Fund itself. The organization also raises resources for other needs at the colleges, including capital projects, operations, endowments, and/or program initiatives, and it conducts fundraising and related activities for any other Board-directed initiatives.

We are committed to fulfilling our mission while practicing the highest ethical standards. We are faithful to the key principles of honesty, integrity, service above self, and excellence in all we do. We are dedicated to doing the right thing and doing things right and being an organization worthy of the utmost trust.

Because of the unique level of trust placed in the College Fund to serve the public good, have created “A Commitment to Integrity: Code of Ethics and Conduct” to institutionalize our ethical obligations to our team, our donors, and the individuals, communities, and institutions we serve. Our Code of Ethics is available here.

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy governs your use of our Websites, and explains, in general, what Personal Information (as defined below) and other information is collected on the Websites, how the information is used, and with whom we may share such information. The American Indian College Fund is referred to in this Privacy Policy as “the College Fund”, CF,” “we,” “us,” “our,” or with other similar pronouns.

By visiting the Websites, and/or by using the services available on the Websites, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy as they may be amended from time to time. As we update and expand our services, this Privacy Policy may change, so please check this page from time to time. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into, and part of collegefund.org and any other related College Fund operated Websites, which also governs your use of the Websites in general.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to information that you may provide to us, or that we may obtain, through sources other than our Websites, such as by phone, through postal mail, and through other live and print media, including without limitation, information obtained from or provided to us by third parties.

SMS consent and phone numbers must not be shared with third parties or affiliates.

Normal Browsing

When you visit our Websites, we collect some non-identifying basic information. This includes total number of visitors, pages viewed, and other non-identifying information. We use this aggregate information to improve our Websites and to make your experience on our Websites as smooth as possible. Some of the information collected may include:

• Details of your visits to our Websites, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on the Websites.
• Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type.

The information we collect automatically is statistical data for web analytics captured during normal browsing. The information does not include personal information, but we may maintain it or associate it with personal information we collect in other ways or receive from third parties. This information also is collected for information security purposes, particularly to detect, prevent and respond to fraud, abusive practices, and security risks that could harm the College Fund, our data, and our users. It further helps us to improve our Websites and to deliver a better and more personalized array of services, by enabling us to:

• estimate our audience size and usage patterns;
• store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Websites according to your individual interests; and
• recognize you when you return to our Websites.

Cookies and Analytics

Cookies are small text files that a site transfers to a site visitor’s hard disk or browser for added functionality or for tracking site usage. The College Fund uses cookies in a limited capacity. Our cookies do not capture or store any personally identifying information about you or data about your past usage of our site. We use information captured by cookies only for blind statistical analysis and to tailor our communications with the public.

Pages of our Websites and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the College Fund, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email or email attachments, and for other related statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain Website content and verifying system and server integrity).

For certain parts of our Websites, such as those for which users download files, the College Fund may track certain information, such as the number of downloads of specific files. For certain Websites, the College Fund may also track other details related to use, such as the type of device on which users are using to access the Websites and the sections through which users scroll in the aggregate. The College Fund does not collect or use personally identifiable information in its use of these analytical tools.

User-Provided Information

We may collect Personal Information from users of our Websites, for example, through such users’ activities, transactions, and completion of online forms on our Websites. Such information may be collected, for example, when users create membership profiles, register or subscribe for accounts or features on our Websites; submit resumes; enter into online transactions; complete surveys; provide reviews; respond to polls; input information into our interactive programming features such as an interactive calendar or search engine; submit content (including without limitation, media files, photos, videos, documents or other information to the Websites); contribute to a social media platform, chat room, list serve, blog or other open forum or community feature that we may make available on our Websites; submit a comment or question to us using a “contact us” or similar feature on our Websites; send us an email: view web pages, advertisements or file attachments; or in any other way submit Personal Information to us via our Websites.

Scholarship Applicant Confidentiality Policy

The College Fund highly values the concepts of privacy and confidentiality. It is the College Fund’s policy that only the applicant, College Fund staff members (including application reviewers), and faculty/staff at the applicant’s college have access to application and award information. Applicants do, however, give permission for the College Fund to share limited demographic information with scholarship donors, their colleges and universities, and the media as a part of the application process. Information about an application and/or scholarship award will be released to third parties (including parents, spouses, and other relatives) only with the express written consent of the student. Information about applications and awards will only be discussed with the applicant unless the College Fund has written authorization to do otherwise. While we honor the relatives of our applicants, our primary relationship is with the student, by law we have a duty to respect our students’ privacy.

Online Forms

We do not collect personally identifiable information from users unless they provide it to us voluntarily and knowingly, such as when requesting information using the Profile update form or donating on our Website with personally identifying information. In instances like these we may collect the following information: first and last name, street address, city, state, zip code, telephone number, email address, subject of inquiry and payment information. We may use your contact information to send further information about our organization to you or to contact you when necessary.

The information you transmit to us on this site travels by encryption. The third-party companies we work with to process your online donation payments and product purchases also use encryption and security protocols. The information you provide is stored in a secure location and is accessible only by designated employees trained in the proper handling of customer information.

Your information is privileged and confidential and will not be shared or released to any organization or business entity other than those affiliated with or working in conjunction with the College Fund. We do not give or sell your personal information to any outside company for its use in marketing or solicitation.

Like many other non-profit organizations, we sometimes make available only our contributor names and postal addresses to companies, predominantly other carefully screened, non-profit organizations. This practice helps us reduce costs of reaching more individuals with information related to our mission. Names and addresses are provided on a one-time basis; therefore, these organizations will not have continued access to your name and address unless you choose to respond to them directly.

You may request that we not share, sell, or exchange your information for third-party fundraising or marketing purposes by sending your request to the American Indian College Fund, 8333 Greenwood Boulevard, Denver, Colorado 80221, by phone at (303) 426-8900, or by email to info@collegefund.org.

You may also choose to restrict internal and external sharing of your personal information at any time. When you donate, you can request that the College Fund not share your contact information with anyone. We recognize that you may wish to limit the ways in which we contact you; that we not contact you; or that we only contact you at a certain rate of frequency or certain times of the year. All reasonable efforts will be taken to ensure that your privacy requests are honored, and we will use reasonable efforts to process such requests in a timely manner. Please note that it is not always possible to completely remove or modify information in our subscription databases. If you have any questions or would like to change your contact preferences at any time, please contact the College Fund at (303) 426-8900 or by email at info@collegefund.org.

A Secure Environment for Online Transactions

The College Fund’s online processing system allows you to make secure donations and purchases. We use the latest encryption technology to best ensure that your information is secured and unreadable as it travels to our system.

Our online credit card verification system is handled by a third party, which collects your name, address, phone, and credit card number and expiration date in order to process your transaction. Their encryption technology offers a secure technology to best ensure the confidentiality of your transactions.

Web Site Security

The College Fund will take reasonable steps to protect the security and integrity of all Personal Information provided to us via our Web Sites, including employing industry standards for SSL, and other encryption methods that are at least as secure. However, due to the inherent nature of the Internet as an open global communications vehicle, we cannot guarantee that information, during transmission through the Internet or while stored on our system or otherwise in our care, will be absolutely safe from intrusion by others, such as hackers.

If you contact us by email or a “contact us” or similar feature on our Web Sites, you should be aware that your transmission might not be secure. A third party could view information you send by these methods in transit.

You may be able to create an account on our Web Sites with a username and password. If so, you are responsible for maintaining the strict confidentiality of your account password, and you shall be responsible for any access to or use of the Web Sites. You agree to immediately notify the College Fund of any unauthorized use of your password or account or any other breach of security. We will not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage arising from your failure to comply with this provision, nor will we have any liability for disclosure of your information due to errors or unauthorized acts of third parties during or after transmission.

In the unlikely event that we believe that the security of your Personal Information in our possession or control may have been compromised, we may seek to notify you of that development. If a notification is appropriate, we will endeavor to do so as promptly as possible under the circumstances, and, if we have your email address, we may notify you by email. You consent to our use of email as a means of such notification.

Third-Party “Linked-To” Web Sites

When you are on our Websites you may have the opportunity to visit, or link to, other sites not operated by us. These sites may collect Personal Information from and about you. The College Fund does not control such web sites and is not responsible for the privacy and information practices of these sites. This Privacy Policy does not address the privacy and information practices of those other Websites.

Note to Parents and Children

The College Fund Websites are intended for users who are 13 years of age or older and located in the United States of America. The College Fund does not direct any part of our Websites to individuals under 13 years old and does not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children. This Privacy Policy shall be interpreted under the laws of the United States.

European Union General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR)

The European Union GDPR is a regulation that protects the privacy and security of personal data collected from individuals within the territory of the European Union (“EU data subjects”). It applies to organizations established outside of the EU if they:

(i) process the personal data of EU data subjects when offering them goods or services; or (ii) monitor the behavior of EU data subjects.

The College Fund neither offers goods or services to EU data subjects nor monitors their behavior. Therefore, the GDPR does not directly apply to the College Fund.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy statement will be updated periodically and posted on our Web Site. It applies to the online practices of the College Fund. We reserve the right to change this policy at any time by posting revisions. You agree to review the Privacy Policies each time you use our Web Site so that you are aware of any modifications. By accessing or using our Web Sites, you agree to be bound by all the terms and conditions of the College Fund’s Privacy Policy as posted at the time of your access or use.

Questions About Our Policies

If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy policy, or want to let us know what you think about our services, please contact us at info@collegefund.org or 303-426-8900.

Donor Bill of Rights

“The American Indian College Fund’s mission is to raise scholarship funds for American Indian and Alaska Native students at accredited tribal colleges and universities and to generate broad awareness of those institutions and the College Fund itself. The organization also raises resources for other needs at the schools, including capital projects, operations, endowments, or program initiatives, and it will conduct fundraising and related activities for any other Board-directed initiatives.”

A major strategic initiative is to assure that “the American Indian College Fund will be one of the premier American Indian organizations in the country. We will honor and practice organizational values of respect, relationships, responsibility, reasoning, and reciprocity. The American Indian College Fund will have the highest standards for all operations across all departments and practice consistent processes that produce positive, decisive results for constituents and employees.” As a part of this initiative, the College Fund is committed to meeting high standards of accountability to earn our donor’s deepest confidence.

We endorse and adopt the “Donor’s Bill of Rights” developed by the American Association of Fundraising Counsel, the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy, the Association of Fundraising Professionals, and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. This document has also been endorsed by other organizations including the Independent Sector, the National Catholic Development Conference, the National Committee on Planned Giving, the National Council for Resource Development, and the United Way of America, among others.

“THE DONOR BILL OF RIGHTS”

“Philanthropy is based on voluntary action for the common good. It is a tradition of giving and sharing that is primary to the quality of life. To ensure that philanthropy merits the respect and trust of the general public, and that donors and prospective donors can have full confidence in the nonprofit organizations and causes they are asked to support, we declare that all donors have these rights:

• To be informed of the organization’s mission, of the way the organization intends to use donated resources, and of its capacity to use donations effectively for their intended purposes.
• To be informed of the identity of those serving on the organization’s governing board, and to expect the board to exercise prudent judgment in its stewardship responsibilities.
• To have access to the organization’s most recent financial statements. To be assured their gifts will be used for the purposes for which they were given.
• To receive appropriate acknowledgement and recognition.
• To be assured that information about their donation is handled with respect and with confidentiality to the extent provided by law
• To expect that all relationships with individuals representing organizations of interest to the donor will be professional in nature.
• To be informed whether those seeking donations are volunteers, employees of the organization, or hired solicitors.
• To have the opportunity for their names to be deleted from mailing lists that an organization may intend to share.
• To feel free to ask questions when donating, and to receive prompt, truthful and forthright answers.”

We encourage donors or potential donors to contact us regarding any questions or concerns regarding the “Donor Bill of Rights” and hope that our adherence to these rights strengthens the trust our donors have shown in us.

Thank you for supporting the American Indian College Fund, tribal colleges and universities, and thousands of American Indian students striving for an education.