Privacy Policy

Privacy Statement

The American Journalism Project is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This Privacy Policy describes how we may collect, use, disclose, and retain your personal information when you visit our website. This Privacy Policy does not address personal information that you provide to us in other contexts (e.g., applying for a grant or a job).

By using our website and engaging in the functionalities that it provides, you consent to information practices outlined in our Privacy Policy.

Information Collection

As a result of you visiting our site, we may collect and use certain personal information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular individual, household or entity. We collect most of this information directly from you via our website when you either subscribe for updates, sign up for our newsletter, make a donation, submit an employment application, apply for a grant, or request to contact us. Where you have an opportunity to supply information about yourself, you may choose not to provide requested information. In such cases where you opt to not provide the requested information, you may be restricted from use or access to certain functionalities of our website.

Additionally, we may collect information from your passive use of our website via our technology systems and platforms, including door entry systems and reception logs, cookies on our website, from a third party with your consent (i.e. your bank if utilizing our donation platform), from publicly accessible sources, and/or automated monitoring of our website and other technical systems, such as computer networks and connections, CCTV and access control systems, communication systems, email systems, donation platform systems such as Donorbox and Airtable.  

How and Why We Use Your Personal Information

In accordance with applicable data protection laws, we only use your information if we have a proper reason for doing so. Most of the personal information collected is used to either comply with our legal and regulatory obligations or for the legitimate business interests of the American Journalism Project or those of a third party, including but not limited to, local news organizations that we support. For example, we may use your information to track how our visitors use this site so that we can see what people like and don’t like or to comply with our legal requirements in reporting certain information to governmental and taxing agencies with regard to contributions and donations received.

We occasionally have service contractors, third party agents, subsidiaries, affiliates, and joint ventures that perform functions on our behalf, including but not limited to website hosting. They have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, and are contractually obligated to maintain the confidentiality and security of the data. They are restricted from using or altering this data in any way other than to provide the requested services to this website and we only allow our service providers to handle your personal information if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal information. 

That said, we will not release your name, email address or any other personal information to anyone outside the American Journalism Project except as expressly set forth in the Privacy Policy or without your consent, unless we are under a legal order to do so or there is an emergency involving danger to a person or property.

Notwithstanding, we may use certain anonymous information other than your personally identifiable information, including aggregate information derived from personally identifiable information, to improve our website, program and impact, to monitor traffic and general usage patterns or for other legitimate business purposes. 

Cookies

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier that is sent to your browser from a web site’s servers and stored on your computer. Each web site can send its own cookies to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) most browsers only permit a web site to access the cookies that the same web site has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites.

The American Journalism Project may use cookies to identify you as a repeat visitor or customer of the website and to track usage trends and patterns in order to better understand and improve areas of our website. You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, but you may not be able to take full advantage of our site’s features.

All computers and servers on the internet use IP addresses to recognize and communicate with each other. We collect IP addresses to administer and analyze our site and report aggregate, non-personal information (such as how many visitors we have). When you call up our site on your computer, our servers enter the IP address of that computer into a log. To maintain our users’ anonymity, we do not associate IP addresses with records containing personal information.

We do not and cannot use cookies or IP address tracking to retrieve personal information from your computer.

Security and Where Your Information is Held

No data transmission over the Internet or any wireless network can be guaranteed to be secure.  However, we have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost or used or accessed in an unauthorized way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to access it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorized manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.As a result, while we try to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure or guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. We are not liable for the illegal acts of any third party.

Information received may be held at our offices and those of our third party agencies, providers, representatives and agents described above. 

Links to Other Sites

The American Journalism Project may provide links to third party websites or utilize third party platforms  that are not maintained or owned by the American Journalism Project. The American Journalism Project provides these links as a convenience to users, but it does not operate or control such sites. The American Journalism Project also disclaims any responsibility for the information on those sites and any products or services offered there, and cannot vouch for the privacy policies of such sites. The American Journalism Project does not make any warranties or representations that any linked sites, or this site, will function without error or interruption, that defects will be corrected, or that the sites and their servers are free of viruses and other problems that can harm your computer. The American Journalism Project encourages to review the Terms and Conditions of Use and Privacy Policies of those third party websites and platforms.

Right to Know and Data Portability

You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months (the “right to know”). Once we receive your request and confirm your identity (see Exercising Your Rights to Know or Delete), we will disclose to you:

  • The categories of personal information we collected about you.
  • The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you.
  • Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information.
  • The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information.
  • Confirmation that we did not sell your information.
  • The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you (also called a data portability request).

We do not provide a right to know or data portability disclosure for Business-to-business (B2B) personal information.

Right to Delete

You have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions (the “right to delete”). Once we receive your request and confirm your identity (see Exercising Your Rights to Know or Delete), we will review your request to see if an exception allowing us to retain the information applies. We may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service provider(s) to:

  • Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you.
  • Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
  • Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law.
  • Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et. seq.).
  • Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information’s deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research’s achievement, if you previously provided informed consent.
  • Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us.
  • Comply with a legal obligation.
  • Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

We will delete or deidentify personal information not subject to one of these exceptions from our records and will direct our service providers to take similar action.

We do not provide these deletion rights for B2B personal information.

Exercising Your Rights to Know or Delete

To exercise your rights to know or delete described above, please submit a request via email to ops@theajp.org or through our Contact Us page. Only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf, may make a request to know or delete related to your personal information. You may only submit a request to know twice within a 12-month period. Your request to know or delete must:

  • Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information and
  • Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you.

Opt Out and Compliance with CAN-SPAM Act

The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 (“CAN-SPAM Act”) is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have emails stopped from being sent to them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

We collect your email address in order to:

  • Send information, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions.
  • Send information and updates pertaining to our programs and services.
  • Market to our mailing list or continue to send emails to our program participants and/or interested participants after you have provided us your information.

To be in accordance with CANSPAM, we agree to the following:

  • Not use false or misleading subjects or email addresses.
  • Identify the message as an advertisement in some reasonable way.
  • Include the physical address of our business or website headquarters.
  • Monitor third party email marketing services for compliance, if one is used.
  • Honor opt-out/unsubscribe requests quickly.
  • Allow users to unsubscribe by using the link at the bottom of each email.

If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, we include detailed unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email. 

Children

The American Journalism Project is not directed to children (persons under the age of 13), and we do not knowingly collect, either online or offline, Personally Identifiable Information from children. If you believe that we have received information from a person under 13, please contact us by email at ops@theajp.org or in writing at 6218 Georgia Avenue NW, Suite 1-#599, Washington, DC 20011 and we will take appropriate action.

Notice to California Visitors
California Online Privacy Protection Act

The California Online Privacy Protection Act (“CalOPPA”) requires commercial websites and online services to post a privacy policy. The law’s reach stretches well beyond California to require any person or company in the United States (and conceivably the world) that operates websites collecting Personally Identifiable Information from California consumers to post a conspicuous privacy policy on its website stating exactly the information being collected and those individuals or companies with whom it is being shared. We comply with CalOPPA.

California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”), if you are a California resident, you have the right to us ask us to disclose what personal information we have about you and what we do with that information, to delete your personal information and not to sell your personal information. You also have the right to be notified, before or at the point we collect your personal information, of the types of personal information we are collecting and what we may do with that information. Unless otherwise permitted, we cannot discriminate against you for exercising your rights under the CCPA. We comply with CCPA.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

The American Journalism Project may change its privacy policy from time to time.  If we make any changes regarding disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information to third parties, we will post notice of the new policy on our home page.

Disclaimers and Limitations of Liability

ALTHOUGH WE TAKE REASONABLE STEPS TO PREVENT THE INTRODUCTION OF VIRUSES, WORMS, OR OTHER DESTRUCTIVE MATERIALS AND PROGRAMS TO OUR SITE, WE DO NOT GUARANTEE OR WARRANT THAT OUR SITE OR MATERIALS THAT MAY BE DOWNLOADED FROM OUR SITE ARE FREE FROM SUCH DESTRUCTIVE FEATURES. WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR HARM ATTRIBUTABLE TO SUCH FEATURES. WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, LOSS OR INJURY BASED ON ERRORS, OMISSIONS, INTERRUPTIONS OR OTHER INACCURACIES IN OUR SITE, NOR FOR ANY CLAIM, LOSS OR INJURY THAT RESULTS FROM YOUR USE OF THIS SITE OR YOUR BREACH OF ANY PROVISION OF THIS AGREEMENT.

Questions

If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy or our use of your information, please email ops@theajp.org.