This policy has been updated on, and is valid as of, May 3, 2023
Energy Savers Network Incorporated respects your privacy and preferences. This privacy policy (the “Privacy Policy”) sets forth the terms under which you share your personal data with Energy Savers Network Incorporated, how Energy Savers Network Incorporated collects and uses your data, and your rights with respect to understanding and modifying how it will be collected and used.
How does this Privacy Policy apply to you?
This Privacy Policy applies to the personal data provided to Energy Savers Network Incorporated when you make a donation, register for an event, sign up for a newsletter, purchase a product, or otherwise provide us with information via the Energy Savers Network Website located at energysaversnetwork.org, or any other domain names owned or controlled by Energy Savers Network Incorporated. It also applies to personal data you may provide to Energy Savers Network Incorporated via telephone, email, regular mail, social media, texting, mobile applications, at a special event, in response to a solicitation or face-to-face.
Why do we hold and process personal data?
Energy Savers Network Incorporated may request from you, or you may volunteer to provide, your contact information, including your name, mailing address, phone number(s), social media handles and email address(es). We hold and process supporters’ personal data for a number of reasons:
- To manage client accounts and provide ongoing customer service
- To manage supporters’ accounts and provide customer service
- To keep a record of donations made and actions taken by our supporters and our communications with them
- To send our supporters marketing information about our projects, fundraising activities and appeals where we have their consent or are otherwise permitted to do so
- To fulfill contractual obligations entered into with supporters
- To support volunteers, such as during build or fundraising events
- To support community based fundraising and campaigning
- To ensure we do not send unwanted information to supporters or members of the public who have informed us they do not wish to be contacted
- To offer sweepstakes, contests, giveaways or other promotions
- To enforce the Website terms of service
- To perform other functions as described at the time Energy Savers Network Incorporated collects information.
If you make a donation with Energy Savers Network Incorporated, or otherwise provide us your information, Energy Savers Network Incorporated may contact you from time to time about opportunities to make additional donations or to provide you information about upcoming programs.
We may also analyze your personal information to create a record of your interests and preferences. This allows us to ensure communications are relevant and timely, to contact you in the most appropriate and relevant way and in general to provide you with an improved user experience. It also helps us to understand the background of our supporters so that we can make appropriate requests for support, enabling us to raise funds and help beneficiaries sooner and more cost-effectively.
When will we send you personalized marketing communications?
Energy Savers Network Incorporated will contact you for marketing purposes—for example, to keep you up to date on our work, or let you know how you can support that work—only where we have your consent or we are otherwise allowed to do so because of your prior engagement with Energy Savers Network Incorporated.
We will make it easy for you to tell us if you would like to receive marketing communications from us and hear more about our work and the ways in which you would like to receive this information. We will not send you marketing material if you tell us that you do not wish to receive it. Instructions for how to do so are below (see “How to control what we send you or update your personal information”).
How and when do we obtain information about you?
Energy Savers Network Incorporated may obtain your personal data in the following circumstances:
a. When you give it to Energy Savers Network
We will obtain your personal data directly when you email/call us, make a donation, apply for our services, sign up for our enewsletter, sign up to volunteer, sign up for one of our events, or when you communicate with us directly in some other way.
b. When you access Energy Savers Network’s website, social media, or emails
We might also track your personal data through our website (Google Analytics), email opens and clicks, or through social media such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn, depending on your settings or the privacy policies of these social media and messaging services.
What personal information might we collect?
Energy Savers Network Incorporated will only collect personal data about you that is relevant to the type of transaction or service you have engaged in with us.
For example, we may receive and retain personal information about you when you contact Energy Savers Network Incorporated to make a donation; sign up for any of Energy Savers Network’s services, volunteer opportunities, or online content (such as newsletters); or when you telephone, email, or write to us, or engage with us via social media channels. In each of these cases, the information we collect is relevant to the type of transaction you are entering into. Data such as your name email or postal address, telephone or mobile number will be necessary both to execute these transactions as well as to enable us contact you for further engagement. Bank account or credit card details will be necessary to process any donations.
Credit card and billing information: In addition to your contact information, when you make a donation, Energy Savers Network Incorporated asks for your billing address and credit card or other financial services information. Energy Savers Network Incorporated uses a third-party banking agent (GoFundMe, Stripe and PayPal) to process your payments via a secured server that verifies your credit card/bank information. They return a unique tracking number only, which cannot be decrypted to obtain the payment card information, and Energy Savers Network Incorporated never retains your complete credit card number. Only employees who need access to your personal information to perform a specific job are granted access to that information, and Energy Savers Network Incorporated and our banking agent will not share your credit card/bank information with any other third party.
Sensitive Personal Data: We only collect “sensitive personal data” (e.g., proof of income, energy bills) when you apply to receive our free weatherization services —and then only to the extent such data is required to ensure that you qualify for our services.
All sensitive personal data is stored on a password-protected system (WP Engine, Salesforce CRM, or Google Workspace) to which only a limited number of relevant staff have access. It is deleted when no longer needed by us, is never shared with third parties other than Duke Energy, and is available to you at any point should you wish to see it.
How will we use your personal data?
Energy Savers Network Incorporated will use your personal information for the following purposes:
a. For administrative reasons, including:
- “service administration”, which means that Energy Savers Network Incorporated may contact you for reasons related to administering any donations/applications you have made, the completion of services you have entered into with us, or the activity or online content you have signed up for;
- to confirm receipt of donations (unless you have asked us not to do this), and to say thank you and provide details of how your donation might be used;
- in relation to correspondence you have entered into with us whether by letter, email, text, social media, or any other means, and to contact you about any content you provide;
- for internal record keeping (for audit purposes) so as to keep a record of your relationship with us;
- to implement any instructions you give us with regard to withdrawing consent to send marketing information;
- to use IP addresses to identify the location of users, to block disruptive use and to establish the number of visits from different countries.
b. For marketing and fundraising
Sections above describe what data may be used for marketing and fundraising purposes and under what circumstances.
c. Analysis
To analyze and improve the activities and content offered by the Energy Savers Network Incorporated website to provide you with the most user-friendly navigation experience. We may also use and disclose personal information in aggregate (so that no individuals are identified) for marketing and strategic development purposes.
How long will we keep your personal information?
We will hold your personal information on our contact lists only for as long as you continue to provide your consent.
If you request that we stop sending you marketing materials, we will keep a record of your contact details and appropriate information to enable us to comply with your request not to be contacted by us.
How we keep your data safe
We ensure that there are appropriate security mechanisms in place to protect your personal details. For example, your personal information are stored on password-protected networks that are routinely backed up and monitored by our service providers’ IT staff for security risks (WP Engine webhosting, Salesforce CRM, and Google Workspace). All sensitive personal data is stored on a secure database, to which only a limited number of relevant personnel have access. It is deleted when no longer needed by us and is never shared with third parties except Duke Energy when requested. If data is stored temporarily on a laptop or phone we make sure it is password-protected, encrypted with Norton Anti-Virus software, and deleted after uploading to our secure networks. We do not recommend that you send personal info by email as we can not guarantee it’s security from your email client to ours.
Cookies Policy
If you visit our webpage, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
Our cookies will measure how many people are using each page of the website and for how long so that we can try to improve the quality of our website.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.