Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County’s  Privacy Policy for Online and Electronic Use

Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County (Coalition) is strongly committed to protecting the privacy of its online guests, donors, and friends. We do not collect personally identifiable information about individuals—such as their names and postal and/or email addresses—except when it is knowingly provided by such individuals. We believe that maintaining privacy on the Web is very important and we hope you will read this privacy policy carefully so that you will clearly understand both our commitment to you and your privacy and our method of collecting and using information.

This privacy policy only applies to transactions made, and data gathered, on the homelesshouston.org Web site and does not apply to any other Web site. The terms of this privacy policy shall govern all interactions with the Coalition through either the Coalition's Web site or email. A link to the privacy policy can be found on our home page and on other related areas throughout the Web site. By using the Coalition Web site or communicating with us by email, you agree to the terms of this privacy policy.

Information Provided by Visitors When You Sign-up for Email Updates or When You Make a Donation

You may use the Coalition Web site without registering or submitting any personally identifiable information. However, should you decide to made a donation, or receive any information from the Coalition, you must provide us with certain personal information.

If you decide to donate online, you will be asked to provide personally identifiable information necessary to process and service your donation that may include your name, billing and shipping postal addresses, telephone number, email address, and credit card number. When you make a donation online, your credit card information will be temporarily stored on a secured server.

If you elect to receive information, we may ask your for your email address, name and postal address.

When You Complete an Electronic Survey

The Coalition may occasionally post surveys on its Web site or through email. Your participation in these surveys is on a completely voluntary and anonymous basis unless we inform you otherwise. We use the information in the responses to the survey to understand our visitors better and to determine how best to serve them. Personally identifiable information collected in our surveys is never sold, rented, or shared with third parties for their marketing purposes.

How Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County Uses Information Provided by Visitors

The Coalition uses the information you provide to process your online donations, and to inform you of site updates and/or news about homelessness.

The Coalition never shares with third parties any personally identifiable information you provide when making a donation online, except as required by law.

Information Collected Automatically

Cookies

This Web site automatically collects some non-personally identifiable information about you when you request pages through your browser. We place cookies on Web site visitors' computers to collect aggregate information for site traffic analysis, such as the number of visitors and the number of pages viewed. (Cookies are small files that reside in a visitor's browser.) The aggregate information we collect through cookies helps the Coalition monitor how you and other visitors use the site, allowing us to provide an optimal experience and better service; this information is never used to identify you personally. However, the Coalition’s Web site has been designed to provide nearly full functionality without the use of cookies. You can opt to set your Web browser to reject cookies without any significant impact to our Web site’s features and functions.

Emailing The Coalition

The Coalition tries to respond to email messages requiring a response within seven business days. If you email us, your message and email address will be forwarded to the appropriate department within the Coalition. We may choose to save this information. We are pleased to hear from you. However, any message, material, business information, ideas, concepts, or other information sent to the Coalition by email will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary.

Data Security

The Coalition makes every reasonable effort to ensure that all of the transactions that occur on our Web site are secure. All credit card numbers submitted to the site for donations are encrypted using "Secure Socket Layer" (SSL) encryption. SSL technology is an industry standard for protecting sensitive information as it is transmitted over the Internet.

To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and administrative procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

Third-Party Service Providers

The Coalition may engage reputable third-party vendors in order to help us manage our Web site and allow us to better service our visitors and customers. These may include third-party vendors engaged to analyze, for marketing purposes, the information collected on our Web site; or third-party vendors engaged to process your donations. The Coalition requires its vendors by contract to maintain the confidentiality and security of our information to which they are provided access and restricts the vendors from using the information in any way not expressly authorized by The Coalition.

The Coalition’s site may contain links to other Web sites such as our third-party vendors, sponsors, and other organizations. Once you leave the Coalition’s Web site, this privacy policy will not apply.

Contact Information

If you have any questions regarding this privacy policy, please contact:

Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County
600 Jefferson, Suite 920
Houston, TX 77002
Ph: 713 739 7514
Fax: 713 739 8038;
Email info@homelesshouston.org

Changes to Privacy Policy

Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County, Inc. may revise its privacy policy at any time. We encourage you to visit this page periodically to review our current policy so that you will always know what information we gather and how we may use that information.