rootEd Alliance Privacy Policy
Effective Date/Last Updated: September 15, 2023
This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) describes the Personal Information collected by or on behalf of rootEd Alliance (“rootEd,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) through this website (“Site”), in connection with the services we provide you (“Services”), and our interactions with you, and how Personal Information is used, protected, and shared. If you have questions or concerns about this Policy, please contact us as set forth below.
Personal Information We Collect
We may collect a range of Personal Information. “Personal Information” means information that uniquely identifies, relates to, describes, or is reasonably capable of being associated with or linked to you.
Personal Information Provided by You on the Site. If you contact us or send inquires via our Contact Us form on the Site (where we may retain your message’s content and our response), we may also collect your contact information. This may include your name, email address, address, demographic information, and phone number.
Student Personal Information We Collect in Connection with our Services. We collect and maintain a variety of Personal Information about the students we provide our Services to, including the following categories:
General Information, such as name, age, and birth date;
Contact Information, such as email address, phone number, parent/guardian information; and
Education/Career Information, such as graduating class, grade level, school and advisor information, GPA, test and assessment scores, financial aid and grant information, scholarship information, educational enrollment information, and career advancement information.
Use of Personal Information
As Stated or Agreed to at the Point of Collection. We may use Personal Information for the purposes stated or agreed-to (or as is obvious) at the point of collection. For example, we use Personal Information to respond to your questions, comments, or complaints. We may also use Personal Information as requested or consented to by you.
Administration. We use Personal Information for administrative purposes, such as to inform our business strategies and to understand the Site’s demographics and user preferences.
Communications. We may use Personal Information to notify you of new features of our Site, Services, to notify you of changes to our Terms or this Policy, respond to feedback provided to us, send you information about our organization and Services, and for other similar communications.
Site Management. We use Personal Information for Site management, such as troubleshooting problems, improving the content and functionality of the Site, statistical and other analyses of the Site, and to customize the Site to you and our users.
Analytics and Statistics. We may use Personal Information of our students for purposes of conducting analytics and measuring statistics in order to improve and enhance the Services we provide to students.
To Protect Our Rights. We may use Personal Information to protect our legal rights or interests, or those of other parties, including to bring a legal action against you or anyone who may be causing harm to us, our Site, or to other users of the Site, meet contractual obligations, or any other lawful purpose for which the Personal Information is collected.
Cookies & Other Tracking Technologies
We process information collected through cookies and other tracking technologies, which may include or be combined with Personal Information, to help operate certain features of our Site, to enhance your experience through personalization, and to help us better understand the features of the Site that you and other users are most interested in.
Most browsers provide you with the ability to block, delete, or disable cookies, and your mobile device may allow you to disable transmission of unique identifiers and location data. If you choose to reject cookies or block device identifiers, some features of our Site may not be available, or some functionality may be limited or unavailable. Please review the help pages of your browser or mobile device for assistance with changing your settings.
Some of our service providers or plug-ins may use cookies or other methods to gather information regarding your use of our Site and may combine the information in these cookies with any Personal Information about you that they may have. The use of such tracking information by a third party depends on the privacy notice of that third party. We do not respond to Do Not Track (“DNT”) signals sent to us by your browser at this time. To learn more about how DNT works, please visit http://allaboutdnt.com/.
We use analytics services, including Google Analytics, to assist us with analyzing our website traffic through cookies and similar technologies. To learn more about how Google uses data, visit Google’s Privacy Policy and Google’s page on “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps.” You may download the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on for each web browser you use, but this does not prevent the use of other analytics tools. To learn more about Google Analytics cookies, visit Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites.
You can use our cookie preference page to decide which of the above technologies you wish to enable when you use our Site. In addition, most browsers provide you with the ability to block, delete, or disable cookies and similar technologies, and your mobile device may allow you to disable transmission of unique identifiers and location data. If you choose to reject cookies or block device identifiers, some features of our Site may not be available, or some functionality may be limited or unavailable.
Applying to Work with rootEd. If you apply for employment with rootEd, we will collect your name, education and employment history, address and contact information, demographic information, and any other information included in your resume or application. If you send us your job application materials, we will only use and share those job application materials to evaluate your qualifications to work with rootEd.
Feedback. When you provide comments or feedback about our Site, the content on the Site, or our Services (“Feedback”), we will not treat that Feedback as confidential and we may use that Feedback for any purpose in our sole discretion so long as it does not personally identify you. Feedback will be used without attribution or compensation to you.
Videos; Embedded Content
The Site contains videos and embedded content provided by rootEd and other parties, including visible content and/or feeds scripts embedded in the Site’s code. rootEd and such other parties may collect data about how you interact with such content. For example, Vimeo may collect usage data on videos embedded on the Site. Even if you do not watch videos, Vimeo may still collect certain information about your interactions with our Site if you are signed into your Vimeo account when accessing our Site. Please see Vimeo’s Privacy Policy for more information.
Data from Third Party Sources
We obtain Personal Information about our students, including educational records, from various third-party sources such as the National Student Clearinghouse and we may combine such information with other Personal Information we maintain to further enhance the Personal Information we have about the students we provide our Services to.
Social Media
We are active on social media, including Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Medium (“Social Media”). Anything you post on Social Media is public information and will not be treated confidentially. We may post (or re-post) on the Site and our Social Media pages any comments or content that you post on our Social Media pages.
The Site may allow you to connect and share data with Social Media platforms. These features may require us to use cookies, plug-ins, and APIs provided by such Social Media platforms to facilitate those communications and features. The Site may use advertising networks and services offered by Social Media platforms to deliver advertising content. Use of these services requires Social Media platforms to implement cookies or pixel tags to deliver ads to you while you access the Site.
Your use of Social Media is governed by the privacy policies and terms of the providers that own and operate those websites and not by this Policy. We encourage you to review those policies and terms.
Disclosure of Personal Information
We do not sell, rent or lease Personal Information to any third party. We may share Personal Information with the following parties, in compliance with applicable laws:
Employees and Affiliates. We may share Personal Information with our employees and affiliates who have a need to know the information for our business purposes.
Third Parties and/or Service Providers. We may share Personal Information with third parties and/or service providers that provide services for us. For example, we may share Personal Information with vendors to help us host and manage the Site; provide targeted advertising and other marketing; improve the content and functionality of the Site; perform data analysis and statistical analysis; troubleshoot problems with the Site; provide public relations; provide email services; provide data processing; and support or provide the security of the Site.
National Student Clearinghouse. We may share Personal Information of our students with the National Student Clearinghouse for reporting and research purposes.
Government Officials/Law Enforcement. We will cooperate with law enforcement and other governmental agencies, and may disclose Personal Information: (i) if we believe in good faith we are legally required to disclose that Personal Information, (ii) if we are advised to disclose Personal Information by our legal counsel, (iii) when necessary to identify, contact or bring a legal action against someone who may cause or be causing harm to, or interfering with the legal rights of, rootEd or any other party, (iv) detect, prevent, or otherwise respond to fraud, security or technical concerns, or (v) support auditing and compliance functions.
Professional Advisors. We may share Personal Information with our professional advisors, such as our attorneys, accountants, financial advisors and business advisors, in their capacity as advisors to rootEd.
Change in Ownership or Merger. In the event rootEd is the subject of a change of control or in the event the Site changes ownership, in whole or in part, or in the event of a merger, bankruptcy, receivership or a similar transaction, we may transfer Personal Information to the subsequent owner(s). Where legally required we will give you prior notice and if you have a legal right to do so, an opportunity to object to this transfer.
Other. We may share Personal Information with third parties when explicitly requested by or consented to by you, or for the purposes for which you disclosed the Personal Information to us as indicated at the time and point of the disclosure (or as was obvious at the time and point of disclosure).
Children’s Privacy
We do not knowingly collect, use, or share Personal Information from children under 13. If a parent or legal guardian learns that their child provided us with Personal Information without his or her consent, please contact us and we will make commercially reasonable attempts to delete such Personal Information.
Data Security
We use our commercially reasonable efforts to protect the confidentiality and security of Personal Information we process. However, despite these efforts to store Personal Information in a secure operating environment, we cannot guarantee the security of Personal Information during its transmission or its storage on our systems. Further, while we attempt to ensure the integrity and security of Personal Information, we cannot guarantee that our security measures will prevent third parties such as hackers from illegally obtaining access to Personal Information.
Retention
We will retain Personal Information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purpose(s) for which it was collected, including satisfying any legal, regulatory, accounting, or reporting requirements and according to applicable law(s).
Access from Outside the United States
If you access the Site from outside the United States, please be aware that Personal Information may be transferred to, stored in, collected, or processed in the United States, where our data center and servers are located and operated. Certain governmental authorities may not consider the level of protection of Personal Information in the United States to be equivalent to that required by other jurisdictions.
Third-Party Websites
The Site may link to, or be linked to, websites not controlled by us. We are not responsible for third parties’ privacy policies or practices. This Policy does not apply to any third-party websites or to any data that you provide to third parties. We encourage you to read the privacy policy for each website that you visit before disclosing Personal Information to third parties, since any Personal Information disclosed will be subject to the applicable third party’s privacy policy.
Your Choices and Controls
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to exercise certain controls and choices regarding our collection, use, and sharing of your Personal Information. To opt-out of marketing communications please email us at [email protected] by following the instructions included in the email or text correspondence.
Please note that, even if you unsubscribe from certain correspondence, we may still need to contact you with important transactional or administrative information, as permitted by law. You cannot opt-out of receiving transactional emails related to the performance of our Services. Please note that even if you opt-out of receiving the foregoing emails, we may still send you a response to any "Contact Us" request as well as administrative, maintenance and operational emails.
California Residents
Pursuant to California Civil Code Section 1798.83, if you are a California resident, you have the right to obtain: (a) a list of all third parties to whom we may have disclosed your Personal Information within the past year for direct marketing purposes, and (b) a description of the categories of Personal Information disclosed, by emailing us at [email protected].
Changes to this Policy
Please note that we may modify or update this Policy from time to time, so please review it periodically. We may provide you with an updated Policy if material changes are made. Unless otherwise indicated, any changes to this Policy will apply immediately upon posting to our Site.
Contact Us. If you have questions or concerns regarding this Policy, contact us at:
rootEd Alliance
Attn: Philanthropy and Social Impact
401 Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL, 60611