PRIVACY POLICY
Birds Canada’s mission is to drive action to increase the understanding, appreciation, and conservation of birds in Canada.
We are committed to respecting our relationship with you. Personal, accurate, and cost-effective communication with you is essential in order to carry out our mission.
This privacy policy conveys our best efforts to maintain this respect. It explains how your personal information is collected, used, and safeguarded in accordance with Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, Ontario’s Personal Information Protection Act, and other relevant legislation.
Information we collect and how it helps bird conservation
Personal information
Your name, address, birth date, and gender are examples of “personal information.” It is any information that can be used to identify (or infer the identity of) a specific person. Your computer’s IP address can, in some cases, be considered personal information, as it may give some indication of your geographic location. Website forms, surveys, mail-in forms, over the phone, and in person are some of the ways we may ask for this information.
Processing a donation or registration, providing your subscription to an e-newsletter, enabling you to send letters or sign a petition via online action platforms, or to participate in data collection efforts for our various Citizen Science programs (e.g., via NatureCounts) are among the reasons we may ask you for this information. We may also communicate with you by mail, email, or phone regarding donation or volunteer opportunities in support of our work.
Providing personal information is always at your discretion. You may choose to withhold information. There are instances where your personal information is necessary to fulfill your request. We are required by law to take your full name and mailing address, for example, when you make a donation for which you wish to receive a tax-deductible receipt.
Web cookies and data technology
Like almost all websites, our site uses web data ‘cookies’ to improve your experience when using the Birds Canada websites. Cookies also help us learn how our users are interacting with us so we can provide the best information possible. Information collected this way may include (but is not limited to) your IP address and internet service provider, the type of web browser and operating system you used, and which of our website pages you visited. We also include links in our emails to track open and click-through rates to help us learn what bird conservation information is most important to our supporters.
Our cookies may be session cookies (temporary cookies that identify and track users within our websites, applications, or services, which are deleted when you close your browser or leave your session in the application or service) or persistent cookies (cookies which enable our websites, applications or services to “remember” who you are and to remember your preferences within our websites, applications, or services, and which will stay on your computer or device after you close your browser or leave your session in the application or service).
In some cases, interacting with our websites, social media accounts, or emails provides us with “anonymous” data, such as IP addresses, link clicks, page visits, the time spent on a page, etc. We use Google Analytics on our website to get a sense of where website visitors are in the world, and what content is most interesting to them. This helps us stay relevant for our supporters.
Third-party cookies and other storage technologies may also be used to understand the content that is most important to you. This helps us measure our performance and target sponsored and unsponsored content to you on third-party platforms. For example, Facebook’s tracking pixel can help us understand what content you are interested in on our website so that we can serve only our most relevant advertising to you on Facebook. You can opt out from such Facebook advertising by clicking “Why am I seeing this?” on our Facebook ads, clicking “Options,” and then selecting “Hide all ads from this advertiser.”
By using all the information available we can send relevant bird-related communications to you and avoid sending irrelevant or too many emails. For example, when we have petitions or actions for birds that are meaningful locally, we try our best to send them to the affected communities.
Aggregate data
Your information may be used in combination with other people’s so we can report the aggregate number of people that donated, participated, or signed a petition from a particular area.
Third parties
Any third party service that we use, such as Survey Monkey for sending surveys, have resources dedicated to maintaining security. We ensure that any third-party partner has written policies about never sharing your information with anyone other than Birds Canada.
Donation and credit card information
Often, donations are made to us via credit card. When you make a donation to us online, your credit card information is collected and processed by third-party Payment Card Industry (PCI)-compliant services. At Birds Canada we use PayPal Checkout and CanadaHelps to securely collect your payment information.
For credit card donations received in person, through the mail, or by phone, payments may be processed by TD Business Banking, Worldline-Bambora or PayPal Checkout. All services are PCI compliant and use and store information securely.
Fundraising
Birds Canada is a registered Canadian charity. We cannot do our work for birds without the financial support of our many generous members and donors. We do our best to reach out to as many individual supporters as we can. Our donors allow us to maintain our vital work to understand, appreciate, and conserve Canada’s wild birds.
Letters or phone calls to you help us understand how our work and your goals match. Information you provide (such as your postal code) may be used to find more complete contact information from other sources (such as Canada Post) so we can contact you. Please contact hello@birdscanada.org to opt out of any of these communications.
Links to other websites
Our websites contain links to websites owned and operated by other organizations. Please review the privacy policy and terms of use for each website you visit. They are not governed by this policy.
