This policy outlines Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada (“CAFC”, “we”, “us” or “our”) commitment to respecting and safeguarding the privacy of personal information of individual persons and explains how we collect, use, protect and disclose personal information. This includes the personal information of donors, prospective donors, board members, volunteers, individuals who engage with us on community initiatives, individual grant applicants and recipients, and our staff. CAFC subscribes to the Donor Bill of Rights, the Code of Ethical Principles and Standards and the Ethical Fundraising and Financial Accountability Code. We operate in accordance with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation.
What is Personal Information?
Personal information means information about an identifiable individual. This includes an individual’s name, home address and phone number, age, sex, marital or family status, an identifying number, email address, financial information, educational history, etc.
Collection, Use, Disclosure and Retention of Personal Information
Personal information is collected from individuals for the overall purpose of meeting the mission of CAFC. We collect, use and disclose personal information only for certain purposes that we identify to you. The purposes for which personal information is collected will be identified at the time the information is collected. With your consent, we collect information about you for various purposes, including, but not limited to the following:
We normally collect individual information directly. We may collect your information from other persons with your consent or as authorized by law.
We inform individuals, before or at the time of collecting personal information, of the purposes for which we are collecting the information. The only time we don’t provide this notification is when an individual volunteers information for an obvious purpose (for example, producing a credit card to make a donation when the information will be used only to process the payment).
We may only use personal information for the purpose it has been collected, or for a consistent purpose, unless another use is specifically authorized at law.
We may only disclose personal information where we have legal authority to do so, or where the disclosure is for the purpose that we collected the information, such as providing you with a program or service.
We will keep your personal information only as long as it is necessary to satisfy the purposes for which it was obtained, or as required by law. We have guidelines and procedures for the retention and destruction of personal information. When we destroy personal information, we will use safeguards to prevent unauthorized parties from gaining access to that information during the process.
How do we safeguard personal information?
We make every reasonable effort to ensure that personal information is accurate and complete. We rely on individuals to notify us if there is a change to their personal information that may affect their relationship with our organization. If you are aware of an error in our information about you, please let us know and we will correct it on request wherever possible. In some cases we may ask for a written request for correction.
We protect personal information in a manner appropriate for the sensitivity of the information. We make every reasonable effort to prevent any loss, misuse, disclosure or modification of personal information, as well as any unauthorized access to personal information.
Access to your personal information is restricted to CAFC employees, agents and authorized service providers who need the information to fulfill the purpose for which the information was collected. CAFC will protect your personal information by safeguards that are appropriate to the sensitivity of that information and the format of the information, whether electronic or physical.
Our procedures include physical security measures, organizational measures including security clearances and limiting access on a “need-to-know” basis, and technological measures such as the use of passwords and encryption. When it comes to the handling of electronic records, CAFC adheres to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).
Third Party
CAFC website pages requesting personal information, including credit card numbers, names and addresses are linked and hosted by a third party, secure website. All information shared by individuals, and information transfers are conducted under secure site conditions.
Personal information collected online is transferred into our donor database for tax receipting, stewardship, and donor solicitation purposes. Personal information collected through our website is treated under the same privacy policies as other personal information.
Please note that individual organizations are governed under their own privacy policies. Organizations visited through links contained on the CAFC website may not adhere to the same privacy policies. It is the responsibility of each user to read individual organization’s policies accordingly.
Email addresses are not shared with other organizations.
Questions and complaints
If you have a question or concern about any collection, use or disclosure of personal information by CAFC, or about a request for access to your own personal information, please contact Enza DiBenedetto at 416-923-0924 ext. 225 to respond to questions. Further information on privacy and your rights in regard to your personal information may also be found on the website of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/