Privacy Policy

Last updated April 19th 2022

Overview

We at the Green Neighbor Challenge take privacy seriously. We want trust to be at the heart of our relationship with you. We're working hard to remove every possible barrier between you and your green options, that includes any fears you may have about how we might use your data. For this reason, we've designed our website to collect as little personally identifiable information as possible.

The Green Neighbor Challenge is a fiscally sponsored non-profit project of the Power Shift Network, 501c3. We chose the non-profit path specifically to avoid the perverse incentives that often appear in the tech industry to put profits before people, and monetization before privacy.

A summary: We collect your zip code when you enter it to see what geographies are using our tools. We log green pricing success and failure reports by utility if you respond to our validation pop-up to maintain quality program data. We collect anything you choose to share in an error report or survey, including your email if you'd like a followup. And we also employ Google Analytics (Privacy Policy) and the conversion tracking feature of Google Ad Grants for nonprofits to help us track generalized usage data to help us understand how well you're navigating our tools, and improve our Ad Grant conversion performance (you can opt out of Google Analytics here and Google Ad personalization here). Mailchimp (Privacy Policy) collects your email on our behalf if you choose to sign up for our newsletter. If you choose to donate, ActBlue (Privacy Policy) will collect and process your payment and billing information, which we may also use to fulfill any applicable donor rewards. And although we do not share any information with Energy Sage (Privacy Policy), CleanChoice Energy (Privacy Policy), Incentifind, or other third-party service providers, if you use an affiliate link to their websites for their services or programs, we receive referral revenue for completed purchases/subscriptions, which also helps keep our team fed and housed, as well as our tools entirely free (and unobtrusive).

We invite you to continue reading about how we handle your information in more detail. We used Termly’s privacy policy generator to make sure we didn’t miss anything, and made some editing tweaks from there. If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy notice or our practices, please contact us at Team@greenneighborchallenge.org.

Introduction

Thank you for choosing to be part of our community at Green Neighbor Challenge (as sponsored by Power Shift Network, 501c3) (“Company,” “we,” "us," or, "our"). We are committed to protecting your personal information and your right to privacy. 

This privacy notice describes how we might use your information if you:

In this privacy notice, if we refer to:

  • “Website” we are referring to any website of ours that links to this policy
  • "Services," we are referring to our Website, and other related services, including any sales, marketing, or events

The purpose of this privacy notice is to explain to you in the clearest way possible what information we collect, how we use it, and what rights you have in relation to it. If there are any terms in this privacy notice that you do not agree with, please discontinue use of our Services immediately.

Please read this privacy notice carefully, as it will help you understand what we do with the information that we collect.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

2. HOW DO WE USE YOUR INFORMATION?

3. WILL YOUR INFORMATION BE SHARED WITH ANYONE?

4. WHO WILL YOUR INFORMATION BE SHARED WITH?

5. DO WE USE COOKIES AND OTHER TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES?

6. HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION?

7. HOW DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION SAFE?

8. WHAT ARE YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS?

9. CONTROLS FOR DO-NOT-TRACK FEATURES

10. DO WE MAKE UPDATES TO THIS NOTICE?

11. HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?

12. HOW CAN YOU REVIEW, UPDATE OR DELETE THE DATA WE COLLECT FROM YOU?

1. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you express an interest in obtaining information about us or our products and Services, when you participate in activities on the Website or otherwise when you contact us.

The personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us and the Website, the choices you make and the products and features you use. The personal information we collect may include the following:

Personal Information Provided by You: We collect zip codes, email addresses, and other similar information provided through error reporting or user surveys.

Personal Information Provided by Third-Party Service Providers: If you use affiliate links from our website to one of our third-party service providers such as EnergySage, CleanChoice Energy, or Incentifind, we may be provided access to basic personal information to verify successful subscription or purchase referrals, such as name, location, email address, and transaction time/date, but we are NOT provided access to payment/account information.

Information automatically collected

We automatically collect certain information when you visit, use or navigate the Website via Google Analytics and conversion tracking provided by Google Ads Grants for Nonprofits. This information does not reveal your specific identity (like your name or contact information) but may include device and usage information, such as your IP address, browser and device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring URLs, device name, country, location, demographics, information about how and when you use our Website and other technical information. This information is primarily needed to assess and improve the reach and usefulness of our tools, as well as for reporting purposes (grantmakers are all about metrics!).

Like many organizations, we also collect information through cookies and similar technologies. 

The information we collect includes: 

  • Log and Usage Data. Log and usage data is service-related, diagnostic, usage and performance information our servers automatically collect when you access or use our Website and which we record in log files. Depending on how you interact with us, this log data may include your IP address, device information, browser type and settings and information about your activity in the Website (such as the date/time stamps associated with your usage, pages and files viewed, searches and other actions you take such as which features you use), device event information (such as system activity, error reports (sometimes called 'crash dumps') and hardware settings). 
  • Device Data. We collect device data such as information about your computer, phone, tablet or other device you use to access the Website. Depending on the device used, this device data may include information such as your IP address (or proxy server), device and application identification numbers, location, browser type, hardware model, Internet service provider and/or mobile carrier, operating system and system configuration information.
  • Location Data. We collect location data such as information about your device's location, which can be either precise or imprecise. How much information we collect depends on the type and settings of the device you use to access the Website. For example, we may use GPS and other technologies to collect geolocation data that tells us your current location (based on your IP address). You can opt out of allowing us to collect this information either by refusing access to the information or by disabling your Location setting on your device.

2. HOW DO WE USE YOUR INFORMATION? 

We use personal information collected via our Website for a variety of organizational purposes described below. We process your personal information for these purposes in reliance on our legitimate organizational interests, in order to enter into or perform a contract with you, with your consent, and/or for compliance with our legal obligations. We indicate the specific processing grounds we rely on next to each purpose listed below.

We use the information we collect or receive: 

  • To send you marketing and promotional communications (aka our newsletter). We and/or our third-party marketing partners (aka Mailchimp) may use the personal information you send to us for our marketing purposes, if you signed up for it. For example, when expressing an interest in obtaining information about us or our Website, subscribing to marketing or otherwise contacting us, we will collect personal information from you. You can opt-out of our marketing emails at any time (see the "WHAT ARE YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS?" below). 
  • For other organizational purposes. We may use your information for other business purposes, such as data analysis, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and to evaluate and improve our Website, products, marketing and your experience. We may use and store this information in aggregated and anonymized form so that it is not associated with individual end users and does not include personal information. We will not use identifiable personal information without your consent.

3. WILL YOUR INFORMATION BE SHARED WITH ANYONE?

We will never sell your information. We may process or share your data that we hold based on the following legal basis:

  • Consent: We may process your data if you have given us specific consent to use your personal information for a specific purpose.  
  • Legitimate Interests: We may process your data when it is reasonably necessary to achieve our legitimate organizational interests. 
  • Legal Obligations: We may disclose your information where we are legally required to do so in order to comply with applicable law, governmental requests, a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process, such as in response to a court order or a subpoena.  
  • Vital Interests: We may disclose your information where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding potential violations of our policies, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person and illegal activities, or as evidence in litigation in which we are involved. 

More specifically, we may need to process your data or share your personal information in the following situations: 

  • Business Transfers: As a non-profit project, we cannot be bought or sold. In the event we decide to merge our operations into another non-profit, we will transfer data to our new organizational home.
  • Vendors, Consultants and Other Third-Party Service Providers. We may share your data with third-party vendors, service providers, contractors or agents who perform services for us or on our behalf and require access to such information to do that work. Examples include: payment processing (i.e. ActBlue), data analysis (i.e. Google Analytics), email delivery (i.e. Mailchimp), hosting services (i.e. Heroku), customer service and marketing efforts. We may allow selected third parties to use tracking technology on the Website, which will enable them to collect data on our behalf about how you interact with our Website over time (i.e. Google Analytics and Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits). This information may be used to, among other things, analyze and track data, determine the popularity of certain content, pages or features, and better understand online activity. Unless described in this notice, we do not share, sell, rent or trade any of your information with third parties for their promotional purposes. 
  • Affiliates. We may share your information with affiliates (i.e. Power Shift Network), in which case we will require those affiliates to honor this privacy notice. Affiliates include our fiscal sponsor and any subsidiaries or other companies that we control or that are under common control with us.

4. WHO WILL YOUR INFORMATION BE SHARED WITH? 

We only share and disclose your information with the following third parties. If we have processed your data based on your consent and you wish to revoke your consent, please contact us using the contact details provided in the section below titled "HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?”. 

Web and Mobile Analytics 

Google Analytics  

Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits  

Newsletter

Mailchimp

Donations

ActBlue

5. DO WE USE COOKIES AND OTHER TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES?

We may use cookies (via Google Analytics and Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits) and similar tracking technologies (like web beacons and pixels) to access or store information. Specific information about how we use such technologies and how you can refuse certain cookies is set out in Google Analytics’ Cookie Notice.

6. HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION?

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting or other legal requirements). 

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize such information, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

7. HOW DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION SAFE?

We have implemented appropriate technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process. However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security, and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from our Website is at your own risk. You should only access the Website within a secure environment.

8. WHAT ARE YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS?

Green Neighbor Challenge is a tool aimed at US residents. However, If you are a resident in the EEA or UK and you believe we are unlawfully processing your personal information, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection supervisory authority. You can find their contact details here: https://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/bodies/authorities/index_en.htm. 

If you are a resident in Switzerland, the contact details for the data protection authorities are available here: https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/edoeb/en/home.html.

Cookies and similar technologies: Most Web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove cookies and to reject cookies. If you choose to remove cookies or reject cookies, this could affect certain features or services of our Website. To opt-out of interest-based advertising by advertisers on our Website visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/.

9. CONTROLS FOR DO-NOT-TRACK FEATURES

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track ("DNT") feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this privacy notice.

10. DO WE MAKE UPDATES TO THIS NOTICE? 

In Short: Yes, we will update this notice as necessary to stay compliant with relevant laws.

We may update this privacy notice from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated "Revised" date and the updated version will be effective as soon as it is accessible. If we make material changes to this privacy notice, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this privacy notice frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.

11. HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE? 

If you have questions or comments about this notice, you may email us at Team@GreenNeighborChallenge.org or by post to: Green Neighbor Challenge, PO Box 73116 Washington, DC 20056 United States

12. HOW CAN YOU REVIEW, UPDATE, OR DELETE THE DATA WE COLLECT FROM YOU? 

Based on the applicable laws of your country, you may have the right to request access to the personal information we collect from you, change that information, or delete it in some circumstances. To request to review, update, or delete your personal information, please submit a request form by clicking here.

This privacy policy was created using Termly’s Privacy Policy Generator.