Privacy Policy

LAST UPDATED: October 28, 2024  

The Tiny News Collective and its affiliates, if any, (“Tiny News Collective,” “TNC,” “we,” or “us”) want you to be familiar with how we collect, use and disclose information. This Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information that we collect through: 

• The https://www.tinynewsco.org website and any other Tiny News Collective-operated website (including the membership portal: https://members.tinynewsco.org/) from which you are accessing this Privacy Policy (the “Websites”); 
• Our social media pages located at https://x.com/tinynewsco and https://www.linkedin.com/company/tiny-news-collective (collectively, our “Social Media Pages”);
• Software application made available by us for use on or through computers and mobile devices (the “App”); and
• HTML-formatted email messages that we send to you that link to this Privacy Policy or other communications with you.

Collectively, we refer to the Websites, Social Media Pages, Apps, the Membership Portal, and emails as the “Services.”

PERSONAL INFORMATION

“Personal Information” is information that identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable individual. The Services collect Personal Information, including: 

• Name 
• Postal address (including billing and shipping addresses)
• Telephone number
• Email address 
• IP address (we may also derive your approximate location from your IP address)
• Login and logout activity on our site
• Information you share when contacting us, including application information about becoming a Tiny News Collective member or fiscal sponsee
• Profile picture
• Payment card data
• Amounts and frequency of donations and subscriptions
• Social media account ID

Collection of Personal Information 

We and our service providers collect Personal Information in a variety of ways, including:  

• Through the Services.  
  • We collect Personal Information through the Services, for example, when you sign up for a newsletter, register an account to access the Services, attend one of our events, make a donation online, post a message on a forum we operate, or contact us. 
• From Other Sources.  
  • We may receive your Personal Information from other sources, for example: 
    • news organizations we collaborate with to provide our Services;
    • publicly available databases; and
    • joint marketing partners, when they share the information with us.

We need to collect Personal Information in order to provide the requested Services to you. If you do not provide the information requested, we may not be able to provide the Services. If you disclose any Personal Information relating to other people to us or to our service providers in connection with the Services, you represent that you have the authority to do so and to permit us to use the information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.  

Use of Personal Information

We and our service providers use Personal Information for the following purposes: 

• Providing the functionality of the Services and fulfilling your requests. 
  • To provide the Services’ functionality to you, such as arranging access to your registered account and providing you with related service and support.
  • To respond to your inquiries and fulfill your requests, when you contact us via one of our online contact forms or otherwise, for example, when you send us questions, suggestions, compliments or complaints, or when you request other information about our Services.
  • To complete your transactions, process your donations, verify your information, and provide you with related service and support.  
  • To send administrative information to you, such as changes to our terms, conditions, and policies. 
  • To allow you to send messages to another person through the Services if you choose to do so.

We will engage in these activities to manage our contractual relationship with you and/or to comply with a legal obligation. 

• Providing you with our newsletter, news stories, and/or other materials and facilitating social sharing.
  • To send you emails and optional push notifications with information about our services, new stories or events, and other news about our organization. 
  • To facilitate social sharing functionality that you choose to use.

We will engage in this activity with your consent or where we have a legitimate interest.

• Analyzing Personal Information for organizational reporting and providing personalized services. 
  • To analyze or predict our users’ preferences in order to prepare aggregated trend reports on how our digital content is used, so we can improve our Services. 
  • To better understand your interests and preferences, so that we can personalize our interactions with you and provide you with information tailored to your interests.
  • To better understand your preferences so that we can deliver content via our Services that we believe will be relevant and interesting to you.

We will provide personalized services based on our legitimate interests, and with your consent to the extent required by applicable law. 

• Aggregating and/or anonymizing Personal Information.
  • We may aggregate and/or anonymize Personal Information so that it will no longer be considered Personal Information. We do so to generate other data for our use, which we may use and disclose for any purpose, as it no longer identifies you or any other individual.
• Accomplishing our organizational purposes. 
  • For data analysis, for example, to improve the efficiency of our Services; 
  • For audits, to verify that our internal processes function as intended and to address legal, regulatory, or contractual requirements; 
  • For fraud prevention and fraud security monitoring purposes, for example, to detect and prevent cyberattacks or attempts to commit identity theft; 
  • For providing new content and services and developing new products and services; 
  • For enhancing, improving, repairing, maintaining, or modifying our current content, products and services, as well as undertaking quality and safety assurance measures; 
  • For identifying usage trends, for example, understanding which parts of our Services are of most interest to users; 
  • For determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns, so that we can adapt our campaigns to the needs and interests of our users; and 
  • For operating and expanding our organizational activities, for example, understanding which parts of our Services are of most interest to our users so we can focus our energies on meeting our users’ interests.  

We engage in these activities to manage our contractual relationship with you, to comply with a legal obligation, and/or based on our legitimate interest.

Disclosure of Personal Information  

We disclose Personal Information:

• To our third party service providers, to facilitate services they provide to us.
  • These can include providers of services such as website hosting, data analysis, payment processing, fraud prevention, information technology and related infrastructure provision, customer service, email delivery, auditing, and other services.
• By using the Services, you may elect to disclose Personal Information.
  • On message boards, chat, profile pages, blogs, and other services to which you are able to post information and content. Please note that any information you post or disclose through these services will become public and may be available to other users and the general public. 

Other Uses and Disclosures

We may also use and disclose your Personal Information as we believe to be necessary or appropriate, in particular when we have a legal obligation or legitimate interest to do so:

• To comply with applicable law and regulations.
  • This may include laws outside your country of residence. 
• To cooperate with public and government authorities.
  • To respond to a request or to provide information we believe is necessary or appropriate.
  • These can include authorities outside your country of residence.
• To cooperate with law enforcement.
  • For example, when we determine it is necessary to respond to law enforcement requests and orders or provide information we believe is important.
• For other legal reasons. 
  • To enforce our terms and conditions; and
  • To protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others. 
• In connection with a sale or business transaction.
  • We have a legitimate interest in disclosing or transferring your Personal Information to a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer, or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets, or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings). 
• To accomplish any additional purposes disclosed to you at the time you provide the information. 

OTHER INFORMATION

“Other Information” is any information that does not reveal your specific identity or does not directly relate to an identifiable individual. The Services collect Other Information such as:

• Browser and device information
• App usage data
• Information collected through cookies, pixel tags and other technologies
• Demographic information and other information provided by you that does not reveal your specific identity 
• Information that has been aggregated in a manner such that it no longer reveals your specific identity

Collection of Other Information 

We and our service providers may collect Other Information in a variety of ways, including:

• Your browser or device.  
  • Certain information is collected by most browsers or automatically through your device, such as your computer type (Windows or Mac), screen resolution, operating system name and version, device manufacturer and model, language, Internet browser type and version and the name and version of the Services (such as the App) you are using.  We use this information to ensure that the Services function properly.  
• Your use of the App.  
  • When you download and use the App, we and our service providers may track and collect App usage data, such as the date and time the App on your device accesses our servers and what information and files have been downloaded to the App based on your device number.
• Cookies.  
  • Cookies are pieces of information stored directly on the computer that you are using. Cookies allow us to collect information such as browser type, time spent on the Services, pages visited, language preferences, and other traffic data. We and our service providers use the information for security purposes, to facilitate navigation, to display information more effectively, and to personalize your experience. We also gather statistical information about use of the Services in order to continually improve their design and functionality, understand how they are used, and assist us with resolving questions regarding them. We do not currently respond to browser do-not-track signals. 
  • Google Analytics, through the use of cookies or other Tracking Technologies, helps us analyze how users interact with and use our Services, compiles reports on website activity, and provides other services related to activity and usage on our Services. The technologies used by Google may collect information such as your location, time of visit, whether you are a return visitor, and any referring website. You can learn more about Google’s partner services and how to opt out of tracking of analytics by Google on Google’s Privacy and Terms website: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites?hl=en

If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, most browsers allow you to automatically decline cookies or be given the choice of declining or accepting a particular cookie (or cookies) from a particular website. You may also wish to refer to http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/index.html. If, however, you do not accept cookies, you may experience some inconvenience in your use of the Services.  

• Pixel tags and other similar technologies.  
  • Pixel tags. Pixel tags (also known as web beacons and clear GIFs) may be used to, among other things, track the actions of users of the Services (including email recipients), measure the success of our marketing campaigns, and compile statistics about usage of the Services and response rates.  

Uses and Disclosures of Other Information 

We may use and disclose Other Information for any purpose, except where we are required to do otherwise under applicable law. If we are required to treat Other Information as Personal Information under applicable law, we may use and disclose it for the purposes for which we use and disclose Personal Information as detailed in this Policy. In some instances, we may combine Other Information with Personal Information. If we do, we will treat the combined information as Personal Information as long as it is combined.

SECURITY

We seek to use reasonable organizational, technical and administrative measures designed to protect Personal Information within our organization. Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us in accordance with the “Contact Us” section below.

CHOICES AND ACCESS  

You may opt out from receiving marketing-related emails from us. If you no longer want to receive marketing related emails from us on a going-forward basis, you may opt out by following the instructions contained in each such email.

We will try to comply with your request(s) as soon as reasonably practicable.  Please note that if you opt out, we may still send you important administrative messages, from which you cannot opt out.

How you can access, change, or delete your Personal Information  

If you would like to request to access, correct, update, suppress, restrict, or delete Personal Information, object to or opt out of the processing of Personal Information, or if you would like to request to receive a copy of your Personal Information for purposes of transmitting it to another company (to the extent these rights are provided to you by applicable law), you may contact us in accordance with the “Contact Us” section below.  We will respond to your request consistent with applicable law.  

In your request, please make clear what Personal Information you would like to have changed or whether you would like to have your Personal Information suppressed from our database. For your protection, we may only implement requests with respect to the Personal Information associated with the particular email address that you use to send us your request, and we may need to verify your identity before implementing your request. We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable.  

Please note that we may need to retain certain information for recordkeeping purposes and/or to complete any transactions that you began prior to requesting a change or deletion.    

THIRD PARTY SERVICES 

This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information, or other practices of any third parties, including any third party operating any website or service to which the Services link. The inclusion of a link on the Services does not imply endorsement of the linked site or service by us or by our affiliates. 

In addition, we are not responsible for the information collection, use, disclosure, or security policies or practices of other organizations, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Blackberry, or any other app developer, app provider, operating system provider, wireless service provider, or device manufacturer, including with respect to any Personal Information you disclose to other organizations through or in connection with the Apps.

USE OF SERVICES BY MINORS

The Services are not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and we do not knowingly collect Personal Information from individuals under 13.

JURISDICTION AND CROSS-BORDER TRANSFER

Your Personal Information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers, and, by using the Services, you understand that your information will be transferred to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have data protection rules that are different from those of your country. In certain circumstances, courts, law enforcement agencies, regulatory agencies or security authorities in those other countries may be entitled to access your Personal Information.

SENSITIVE INFORMATION

Unless we request it, we ask that you not send us, and you not disclose, any payment card information, financial account numbers, Social Security numbers, health information or other sensitive Personal Information on or through the Services or otherwise to us.

THIRD PARTY PAYMENT SERVICE

The Services may provide functionality allowing you to make donations to third-party organizations using third-party payment services with which you have created your own account. When you use such a service to make a donation, your Personal Information will be collected by such third party and not by us, and will be subject to the third party’s privacy policy, rather than this Privacy Policy. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, this third party’s collection, use, and disclosure of your Personal Information.

UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

The “LAST UPDATED” legend at the top of this Privacy Policy indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Services.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at team@tinynewsco.org, or:

1500 Chestnut Street, #2113
Philadelphia, PA 19102

Because email communications are not always secure, please do not include credit card or other sensitive information in your emails to us.