Privacy Policy

Your privacy is of utmost importance to us.

United Way of Massachusetts Bay is committed to protecting your privacy. Because your privacy is important to us, we provide you this notice explaining our information practices, what information we collect and how it is used:

This site is owned and operated by United Way of Massachusetts Bay, Inc. d/b/a United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley (UWMBMV). Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. At UWMBMV, we want to make your experience online satisfying and safe.

Because we gather certain types of information about our users, we feel you should fully understand our policy and the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and use of that information. This privacy statement discloses what information we gather and how we use it.

Under no circumstances does UWMBMV divulge any information about an individual user to a third party. UWMBMV will not share or sell a donor’s personal information with anyone else, nor send donor mailings on behalf of other organizations. This policy applies to information collected both online and offline.

YOUR CONSENT
By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by UWMBMV. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.

If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy policy, or any aspect of this website, please contact us using our contact form, or the information at the bottom of the page.

INFORMATION UWMBMV GATHERS AND TRACKS
UWMBMV gathers three types of information about users:

• Membership information needed to create your account (if applicable).
• Information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions to receive our electronic newsletters, to participate in our message boards or forums, to email a friend, and from participation in polls and surveys.
• Information UWMBMV gathers through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites. This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers’ needs.

Under no circumstances does UWMBMV divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.

UWMBMV gathers user information In the following processes:

Account Creation (where applicable)
During registration the user is required to supply a username, password, and email address. Accounts are not required to view the site, but they are required to post in the forum.

Optional Voluntary Information
We offer the following services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:

Message boards/forums policy: Users of the site’s Forums must register in order to post messages, although they needn’t register to visit the site. This site provides an RSS feed of new content. Forum entries you create may be included in this feed.

“E-mail this to a friend” policy: Our site users can choose to electronically forward a link, page, or documents to someone else by clicking “e-mail this to a friend”. The user must provide their email address, as well as that of the recipient. This information is used only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the recipient know who sent the email. The information is not used for any other purpose.

Polling: We may offer interactive polls to users so they can easily share their opinions with other users and see what our audience thinks about important issues. Opinions or other responses to polls are aggregated and are not identifiable to any particular user. UWMBMV may use a system to “tag” users after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular question.

Surveys: UWMBMV may occasionally conduct user surveys to better target our content to our audience. We sometimes share the aggregated demographic information in these surveys with our partners.

Usage Tracking
UWMBMV tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our sites. UWMBMV breaks down overall usage statistics according to a user’s domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the browser string (information contained in every user’s browser).

UWMBMV tracks and catalogs the search terms users enter in our Search function. We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don’t like based on traffic to those areas. This helps us continue to build a better service for you.

Cookies
We place a text file called a “cookie” in the browser files of your computer. The cookie itself does not contain personal information, although it will enable us to relate your use of this site to information that you have specifically and knowingly provided. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can’t read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. UWMBMV uses cookies to securely validate your user session.

You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you’ve set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use this site. However, you do need cookies to log in to your account.

USE OF YOUR INFORMATION
UWMBMV uses any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our network of sites, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the sites or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our users.

As stated above, we use information that users voluntarily provide in order to enable users to participate in polls, surveys, and forums.

When we use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don’t like based on traffic to those areas, this helps us continue to build a better service for you. We track search terms entered in the Search function as one of many measures of what interests our users.

UWMBMV creates aggregate reports on user demographics and traffic patterns for partners. We will not disclose any information about any individual user except to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public.

UWMBMV may also use the information we collect to show you content that we think you might find interesting.  Third-party vendors, such as Google, show our ads on sites across the internet, and in some cases, use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to our website. You can opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting Google’s Ads Settings and/or the Google Analytics Opt-Out browser add-on. You can also opt out of all third-party vendor’s use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.

SHARING OF INFORMATION
UWMBMV uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs. We will not share information about individual users with any third party, except to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public.

SECURITY
UWMBMV operates secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by our constituents.

Our donation form is protected by a SSL certificate. All your information will be encrypted before being submitted.

Contacting Us:
If you have any questions about this Web site’s privacy policies or practices or your interaction with this Web site, please contact us by:

1. Sending an e-mail to us at info@supportunitedway.org
2. Calling us at (617) 624-8000
3. Faxing your comments to us at (617) 624-9114
4. Writing to us at:
9 Channel Center, Suite 500
Boston, MA 02210
Attention: Call Center