Privacy Policy

Last Updated: August 17, 2022

The Poetry Foundation (“TPF”, “us”, “our” or “we”) cares about your privacy and the security of your information. We want you to be familiar with how we collect, use and disclose information, including personal information. This Privacy Policy describes our practices regarding our use and disclosure of user information collected on the TPF website (www.poetryfoundation.org and all sub-domains), mobile websites, applications and any other TPF products, services or tools that link to this Privacy Policy (the “Services”).

When you access or use the Services, you are agreeing to this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into by reference and subject to the Terms of Service.

As used in this Privacy Policy, the term “Service Providers” means third-party companies that help us deliver or manage our Services (e.g., analytics, hosting, software maintenance, satisfaction surveys, database maintenance and magazine subscription management).

1. Information Collection

We may collect both personal information (such as, your name, address and email) and non-personal information related to you and your use of the Services in the following ways:

  1. Information you provide to us directly.
    • Website Forms and Newsletters – You may be asked to provide personal information to us when you sign up for newsletters, fill out online forms, make a donation, fill out online job applications or provide feedback on the Services.
    • Magazine Subscriptions – When you subscribe to Poetry magazine or other publications through the Services, you may be asked to create an account with us or with one of our Service Providers (e.g., CDS Global). Creating an account with our Service Provider may occur through TPF’s website, where you may be asked to provide personal information and payment data, including credit card information. This information may be used and stored by the Service Provider and/or TPF to fulfill your subscription, process payments, and send you offers for other products or services that may be of interest to you.
    • Surveys – From time to time, TPF and its Service Providers may collect personal information via online surveys, polls or other interactive activities on topics related to our programs or the Services. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary.
    • Contests and Special Offers – TPF collects personal information, such as your name and email, when you participate in contests or special offers.
       
  2. Information collected from your use of the Services.
    • Cookies and Other Technologies – Information collected automatically may include usage details (e.g., pages viewed on our website or time spent on a page), IP addresses, and information collected through browser cookies. A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of the Services. By using the Services with your browser setting adjusted to accept cookies, you consent to our use of cookies on the Services. The cookies we use include, but may not be limited to:
    • Local Storage Objects and Advertising: We may use Local Storage Objects (“LSOs”), such as HTML5, to store content information and preferences. Service Providers with which we engage to provide certain features on our website and Services or to display advertising based upon your web browsing activity use LSOs such as HTML5 to collect and store information. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 LSOs.
    • Behavioral Targeting/Re-Targeting: We may use a third-party ad network to either display advertising on our Services or to manage our advertising on other sites. Examples of these services include Facebook Pixel and Google Tag Manager. Our ad network and magazine subscription Service Providers may use cookies and Web beacons to collect non-personal information about your activities on our Services and other websites to provide you targeted advertising based upon your interests.
    • Social Media Widgets: We may include social media features, such as the Facebook “Like” button and widgets, the “Share” this button or interactive mini-programs that run on our Services. These features may collect information, such as your IP address and other data, 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 Services. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.
    • Facebook Custom Audiences: We may participate in Facebook’s Custom Audience program, which enables us to display personalized ads to persons on our email lists when they visit Facebook. We provide personal information such as your email address and phone number to Facebook to enable Facebook to determine if you are a registered account holder with Facebook. You may opt-out of Facebook Custom Audience by sending us an email from the email address you are opting out of.
    • Do Not Track Signals: We do not currently take actions to respond to “Do Not Track” signals because a uniform technological standard has not yet been developed. We continue to review new technologies and may adopt a standard once one is created.
       
  3. Information Collected from Service Providers.
    • In certain circumstances our Service Providers may collect personal information on our behalf. For example, as of August 17, 2022, we use CDS Global (https://www.cds-global.com) to manage and fulfill subscriptions to Poetry magazine. CDS Global collects data and information (including personal information) from Poetry magazine subscribers which we use for various purposes, including to communicate with you about your subscription. CDS Global may also send you emails and/or mailings about other products and services that might be of interest to you. You may unsubscribe from marketing emails at any time by following the “unsubscribe” instructions at the bottom of each email. To unsubscribe from other mailings, you can change the privacy settings in your CDS Global account or email CDS Global directly at [email protected] to opt out of the use of your personal information for marketing purposes. 

2. How We Use the Information Collected

We may use the information collected from you to:

  • communicate with you, including to respond to your inquiries and provide information you request from us.
  • send you email newsletters, mailings, and other information about programs, initiatives, and events.
  • process and fulfill subscriptions to Poetry magazine and other publications.
  • communicate with you about other products, programs or services that we believe may be of interest to you.
  • provide, maintain, and improve the Services, including research and analytics regarding users of the Services and usage patterns.
  • administer and protect the Services, including to detect, investigate, and prevent activities that may violate our policies or be illegal.
  • enforce the legal terms that govern your use of our Services, and/or for the purposes for which you provided the Information.

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably determine that we need to use it for another reason that is consistent with the original purpose(s) and/or as required or permitted by law.

3. How We Share the Information Collected

We do not share or disclose your personal information to any third parties, except as described in this Privacy Policy or as authorized by you.

We may share your information with Service Providers who may use the information to perform services on our behalf, such as website hosting, information technology services, analytics, subscription fulfillment, and data management, and in some cases, so they can provide, improve and communicate with you about their own products and services.

We may share your information with our non-profit and for-profit funding or grant partners or other strategic partners when it is related to events, activities, opportunities, products, or services that might be of interest to you. You may unsubscribe from these marketing emails at any time by following the “unsubscribe” instructions at the bottom of each email.

We may share your information as necessary to conform or comply with applicable laws; to respond to requests from public, governmental, and regulatory authorities; to obtain legal remedies or limit our damages; and to protect the rights, safety, or property of our employees, you, or others.

If we merge with or are acquired by another organization or entity, or assign all or part of our Services to another organization or entity, we may share and transfer your personal information to the party or parties involved in the transaction as part of that transaction.

We also may share information in an aggregated manner with third parties and such third parties may further share such aggregated non-personally identifiable information further in connection with their own marketing, products, and services. 

4. Choice/Opt-out

If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter or other email communications from us, you may opt out of receiving these communications by following the “unsubscribe” instructions at the bottom of each email or by changing the settings in your account, as applicable.

From time to time, it may be necessary for us to send out service-related announcements. For example, if one of our Services is temporarily suspended for maintenance, we might send users an email notice regarding the suspension. Generally, users may not opt out of these communications. 

5. Blogs and Community Forums

Our Services may offer publicly accessible blogs, community forums or other public areas where users may submit information and content. You should be aware that any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To request removal of your personal information from a blog or community forum, contact us as noted above. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your personal information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so.

Our blogs and community forums also may be managed by a third-party application that may require you to register to post a comment. We do not have access or control of the information posted to such blogs. You will need to contact or login to the third-party application if you want the personally identifiable information that was posted to the comments section removed. To learn how the third-party application uses your information, please review its privacy policy. 

6. Third-Party Links

The Services may include links to other sites operated by third parties. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our Services, we encourage you to read the privacy policy and terms of use of every website you visit. 

7. Policy Regarding Children

TPF’s general audience websites and mobile services are not directed to children under the age of 13 and do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. Please contact us if you have concerns regarding the potential collection of your child’s information. 

8. Security

We have put in place reasonable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. However, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. 

9. Updating and Deleting Personal Information; Data Retention

We retain your personal information only for as long as is necessary for our legitimate interests, in accordance with our retention policies, and in accordance with applicable laws.

If you would like to request to review, correct, restrict or delete personal information that you have previously provided to us, object to the processing of personal information, or if you would like to request to receive an electronic copy of your personal information for purposes of transmitting it to another company (to the extent this right to data portability is provided to you by applicable law), you may contact us at the email address below. We will respond to your request consistent with applicable law. 

10. Users from Outside the United States

Unless otherwise specified, the Services are operated and controlled by TPF in the United States. By using the Services, you (a) acknowledge that your information will be processed as described in the Policy; and (b) consent to having your information transferred to TPF and/or our third-party service providers, in the United States or elsewhere, as described in the Policy.

If you are an EU national and reside in the EU, or are a non-EU national residing in the EU, we will transfer your personal data to the United States in accordance with EU data protection law requirements and/or by using standard contractual clauses that have been approved by the European Commission. Such a transfer may also take place with your explicit consent and/or if necessary in order to perform a contract with you or fulfill your request. 

11. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The GDPR is a European regulation concerning the use and processing of personal information. We are committed to processing the information of EU visitors to our Services in compliance with the GDPR.

The applicable legal basis for which we process your information for the specific purposes listed above, include the following:

  • We have a legitimate interest in communicating with you and managing our interactions with you regarding the Services
  • In specific circumstances, we may need to process your information to comply with an applicable law or regulation. Where we process your information to meet our legal obligations, you will likely not be permitted to object to this processing activity, but you will usually have the right to access or review this information unless it would impede our legal obligations.

We will use reasonable efforts to timely respond to any requests by you to exercise your rights under the GDPR:

  • You have the right to see and get a copy of information, including an electronic copy that we have about you;
  • You have the right to ask us to make any corrections to inaccurate or incomplete personal information we have about you;
  • You can also request that we erase your personal information when it is no longer needed for the purposes for which you provided it;
  • You may ask us to restrict how we process your personal information to certain limited purposes where erasure is not possible;
  • In certain circumstances you may be able to request that we send a copy of your personal information to a third party of your choosing; and
  • You can object to processing of your personal information based on our legitimate interest (or those of a third party) to use it and there is something about your particular situation that causes you to object to such processing.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us as provided below. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority where you believe that your rights have been violated.

The Services are owned and operated in the United States. Your use of the Services will result in the collection, storage, and processing of your information in the United States and in any country to which we may transfer your information in the course of our business operations. If you are visiting this site from a country other than the United States, your information will cross an international boundary. The level of protection for your information in the United States may not be the same as the level of protection in your country. 

12. Your California Privacy Rights

TPF’s processing of your personal information will comply with the California Online Privacy Protection Act (the “CalOPPA”). For California residents, if you wish to review and request changes to your information collected by TPF, please contact us. 

13. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post any changes to this page along with a notice at the end of the Privacy Policy of the last date that any changes were made. Your continued use of the Services following the posting of any changes will mean you accept those changes. 

14. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at:

The Poetry Foundation
61 W. Superior St.
Chicago, IL 60654
[email protected]