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Privacy and Refund Policy

Our Commitment to your Privacy and Security
The Greater Boston Food Bank is committed to protecting your privacy and the security of your personal information. This Privacy Policy describes the kind of information we collect from you, how that information is used, and what kind of security measures we employ. We will not sell, share or rent the information you provide to us in any way that has not been specified in our Privacy Policy. If you have questions regarding this privacy policy, or The Greater Boston Food Bank’s information practices, please e-mail us at development@gbfb.org.

Donor and Volunteer Privacy Policy
The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB) will not sell, share or trade our donors’ or volunteers’ names or personal information with any other entity, nor send mailings to our donors or volunteers on behalf of other organizations.

This policy applies to all information received by GBFB, both online and offline, on any platform, as well as any electronic, written or oral communications.

To the extent any donations are processed through a third-party service provider, our donors’ information will only be used for purposes necessary to process the donation.

Donor Refund Policy
If you have made an error in making your donation or change your mind about contributing to The Greater Boston Food Bank, we will honor your request for a refund made within 60 days of your donation. To request a refund, please contact our Donor Services department at (617) 427-5200 or development@gbfb.org. Refunds are only made using the original method of payment.

Information Collection and Use
The Greater Boston Food Bank requests information from you at various points on our website and during offline activities. You are under no obligation to provide any information, however, in order to participate in some of the services we offer at The Greater Boston Food Bank, such information collection is necessary. Below is a brief summary of the information we typically collect from you and how it is used. Because we constantly strive to bring new and better services to the community, the list below may not reflect all of the most current service offerings for which information is collected. We’ll do our best to update this policy as we provide new services, so please check back often.

Volunteers: When you become a volunteer for The Greater Boston Food Bank, we ask you to provide us with your name, telephone number, physical address, e-mail address, and emergency contact. We use this information to populate our volunteer database and to contact you in connection with volunteer activities. Volunteers are critical to The Greater Boston Food Bank’s success. In order that all of our volunteers know what we’re doing, we send updates on our activities and events both via electronic communications and sometimes postal mail. If you are receiving electronic communications from The Greater Boston Food Bank and you decide at any time that you no longer wish to hear from us, each electronic communication will contain an “unsubscribe” link. You may unsubscribe from postal mailings at any time by emailing communications@gbfb.org.

Donors: When you give an online financial donation to The Greater Boston Food Bank, we ask that you provide us with your name, telephone number, mailing address, e-mail address and credit card information. We use a secure third party to process online donations. Donations received via postal mail to The Greater Boston Food Bank are also processed by a secure third party vendor. See the section of this policy on Information Sharing for more information on how we share your information with third parties. We will send updates on events and activities via electronic communications and sometimes postal mail. All electronic communications contain an “unsubscribe” link and you may unsubscribe from postal mailings at any time by emailing communications@gbfb.org.

Cookies and Computer Information
When you access our home page, our website will set a cookie on your computer that is used to detect whether your browser is capable of displaying Flash images. If you do not have cookies enabled on your browser, it will not be set. If Flash is not installed on your computers, certain portions of our website will not be displayed to you properly. We collect the following information about your computer configuration: browser type, operating system, IP address, and the URL of the web page you were on just prior to visiting The Greater Boston Food Bank. We use this information to analyze usage trends, administer the site, and track our users’ movements across our site for aggregate use. This information will not reveal, nor is it associated with your personal identity.

Information Sharing
The Greater Boston Food Bank will not at any time trade, share or sell a donor’s personal information with anyone else.

We use outside companies to process many of our charitable donations made online and offline. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing us with these services. Prior to giving a donation online, you will have an opportunity to review that company’s privacy and security policy.

Other Uses and Disclosures of Information
Although unlikely, The Greater Boston Food Bank may be required by law enforcement or judicial authorities to provide personal information about our users. We will provide this information, to the extent technically possible, upon request and receipt of the appropriate documentation. Disclosure may also occur if we consider it necessary to protect our legal rights, or if the information relates to actual or threatened harmful conduct.

Access and the Ability to Correct Your Information
The Greater Boston Food Bank stores the information you provide upon registration at our site and for our various services in databases. If your information changes (such as your e-mail address or zip code), or if you no longer desire to volunteer or receive our newsletters, please contact communications@gbfb.org to change your information.

Privacy of Children
The Greater Boston Food Bank’s Web site is not intended for use by children under the age of 13. The Greater Boston Food Bank does not intend to collect, maintain, store, use, or disclose personal information about children under the age of 13.

Notification of Changes
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post a notice of those changes on the Privacy Policy section of our Web site so that you will always have notice of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner incompatible with the stated purposes at the time it was collected, we will post a prominent notification of the change in policy on our Web site.

Security
The Greater Boston Food Bank operates secure data networks protected by industry standard firewalls and password protection systems. Only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by our customers. Any other particularly sensitive information, such as a customer’s credit card number collected for a commerce transaction, is also encrypted prior to transmission. Although The Greater Boston Food Bank operates secure data networks, no Internet transmission can be guaranteed 100% secure. However minimal, you use this site and its services at your own risk.

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