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Privacy Statement

The American Forest Foundation (“AFF,” “we,” “us” and “our”) respects individual privacy and values the confidence of our program participants, stakeholders, donors and our community.

This Privacy Policy sets out the privacy principles that we follow with respect to the collection, use, and disclosure of information that you may provide through AFF’s Websites (further described below), as well as through other channels, such us your use of our mobile applications and at our events you may attend.

Please read this entire Privacy Policy before using any AFF Websites or submitting information to AFF.

Summary Description of AFF Websites & Online Tools

This Privacy Policy applies to all of the AFF websites, online tool sties, mobile apps, and corresponding AFF programs described below (collectively referred as “Websites”). Except for circumstances otherwise noted, when you submit information to AFF through any AFF Websites, your information may be shared internally within AFF.

  • American Forest Foundation homepage (www.forestfoundation.org): This website offers organizational information about the American Forest Foundation, including our mission, leadership structure, program offerings, resources, news, and donation options.

  • My Land Plan (www.mylandplan.org): This website offers a tool that allows landowners to map the boundaries of their land, set goals and plan actions to protect their land, document their experiences, and connect with woodland owners and foresters.

  • WoodsCamp (www.woodscamp.com and any associated sub-domains) This web platform offers internet tools to help private woodland owners in the United States connect with programs, services, and professionals to help them care for their land. The WoodsCamp platform includes a customer relationship management tool (www.crm.woodscamp.com) for program partners and forestry professionals to support delivery of landowner technical assistance, services, and program benefits.

  • American Tree Farm System (www.treefarmsystem.org): The website provides information about the American Tree Farm System (ATFS) certification program.

  • Program specific sub-domains under URL www.my(localprojectname)woods.org eg. www.mymainewoods.org. Such websites provides landowners with the knowledge, tools, and resources they need to take enroll in an AFF affliated project and access resources and technical assistance from forestry professionals.

Association’s Mission Purpose; Legitimate Interests

The American Forest Foundation ensures the sustainability of America’s family forests for present and future generations in conjunction with our strategic partners. Through our programs, tools, and offerings, AFF has built a national movement of landowners who are actively caring for their woods to protect the clean water, wildlife habit and sustainable wood their forests provide. As such, any information we collect serves to further AFF’s mission, including but not limited to the following:

  • Provide relevant information to our community of landowners, forest owners, stakeholders, and the public

  • Respond to inquiries relating to AFF and its programs

  • Promote AFF events, programs, and activities

  • Perform our contractual obligations with candidates of the ATFS certification program, registered attendees at our events, subscribers of our publications and other products/services, donors/sponsors.

  • Administer and manage AFF’s programs and activities

Information We Collect About You; Purposes

You can access some areas of AFF Websites without submitting any information to us. However, if you wish to access additional content available on the Websites or participate in some of AFF’s programs and activities, we may ask that you provide us personally identifiable information for the following purposes:

A. Create a log-in account to access AFF Websites and online tools
B. Register for an AFF event, such as a webinar
C. Participate in the ATFS certification exam
D. Purchase items through AFF’s online store
E. Receive AFF’s newsletter, magazines, and other publications
F. Donate to the AFF
G. Contact AFF

In order for AFF to administer the foregoing activities, it will be necessary for AFF to collect your personal information.

Personal Data That You Voluntarily Provide To Us. AFF only collects personal data you voluntarily submit to us. The types of personal data we collect vary based on the programs, services, and products you with to engage in, but generally include your name, email address, phone number, username, password, postal address, demographic information (such as your gender and occupation), and credit card information.

Additionally, when you create a profile on our Websites, we will collect the information that you elect to upload to your profile, such as biography, your occupation, and business affiliation information. You should carefully consider whether you wish to submit personal data and tailor any content you submit appropriately.

Information Received from Other Sources. We may receive landowner information from public sources, such as land records and grant information, and combine this data with information we already have about you. This helps us to update, expand and analyze our records, as well as provide products and services that may be of interest to you and our stakeholders.

Automatically Collected Data. When you visit the website, we collect and store certain other information automatically that may not identify you personally:

  • Internet Protocol (IP) address. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to the computer you are using whenever you access the Internet.

  • Type of browser and operating system used to access our website

  • Date and time you access our website

  • The pages on our website that you access

We use the foregoing information in the form of summary statistics to help us make our Websites more useful to our visitors, such as assessing what information is of most and least interest.

How We Use Information

We will use the information you provide to us in order to carry out AFF’s mission purpose and relevant programs and activities, to fulfill our contractual obligations, and for internal use (by AFF staff, board/committee members, and consultants) such as performing marketing studies, research projects, and program development in support of AFF’s mission purposes.

There may be times when we share de-identified, aggregate information—such as the number of hits per page—with our business partners and with advertisers, sponsors, and other third parties in an effort to customize or enhance the content and advertising on the website for our users.

How We Share & Disclose Information

We do not share, sell, or rent information to any third party processors for their promotional use or for marketing purposes except in circumstances noted below.

  • AFF Agents/Selected Vendors: your personal information may be used within AFF or by a company acting as an agent of AFF for operational support purposes, technical service delivery, and distribution of program benefits including but not limited to event registration, content management and analysis, system maintenance, email distribution, printing, and mailing.

  • AFF Business Partners and Affiliates: AFF may share your information with carefully selected business partners and affiliates whose products and services may be of interest to our stakeholders and community. All AFF business partners and affiliates are obligated to implement opt-out mechanisms and honor any opt-out requests by recipients in compliance with applicable laws.

  • Links provided on AFF e-newsletters: For our electronic newsletters or communication that we send to our members and subscribers, AFF and its selected agents/business partners may track whether a recipient subsequently clicks through to links provided in the message and collect specific information such as: email address of a user, the date and time of the user’s "click," a message number, name of the list from which the message was sent, tracking URL number and destination page. AFF and its agents/business partners may use this information to customize profiles for our stakeholders in order to enhance our products/services and their distribution to our stakeholders, and to allow vendors to potentially offer products and services that may be of interest to our stakeholders.

  • When you terminate your website account access, AFF may continue to share information about you according to our legal and regulatory requirements.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, AFF may share personal information with a landowner/stakeholder’s consent. In addition, AFF may disclose your personal information as required by law or as needed in legal proceedings when AFF believes in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request.

In addition, in the event of a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale or transfer of some or all of our assets to a third party, we may also disclose your personal information to the third parties concerned or their professional advisors. In the event of such a transaction, the personal information held by AFF will be among the assets subject to the transaction.

Credit Card Information

AFF does not disclose credit card information provided by its customers and donors. When you choose to pay using your credit cards, AFF submits the information needed through secure payment gate sites to conduct the transactions.

Communications From AFF/How to Update Preferences

Except for transactional emails necessary to perform AFF’s contractual obligations, we will not send you promotional information without your consent, and you can withdraw consent at any time or update your preference by following the unsubscribe/email opt-out instructions included in each email communication, or by contacting us.

How to Access & Update Information

You may contact AFF and request a copy of the information AFF holds about you so you can update information that may be inaccurate or incomplete by contacting us. We may ask you to provide sufficient evidence of your identity for your own protection so we can ensure that information is being released to the correct person.

In some cases, our business requirements and legal obligations may prevent us from being able to delete your information. If we are unable to delete your information, we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why.

Children’s Information

AFF programs are not intended for children under 13 years of age. AFF does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 years of age through Websites or any other channels. If AFF discovers that a child under the age of 13 has provided us with personal information, we will delete the child’s personal information unless a parent or guardian provides verifiable consent to AFF.

Security Measures

AFF Websites have security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under Association’s control. When you enter sensitive information (such as a credit card number) as part of the purchase process, we encrypt the transmission of that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).

When you submit information to AFF through our Websites, you should be aware that your information is transmitted across the Internet and that no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure. Although we take reasonable security measures to protect your information when we receive it, you also need to ensure you take appropriate steps to protect your information.

International Website Access & Cross-Border Data Transfers

Our principle place of business is in the United States. If you are visiting our Websites from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States where our servers are located and AFF is based. In addition, information that AFF collects may be stored and processed in and transferred between any of the countries in which AFF operates to enable the use of the information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. You agree to such cross-border transfers of personal information.

Cookies

“Cookies” are files that contain information created by a web server that can be stored on a user’s hard disk for future use. We use cookies for functional purposes to keep the content of our Websites up to date and running. We also use cookies and analytics tools for analytical purposes to quantify the visits on our Websites and statistics from the server log. Most web browser automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. However, if the user declines the attachment of any cookie, the user may not have access to the full benefits of the website.

Our Websites also use Google Analytics to generate information about visitors, such as a visitor’s interests from Google’s Interest-based advertising or third-party audience data to improve services on our Websites. To provide website visitors more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics, Google has developed an Opt-out Browser add-on, which is available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/, to enable you to opt-out of Google’s programs.

Privacy Issues & Links to Other Sites

The website may contain links to other third party websites that are not affiliated with Association. AFF has no control over and is not responsible for the privacy policies or content of such sites.

Social Media Widgets

The website includes social media features, such as the Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram buttons, that run on our Websites. These features may collect your Internet Protocol address and which page you are visiting on our website, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Site. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

Amendments & Updates

AFF will occasionally update this Privacy Policy. Any changes to our Privacy Policy will be posted here so that users will know what information we gather, how we might use that information, and whether we will disclose it to anyone. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices and this Privacy Policy.

Contact Details

If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy and our practices regarding information you provide to us. Please contact:

American Forest Foundation
2000 M Street, NW
Suite 550
Washington, DC 20036
202-765-3660
info@forestfoundation.org

Effective Date: February 2021