Rebuilding lives after spinal cord injury.

Privacy Policy

NYC Spinal, the NYC Chapter of United Spinal Association is committed to respecting your personal privacy. Our goal is to offer information and resources for those interested in spinal cord injury and paralysis, the NYC Spinal Grant Program and other Chapter activities, and to encourage people to become more involved in our mission.

NYC Spinal is a 501(c) 3 organization that is based in the United States. We comply with U.S. laws governing the privacy of personal information, which may not provide the same level of data protection as provided under the laws of other countries. We understand that you may be concerned about the information you provide to us and how we treat that information. This Privacy Policy has been established to let you know how we collect information and protect your privacy.

Information We Collect

Information that you voluntarily provide to us: When you sign-up with us to make a donation, attend an event, complete a membership or grant application, sign-up for our newsletter, send us an email, post on our blog, or communicate with us in any way, you are voluntarily giving us information that we collect. That information may include your name, physical address, email address, IP address, phone number, credit card information, as well as details including gender, location, and other demographic information.

Information That Is Automatically Collected:  When you visit our website(s), certain generalized information is automatically collected and stored about your computer and mode of Internet access, including the name of the domain from which you access the Internet, the date and time you access our site, how long you stayed on our site, and the Internet address that brought you to our site.

Use of Cookies

When you visit our website or open an email sent to our registered members, we may collect information about your visit. We use ‘cookies’ and other similar technologies – codes that allow us to collect and store only anonymous information about your computer and mode of internet access, including the name of the domain from which you access the Internet, the date and time you access our site, how long you stayed on our site and each of its pages, and the internet address that brought you to our site. We track and use this information to better understand our visitors’ interests and improve the functionality of our website and email communications.

You can delete cookies at any time, or you can set your browser to reject or disable cookies. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage or delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

How We Use Your Information

We may use information collected from you in the following ways:

  • Membership:  You must be 18 years or older to qualify for membership in NYC Spinal. Potential members are required to complete an online application form where you will be asked to provide personally identifiable information such as name, address, phone number, email, age, whether or not you have a spinal cord injury and information related to that injury.  We use this information to help us understand how best to serve our members, engage sponsors and donors and plan chapter activities.
  • Grant Program:  Applicants are asked to provide a wide range of personally identifiable information in order for NYC Spinal to evaluate need and determine award levels. This information is held in the strictest confidence and made available only to our Grant Review Committee. Your personal information will be used to communicate with you regarding the grant and any related action needed to complete the grant process.
  • Communication:  We send emails to our members, sponsors, donors and supporters to keep you informed about member benefits, special offers, and other information that we believe is relevant and useful to our members and to promote our mission and activities. 
  • Fundraising:  Our mission success depends on the generosity of our friends and supporters. We reserve the right to email our members, sponsors and other supporters for fundraising efforts unless you expressly request not to be emailed. Our emails are never sent unsolicited. Unsubscribe information can be found at the bottom of every mass email sent.
  • Charitable Donations:  We deeply appreciate the trust our donors have placed in us. When you make an online donation, we use third party payment processors (PayPal, We Pay, Stripe) to process the payment. We do not collect or store credit card numbers.This information is collected and stored on the servers of our trusted vendors in order to enable one-time and recurring payments to us, as you direct. We use other personally identifiable information such as your name, address and email to communicate back to you regarding your donation, and to update you on how your generosity is helping our mission. We do not sell or give donor names or other information about donors to other organizations except when we partner with another charitable organization(s) to sponsor an event, in which case, such an arrangement will be well documented and publicized in advance and shared data is restricted to only those people who voluntarily opt-in.
  • Transactional Purposes:  We may use your personally identifiable information to respond to your queries and requests and to manage transactions such as purchases of any products or services that you order from us or any of our agents, or for the fulfillment of such transactions (for example delivery), or to fund the fulfillment of a purchase authorized through the NYC Spinal Grant Program.
  • Testimonials and Comments:  We may post testimonials and comments from our supporters, members and grant recipients on our website(s), social media pages and in email communications, which may contain Personal Information. We obtain each individual’s consent via email prior to posting the person’s name and testimonial.
  • Marketing:  We may use your personal information to help generate interest in our mission, engage donor and sponsors, recruit volunteers, and to bring awareness to spinal cord injury and paralysis. We will never use your personally identifiable information without your expressed permission.

NYC Spinal does not sell, rent or lease its customer lists or visitor personal information to third parties.

How We Share Your Information

In addition to the uses listed above, we may share your personal information as follows:

Service Providers – We use certain trusted third party companies and individuals to help us provide, analyze, and improve services (including but not limited to data storage, maintenance services, database management, web analytics, payment processing, and improvement of the Service’s features). These third parties may have access to your information only for purposes of performing these tasks on our behalf and under obligations similar to those in this Privacy Policy.

United Spinal Chapter Affiliation – All membership application data is shared with our national organization, United Spinal Association, in accordance with our Chapter Affiliation Agreement.

Legal Obligation and Compliance – NYC Spinal reserves the right to comply with the law and to release personally identifiable information relating to any user of our website(s) or services without notice, only if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on NYC Spinal or the site; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of NYC  Spinal; and, (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of NYC  Spinal, or the public, (d) any third party with your consent or where disclosure is required or permitted by law.

Your California Privacy Rights

California Civil Code Section § 1798.83 permits users of the Services that are California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of PII to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send an e-mail to: info@nycspinalcord.org. Or write us at: NYC Spinal, Attn: Privacy Policy Inquiry, P.O.Box 286444, Yorkville Station, New York, NY 10128

Children’s Privacy

Our website(s) are only intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect or solicit personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without parental consent and suggest that minors between the ages of 13 and 18 use the website only after checking with their parents or guardian. NYC Spinal Membership is restricted to adults, age 18 years or older.  If we learn that we have collected or received personally identifiable information from a child under the age of 18, we will delete that information immediately.

Safeguarding Your Information

We take reasonable and appropriate measures to protect your personal information from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.  Security measures include, but are not limited to, industry-standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology, firewalls, and internal policies to maintain the security of stored data. Vendors that work with NYC Spinal are held to industry-standard practices including, without limitation, confidentiality.  Our website is certified with HTTPS protocols to further protect our visitors.  Please keep in mind that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure and we cannot guarantee its absolute security. By using our Services, you acknowledge that you understand and agree to assume these risks.

Access, Update or Delete Personal Information

If you are a registered member of NYC Spinal, you will have the opportunity to review, access or update your profile at any time through the Update Your Preferences link that can be found at the bottom of every mass email we send out. You may also send your request via email to info@nycspinalcord.org or write NYC Spinal at the address listed below.

If you have submitted any personally identifiable information to us through our other Services (such as a grant application or purchase), you can review and change the data that we hold about you by sending your request via email to info@nycspinalcord.org or write NYC Spinal at the address listed below.

You have the right to be forgotten. If you would like to have your profile completely deleted from our mailing list(s), please send your request via email to info@nycspinalcord.org or write NYC Spinal at the address listed below.

Be aware that we may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

Opt-Out

If you do not want to receive emails or other communication from NYC Spinal, please use the Unsubscribe link found at the bottom of every mass email sent.  You may also send your request via email to info@nycspinalcord.org or write NYC Spinal at the address listed below.

Data Retention

We may retain your personal data while your membership is in existence or as necessary to provide the Services you requested. We may retain such personal information after your account has been terminated for research and development purposes and as reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations and regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, prevent fraud or abuse, and enforce our Privacy Statement and Terms and Condition.

Data Transfers, Storage, Processing

We operate in the United States and generally store your personal information in the United States however; on occasion we may transfer your personal information to third parties in locations around the world for the purposes described in this privacy policy. We only work with reputable vendors who are held to the highest standards of security to ensure that transactions are processed according to industry standards using generally agreed upon methods of encryption and encoding.

Links

In order to provide you with other valuable information, NYC Spinal may provide links to third-party websites on our website or in our email communications.  We exercise no authority over, and do not necessarily endorse such third-party websites. These destination links are provided only for your convenience and, as such, you access them at your own risk. We recommend that you read each website’s privacy policy.  When you click on a link, we may track this click-through data for various purposes, such as to help us determine interest in particular topics and measure the effectiveness of our communications. If you prefer not to be tracked in this way, you should not click text or graphic links.

Social Media Platforms

NYC Spinal is active on a range of social media platforms. Our website(s) and emails may include Social Media Features, such as the Facebook Like buttons and share widgets that run on our website.  We have no control over the use of cookies on these third party sites. Please see the privacy policies of the individual social media site(s) for more information.

Changes to this Statement

NYC Spinal may change this Privacy Policy from time to time.  We encourage visitors to frequently check this page to be informed of how NYC Spinal is protecting your privacy.  By continuing to access, browse, and/or use our website(s) or services, you agree to accept any posted revised terms.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy or the operations of our website(s), please contact us.

NYC Spinal, United Spinal Association of NYC
P.O. Box 286444
Yorkville Station
NY, NY 10128-0014

Phone: 866-692-7242
E-mail:  info@nycspinalcord.org

This document was last updated on March 20, 2021.