The David Suzuki Foundation aims to protect nature, now and for future generations, and help people in Canada understand that we are all interconnected and interdependent with nature.

To carry out our mission, it’s important to communicate with you. And we’re committed to respecting our relationship with you, whether close or distant.

This privacy policy reflects our best efforts to maintain this respect, while ensuring we can communicate broadly, personally and accurately in the most cost-effective way possible. It explains how we collect, use and safeguard your personal information.

Information we collect and how we use it

Personal information

“Personal information” is any information that can be used to identify (or infer the identity of) a specific person, including, for example, your name, address, birth date, gender, etc. In some cases, your computer’s IP address can be considered personal information, as it may give some indication of your geographic location.

We may ask you for personal information in a variety of ways, including website forms, surveys, mail-in forms, over the phone and in person.

There are a range of reasons why we may ask you for this information, including: to process a donation or registration; to fulfil your subscription to an e-newsletter; to allow you to send letters or sign a petition via our online action platforms; to invite you to events; or to provide other information about us which might interest you. We may also contact you by mail, email or phone about opportunities to donate in support of our work.

Your choice to provide us with your personal information is at your discretion. You may always elect to withhold information. In some cases, we will require your personal information in order to fulfil something you’ve asked of us. For example, when you make a donation, we’re required by law to take your full name and mailing address in order to send you a tax-deductible receipt.

Cookies and data technology

We use cookies and other technology on our websites to make them easier to use and so that we can learn about how you use them. Information collected this way may include (but is not limited to) your IP address and internet service provider, the type of web browser and operating system you used and which of our website pages you visited. We use links in our emails to track open and click-through rates to help us learn what emails appeal to you most.

In some cases, interacting with our websites, social media accounts or emails provides us with “anonymous” data, such as IP address, link clicks, page visits, the time spent on a page, etc. We use Google Analytics on our website to learn where you are, when you’re using our site and what content you find most interesting. This helps us stay relevant.

We may also use third-party cookies, beacons and other storage technologies to understand what website content is most important to you so that we can measure our performance and target sponsored and unsponsored content to you on those third-party party platforms. For example, we use Facebook’s tracking pixel to learn about what content you are interested in on our website so that we can serve only our most relevant advertising to you on Facebook. You can opt out from such Facebook advertising by clicking “Why am I seeing this?” on our Facebook ads, clicking “Options” and then selecting “Hide all ads from this advertiser.”

It’s possible for us to put anonymous data together with personal information you give us to find out more about you. This helps us respect what we know about you. For example, when we have petitions that are meaningful locally, we try our best to send them to the affected communities and avoid sending irrelevant or too many emails.

Aggregate data

In some cases, we may aggregate your information with others peoples’ in order to report on campaigns. For example, we may count the number of people who donate or sign a petition based on their postal code. That way, we can show where people in Canada are taking action — with the number (e.g., “516 people from Toronto have donated to this campaign”) or by indicating the total on a map. We do not display your actual postal code.

Use of third parties

In many cases, we don’t actually collect and store personal information in our systems, but instead use a third party. For example, we may use Survey Monkey to send out a survey or Marketo to provide an online registration form.

Such services have resources dedicated to maintaining security and confidentiality, and we ensure that any third-party partner has written policies about never sharing your information with anyone other than the David Suzuki Foundation.

Donation and credit card information

You may need to provide your credit card information to make your donation.

If you make an online donation, we won’t store your credit card information. Instead it’s collected and processed by a third-party service provider — iATS Payments — which either processes your single gift or stores your data to be processed each month.

If you use a credit card to make your donation in person, through the mail or by phone, another third party — Blackbaud Payment Service — stores the data securely and submits it to iATS Payments for processing.

All partners that handle payment card data must be certified as payment card industry– compliant. These partners include:

A word on fundraising

As a registered Canadian charity, we cannot do our work without the financial support of our many generous donors. We do our best to reach out to as many possible individual supporters as we can. Our donors allow us to maintain our independence.

We may use information you provide (such as your postal code) to find more complete contact information from other sources (such as Canada Post) so we can reach out to you, and we may use third-party providers to help. The chance to send you a letter or give you a phone call helps us see if we’re a good fit for you when it comes to making donations. You may opt out of these communications at any time by contacting communitygiving@davidsuzuki.org.

Links to other websites

Our websites contain links to websites owned and operated by other organizations. They may have their own privacy policies and terms and conditions and are not governed by this policy. We encourage you to carefully review the privacy policy and terms of use of each website you visit.

Retention of your information

Unless otherwise permitted or required by applicable laws or regulations, we will retain your personal information only as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, including for the purpose of satisfying CRA, legal, accounting or auditing requirements.

What you need to know about consent

By providing personal information to us, you allow “deemed” consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your information in accordance with this policy.

When you provide contact information to us for one purpose, we may contact you using that information for other areas of our work. For example, if you sign up for our One Nature Challenge, we may email you about opportunities to support our work with a donation. Or, if you make a donation and provide us with your mailing address, we may also send a paper newsletter to your home in order to keep you up-to-date with work you’ve helped make happen.

We respect your right to control your personal information — please contact us immediately if you want us to stop using it in any particular way. We will fulfil your request in the timeliest way possible.

Please note: In order to adhere to Canada Customs and Revenue Agency rules, we are required to maintain donation records and are not allowed to remove this information from our internal records, even at your request.

Please also note: We may be unable to provide you with certain information or services if you do not give us specific personal information. For example, we cannot issue you a charitable tax receipt if you don’t provide your address, or send you an e-newsletter if you don’t share your email address.

Accessing, correcting and deleting personal information & updating

If you would like to stop receiving email from us at any time, click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of our emails or you can email subscribers@davidsuzuki.org and type “unsubscribe” in the subject line.

If you would like to stop receiving mail solicitations or our paper newsletter from us, please email communitygiving@davidsuzuki.org. You can also reach us by phone at 1-800-453-1533.

Upon reasonable request and notice, you may view and have corrections made to the personal information we hold about you, subject to any legal or contractual restrictions. If you are aware of any inaccuracies in the personal information we hold about you or to remove all of your information from our databases, please contact our privacy officer at privacy@davidsuzuki.org.

We may not accept a request to change information if we believe that the change would violate a law or legal requirement or result in incorrect information.

Before providing you with access to your information, we may ask you for specific information to help us confirm your identity and right of access, and to provide you with the personal information we hold about you, or to make the requested changes. In some cases, applicable law requires us to refuse to provide you with access to some or all of the personal information we hold about you, or that we may have destroyed, erased or made anonymous in accordance with our legal record-keeping obligations and privacy best practices.

Please note that if you request deletion of certain information, we may not be able to provide you with certain services. We will explain the consequences of deletion at that time to assist you in your decision.

If we are unable to provide you with access to your personal information, we will inform you of the reasons why, subject to any legal or regulatory restrictions. Such restrictions may include, for example, information about another individual that would reveal their personal information or confidential business information, or would be prohibitively costly to provide.

Ways to prevent us from collecting “anonymous” data

Our websites use cookies and JavaScript-based tracking scripts to collect the anonymous data referred to above. To stop this from happening, adjust your web browser’s “cookie,” “cache” and JavaScript settings. Please note that doing so may affect the performance of our web properties, and in some cases may completely prevent you from using some of our pages and forms.

Information we share

General

In order to communicate with you, we sometimes work with external organizations and have them contact you on our behalf. We require them to take measures to properly safeguard your information and only use it for the purpose specified by us, in a manner consistent with this policy.

For example, we work with a mailing company that sends out our fundraising letters. We give them a list of names and mailing addresses of people we want to contact. They sort the lists, print the letters, stuff the envelopes and drop the mail off at Canada Post, which delivers it to your door. Another example is that we use an email tool to send out our e-newsletters.

We sometimes send personal information to outside organizations who help us better communicate with you. We only work with organizations that have comprehensive security and confidentiality policies, including written policies that do not allow them to use or share your information with anyone other than the David Suzuki Foundation.

We may disclose information to other third party service providers that perform services on our behalf, such as payment processing, marketing, information technology, data hosting and processing services.

Finally, we may disclose personal information as necessary to meet legal, regulatory, insurance, audit, and security requirements, and as otherwise with your consent, or as permitted or required by law (including as required by applicable Canadian and foreign laws applicable to us or our service providers).

Email addresses

We do not sell or exchange email addresses with other organizations.

In some instances, we may promote actions or petitions on our websites in partnership with other non-profit organizations. In these cases, we give you the clear option of whether you want us to share your email with them.

Mailing addresses

Unless otherwise requested, we sometimes share names and mailing addresses of people who donate less than $100 per year to us with other Canadian non-profits. Sharing information is common among non-profits, as a way to reach new people and receive funds to help continue important work. You may choose to have us withhold your information by contacting communitygiving@davidsuzuki.org.

How we keep your information secure

We take reasonable steps to protect the personal information in our custody or control using physical, electronic or procedural security measures, including firewalls and encryption, that are appropriate having regard to the nature and sensitivity of the information. We take reasonable measures to limit access to this data to authorized employees and contractors who need to know that information in order to perform, develop or improve our services.

However, please note that no security measures can offer absolute security.

Cross-border transfer of information

Some information we collect may be stored and processed on servers located outside your jurisdiction of residence, including outside your province and/or country. Please note that the privacy laws in such jurisdictions may differ from Canadian privacy laws.  As a result, this information may be subject to disclosure to governments, courts or law enforcement agencies in those areas, according to their laws, without notice to us or you.

Policy updates and changes

We may change this policy from time to time without notice. Changes will be reflected on this page.

Contact information

For further information or to make a complaint, please contact our privacy officer by email at privacy@davidsuzuki.org or by mail to:

340 – 1122 Mainland Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 5L1

This document is available to the public and explains how we collect, use and disclose information, in accordance with this policy, the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act, the Personal Information Protection Act and other relevant legislation.