Introduction
The SDB General Conference USA & Canada (“Conference”) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting it through our compliance with this policy.
This policy describes the types of information we might collect from individuals as they visit our websites (seventhdaybaptist.org or any other domain belonging to the Conference) or social media sites, when they subscribe to one of our mailing lists, or when they initiate contact or respond/reply to us by phone, email, social media, or written communication.
Please read this policy carefully to understand our procedures and practices regarding your information and how we will use it. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, you have a choice to not use our websites and social media sites and to ask for your information’s removal from our Church Relationship Management (CRM) system.
By using our websites, social media sites, or contacting us by phone, email, social media, or written communication, you agree to this information usage and privacy policy.
Minors
Under Federal Law, users as young as 13 may consent to the collection of personal information while online. However, the Conference strives not to collect personal information from any minors (under age 18). If you are under 18, the Conference asks that you do not use our website, social media sites, electronic communication, or on or through any of their features to provide any information, make any purchases or donations, use any of the interactive or public comment features or provide any information about yourself to us (including your name, address, telephone number, email address or any screen name or user name you may use). If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a minor without parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a minor without parental consent, please contact our Director of Communications.
Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It
We collect several types of information from people who are interested in our Conference including information:
- by which you may be personally identified, such as name, mailing address, email address, telephone number, birth date, screen name, or other identifier, or ANY OTHER INFORMATION COLLECTED THAT IS DEFINED AS PERSONAL OR PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION UNDER AN APPLICABLE LAW (“personal information”);
- that is about you but individually does not identify you, such as employment history, educational history, or personal statements; and/or
- about your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our Website, and usage details.
We collect this information:
- Directly from you when you provide it to us;
- Automatically as you navigate through our websites and social media sites. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies; and/or
- From third parties, for example, our business partners.
Information You Provide To Us
The information we collect might include:
- Information you provide by filling in forms on our websites or social media sites. This includes information provided when purchasing materials, making donations, posting materials, submitting employment applications, submitting papers and documents, or signing up for events, notifications, or receiving further information. We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our Website.
- Records and copies of your correspondence (including email addresses), if you contact us.
- Your responses to surveys that we might ask you to complete for research purposes.
- Your search queries on our websites or social media sites.
- Your login information for any portions of our websites that require it.
You also may provide information to be published or displayed (hereinafter, “posted”) on public areas of our websites or social media sites, or transmitted to other users of the Conference (collectively, “User Contributions”). Your User Contributions are posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. Although we limit access to certain pages, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. Additionally, we cannot control the actions of other users with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your User Contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.
Information We Collect Through Automated Data Collection Technologies
As you navigate through and interact with our websites or social media sites, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including:
- Details of your visits to our websites or social media sites, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data, and the resources you access and use.
- Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type.
We also may use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or other online services (behavioral tracking).
The information we collect automatically is statistical data and we may maintain or associate the data with personal information we collect in other ways or receive from third parties. It helps us to improve our websites or social media sites and to deliver a better and more personalized service, including by enabling us to:
- Estimate our audience size and usage patterns;
- Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our websites or social media sites according to your individual interests;
- Speed up your searches; and/or
- Recognize you when you return to our websites or social media sites.
The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:
- Cookies (or browser cookies). A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our websites or social media sites. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our websites and social media sites.
- Flash Cookies. Certain features of our websites or social media sites may use local stored objects (or Flash cookies) to collect and store information about your preferences and navigation to, from, and on our websites or social media sites. Flash cookies are not managed by the same browser settings as are used for browser cookies.
- Web Beacons. Pages of our websites or social media sites and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the Conference, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity).
We do not collect personal information automatically, but we may tie this information to personal information about you that we collect from other sources or you provide to us.
Third-Party Use of Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies
Some content or applications, including advertisements, on our websites or social media sites are served by third parties, including advertisers, ad networks and servers, content providers, and application providers. These third parties may use cookies, either alone or in conjunction with web beacons or other tracking technologies to collect information about you when you use our website. The information they collect may be associated with your personal information or they may collect information, including personal information, about your online activities over time and across different websites and other online services. They may use this information to provide you with interest-based (behavioral) advertising or other targeted content.
We do not control these third parties’ tracking technologies or how they may be used. If you have any questions about an advertisement or other targeted content, you should contact the responsible provider directly.
How We Use Your Information
We may use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information:
- To present our websites or social media sites and their contents to you;
- To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us;
- To allow you to register for events and programs;
- To fulfill any other purpose for which you provide it;
- To enable you to make donations and for us to acknowledge them;
- To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection;
- To notify you about changes to our websites or social media sites or any products or services we offer or provide through them;
- To allow you to participate in interactive features on our websites or social media sites;
- To allow you to apply for employment or volunteer positions;
- In any other way we may describe when you provide the information;
- For gathering those interested in Seventh Day Baptists into geographical groups; and
- To mail or email newsletters and notices, including sharing relevant information with business partners for the purpose of communicating with you (e.g. your email or mailing address).
- For any other purpose with your consent.
We may also use your information to contact you about goods, services, events, and ministries that may be of interest to you. If you do not want us to use your information in this way, if the form on which you are submitting the information has a box allowing you to opt out of this use of the information, please check that box. If the form does not have such a box, please contact the Director of Communications.
Disclosure of Your Information
We may disclose aggregated information about our users, and information that does not identify any individual, without restriction.
We may disclose personal information that we collect or you provide as described in this privacy policy:
- To Conference employees or Conference churches;
- To a successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of the Conference’s assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by the Conference is among the assets transferred.
- To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it.
- For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information.
- With your consent.
We may also disclose your personal information:
- To comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including responding to any government or regulatory request.
- To enforce or apply the terms of any agreement you enter into with us, and other agreements, including for billing and collection purposes.
- If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of the Conference, its employees, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information
We strive to provide you with choices regarding the personal information you provide to us. We have created mechanisms to provide you with the following control over your information:
- Tracking Technologies and Advertising. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent. To learn how you can manage your Flash cookie settings, visit the Flash player settings page on Adobe’s website. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of a website may then be inaccessible or not function properly.
- Promotional Offers from the Conference. If you do not wish to have your email address or other contact information used by the Conference to promote products, services, events, or ministry opportunities, you can opt out by checking the relevant box located on the form on which we collect your data (if there is such a box), by logging into our websites and adjusting your user preferences in your account profile (if you have an account profile with user preferences) or by contacting the Director of Communications.
- Targeted Advertising. If you do not want us to use information that we collect or that you provide to us to deliver advertisements according to our advertisers’ target-audience preferences, you can opt out by checking the relevant box located on the form on which we collect your data (if there is such a box), by logging into our websites and adjusting your user preferences in your account profile (if you have an account profile with user preferences) or by contacting the Director of Communications.
- Use of Lists. We never sell, rent, or trade any individual’s contact information and donation information, including email or mailing lists or other personally identifiable information.
We do not control third parties’ collection or use of your information to serve interest-based advertising. However, these third parties may provide you with ways to choose not to have your information collected or used in this way.
Accessing and Correcting Your Information
You may contact the Director of Communications to request access to correct or delete any personal information that you have provided to us. If you have a user account, we cannot delete your personal information associated with that account except by also deleting that user account. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.
If you delete your User Contributions from our websites or social media sites, copies of your User Contributions may remain viewable in cached and archived pages, or might have been copied or stored by other users.
Your California Privacy Rights
California Civil Code Section § 1798.83 permits users of our websites who are California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please contact the Director of Communications.
Data Security
We have implemented measures designed to secure your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure.
The safety and security of your information also depend on you. We urge you to be careful about giving out information in public areas of our websites or social media sites like message boards. The information you share in public areas may be viewed by any user.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information. Any transmission of personal information is at your own risk. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures.
Changes to Our Privacy Policy
It is our policy to post any changes we make to our privacy policy on a webpage on https://seventhdaybaptist.org and to accompany these changes with a notice on the home page that the privacy policy has been updated. The date the privacy policy was last revised is identified below. You are responsible for periodically visiting our privacy policy to check for any changes.
Contact Information
To ask questions or comment about this information usage and privacy policy and our privacy practices, please contact:
Jeremiah Owen
Director of Communications
PO Box 1678
Janesville WI 5354
jowen@seventhdaybaptist.org
608-752-5055 ext. 700
Approved by General Council 10/18/2024