Privacy Policy

Commitment to Openness and Privacy

Heartway Foundation dba Winter's Flower (hereafter referred to as Winter's Flower) is committed to upholding and preserving public and private trust, while at the same time protecting the privacy of donors, survey participants, and applicants for awards.

Established in 2002, Heartway Foundation dba Winter's Flower is a non-profit charitable organization, with tax-exempt status under Internal Revenue Code sections 501(c)(3), 509(a)(1) and 170 (b)(1)(A)(vi). Despite its private status, Winter's Flower openly shares as much information as it can in order to further the public’s understanding of its mission and operations. The Foundation’s Board of Directors has adopted a Public Records Policy and Procedure, which describes how the organization complies with the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 USC 552 (1988), the US Privacy Act, 5 USC 552a, and Oregon's Public Records Law, ORS 192.410 to 192.505.

Once you choose to provide us with personal information, it will only be used to support your relationship with Winter's Flower. Only the Organization and its authorized agents have access to the personally identifiable information you provide us through our website. We will not sell, rent or lease your personally identifiable information to others, nor will we share, trade or exchange your personally identifiable information with anyone outside of Winter's Flower without your permission, except under requirement by law or judgment or when we explicitly notify you at the time we ask for your personally identifiable information.

Anonymous (non-personal) data is collected in aggregate for reporting about our website usability, performance, and effectiveness. It is used to improve the customer experience, usability and site content.

This site contains links to other websites. Winter's Flower is not responsible for the content or privacy practices of these other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this website and Winter's Flower.

Because we care about the safety and privacy of children online, we comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). COPPA and its accompanying FTC regulation establish United States federal law that protects the privacy of children using the Internet. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 and our operations do not target information to children under 13. Our sites are not intended to solicit information of any kind from children under 13, and we have designed our sites to block our knowing acceptance of information from children under 13 whenever age-related information is requested.

It is possible that by fraud or deception by others, we may receive information pertaining to children under 13. If we are notified of this, as soon as we verify the information, we will immediately obtain parental consent or otherwise delete the information from our servers. If you want to notify us of our receipt of information by children under 13, please contact us. Winter's Flower is committed to protecting the privacy needs of children and we encourage parents to take an active role in their children's online activities and interests.

Private Trust

Winter's Flower respects the privacy concerns of individuals. Winter's Flower does not disclose private information entrusted to it by donors, volunteers and staff. This information includes, but is not limited to, trust documents, wills, and personnel records. Donor and prospective donor information are not “public records” under the Oregon Public Records Law. Information not available for public inspection or release includes: the donor database, donor and prospective donor information, and planning documents on fund-raising strategies and other competitively sensitive information. In addition to these items, throughout the course of business, Winter's Flower protects the privacy of its meeting agendas and minutes, internal communications, legal documents, personnel information (beyond that disclosed on IRS Form 990), internal management documents and other items deemed to be private by the Foundation's Board of Directors, unless otherwise allowed under the Oregon Public Records Law.

Security

Winter's Flower is committed to ensuring the security of your information. To prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, maintain data accuracy and ensure the appropriate use of the information, we have in place appropriate physical, managerial procedures to safeguard the information we collect.

We use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption when collecting or transferring sensitive data such as credit card information. Credit card numbers are only used for processing payments and donations and are not used for other purposes. Our efforts to protect credit card fraud help protect your financial data security.

This site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. This includes a firewall and 24-hour monitoring of site activities by our hosting service provider as well as 128-bit SSL encryption (where allowable by law) on all transaction-oriented operations between you and the Foundation via our transaction service provider.

While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user information off-line. All of our users' information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. ALL employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Every quarter, as well as any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our customers' information is protected. Finally, the servers that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a secure environment.

Conditions of Use, Notices and Revisions

We will always use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post the changes here so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we may disclose it.

If you have any concern about privacy at www.wintersflower.org, please contact us.

Contacting Us

We value your comments and opinions. If you have comments or questions about our privacy policy or need help, or to remove your name from our database, please contact us.
 

Relationship with The Rapid Eye Institute

While Winter's Flower's activities and operations are supportive of The Rapid Eye Institute, they are also separate from The Rapid Eye Institute. Heartway Foundation dba Winter's Flower maintains accounting records separate from The Rapid Eye Institute, has a separate annual audit by an independent auditor, and establishes and maintains separate employee payrolls and benefit programs.