About the AFA
The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) is a registered charitable organization dedicated to protecting endangered old-growth forests in British Columbia (BC) and ensuring a sustainable, second-growth forest industry. We specialize in public education and mobilization, building alliances with key allies, on-the-ground exploration and documentation of old-growth forests, research, and engaging governments to achieve policy change for BC’s ancient forests.
To achieve our campaign goals, we need to communicate with a variety of supporters in different ways such as through email communications, phone calls, public outreach, fundraising events, and social media.
Purpose of this Policy
AFA is committed to protecting the privacy and security of personal information we obtain. Our purpose is to assure anyone who shares personal information with us that AFA complies with all legislative requirements with respect to protecting privacy. This policy explains how we collect, use, disclose and safeguard personal information.
Definition of Personal Information
Personal information is any information that is identifiable to you as an individual. This may include, but is not limited to, your name, age, date of birth, language of correspondence, mailing address, telephone number, email address, personal opinions, beliefs or interests, and affiliation with an organization. Personal information does not include publicly available information about you in your capacity as an employee of an organization such as your name, job title, work mailing address, work email address, work fax number, or work telephone number.
Collection of Information
AFA may collect personal information from donors and supporters, event attendees, volunteers, and others who have shown an interest in AFA. This data may include personal details such as your address, phone number, and email when you make a donation or purchase AFA merchandise for yourself or as a gift to someone else. We collect and store data such as email newsletter subscriptions and actions you take such as signing our petition, sending campaign-related messages through our website, and other data you choose to share with us.
This information is collected by a variety of methods: email, phone, mail, social media, online, or in-person at events or through fundraising activities, such as canvassing.
Use of Information
AFA uses personal information to build a broad-based social movement to protect endangered ancient forests in BC and ensure sustainable, value-added, second-growth forestry. To achieve our goals, we need to communicate with you and expand our community of support.
This includes using the information for a variety of purposes including:
- Keeping you informed about campaign news, AFA events, photos, hikes and more
- To conduct awareness and advocacy campaigns and activities
- Acknowledging supporters or donors and fulfilling subscriber requests
- Ensuring that database information about donors and supporters is up to date
- Organizing fundraising activities including by email or mail
- For campaign and administrative-related phone calls and emails
- Monitoring and improving content on our website and social media platforms
- Tracking how many people have taken action to support the ancient forest campaign
- Maintaining a list of anyone who may no longer wish to receive communications from us
AFA is committed to using personal information in a respectful and useful way. AFA is also committed to making sure our followers do not receive more than a reasonable number of emails, letters, or phone calls.
Disclosure of Personal Information
AFA treats its obligations with respect to the use and disclosure of personal information very seriously. Generally, we will only use or disclose personal information for the primary purpose for which it was collected or for a purpose related to the primary purpose that you would reasonably expect it to be used. AFA will never sell or rent your personal information. We also do not purchase or retrieve any personal information through other organizations or services.
Storage of Information
Personal information is stored in our database(s) on a secure server and in hard copy files. Only authorized AFA personnel have access to this information. AFA uses personal information to better serve our followers and to expand our community of support. We will keep your data for as long as we consider it necessary to carry out our activities, taking into consideration legal, taxation and accounting requirements.
Additionally, AFA uses, and may need to share your information with, a variety of authorized third party vendors and service providers that help us with specialized services to meet our campaign goals, including billing, payment processing, customer service, email and mail deployment, business analytics, marketing, advertising, performance monitoring, hosting, and data processing, each of which has their own privacy policies. Please note that while AFA strives to protect personal data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
Online Privacy
AFA is committed to protecting the privacy of those who use our website. AFA does not collect any personal information about individuals browsing our website.
AFA does collect statistical information through a log file which indicates the number, length, and frequency of page visits, external links redirecting users to our website, and which browser, operating system, and type of device (mobile or desktop) were used to access our website. This information is analyzed to help us develop content that responds to the interests of our website visitors.
AFA’s website uses tracking codes like Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel for reporting and evaluation purposes and to help develop a better user experience for our visitors. These cookies are used to store non-personally identifiable information. Browsers do not share first-party cookies across domains. For further information on the privacy policy concerning Google Analytics, please see https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-US.
Accountability
AFA does its best to ensure that all information is recorded accurately—if you notice any errors in our correspondence with you or if your personal information changes, please contact us at (250) 896-4007 or [email protected] to update your file.
If you do not wish to be contacted by phone, mail, or email, please contact us and we will ensure that your request is honoured.
If you have any questions about AFA’s privacy policy or concerns about the way that your information is being used, please contact us.
