The Earth Organization U.S. Donor Privacy Policy

The Earth Organization (doing business as Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization (LAEO)) is committed to donor privacy.

We respect your privacy and do not rent, sell, or exchange our mailing lists. We may disclose some personal information to select third parties in order to more effectively target our donor communications.

What does this mean?

We value your trust and assure you that we will always strive to be responsible in our management, truthful in our advertising, and cost-effective in our fundraising.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact us at info@TheEarthOrganization.org or +1 (818) 330-9528.

The Earth Organization has been working to reverse decaying environmental conditions since 2003, and we are continually working to ensure every dollar is used to its fullest for this purpose.

We make every effort to honor any designation or preference you have stated for the use of your funds. In certain circumstances, where a project is overfunded or cannot be carried out in accordance with your preference, the funds will be used for similar projects approved by our Board of Directors.

Disclosure to Third Parties

To most efficiently use the resources you entrusted to us, we may disclose to select third parties’ information regarding donation history. Information of this kind is used to enable The Earth Organization to identify others like yourself interested in partnering with us to help improve the health of the worldwide environment. Information provided in donation history may include statistics such as ‘total number of donations’ and ‘value of donations for a set period of time’. This information disclosure is done very carefully to ensure that your personal information is protected.

Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies

As with most other Internet sites, our web servers utilize “cookies” to track a user’s activity within our site as well as record the IP address of each visitor to this site. A cookie is a small data file that is stored on your computer. A cookie contains a unique identifying feature that allows our computer to recognize you when you return to The Earth Organization’s site. The recorded IP address tells us which domain you visited from (for instance, yahoo.com), but not your email address or other private and personal information. If you wish to opt out of this type of data collection, you can disable cookies in your web browser.  Please note that disabling cookies may diminish the experience of the websites you visit, including The Earth Organization’s.

We may use the information we record for any of the following purposes:

• To help diagnose problems with our servers, and to administer this website more effectively;
• To gather broad demographic information about what countries and domains our visitors come from and their behavior on our site;
• For marketing and fundraising purposes, including through cross channel means such as email and direct mail communications.

In addition, this website is enabled with one or more add-on services such as Google Analytics to collect information about the use of this site. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit this site, what pages they visit when they do so, and what other sites they used prior to coming to this site. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit this site, rather than your name or other identifying information. We do not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with personally identifiable information. Although Google Analytics plants a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit this site, the cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to this site is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. You can prevent Google Analytics from recognizing you on return visits to this site by disabling cookies.

We sometimes also use third-party service providers to serve advertisements (banners, video or test ads) on our behalf across the Internet, or to implement cross-channel communications via email or direct mail. These third parties may collect non-personally identifiable information about your interaction with us. This Privacy Policy does not cover the collection methods or use of the information collected by these vendors, as they have their own privacy policies and may be members of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”). To remove yourself from some or all NAI member advertising programs, please visit the NAI opt-out page  and follow the relevant instructions. In the alternative, if you wish to opt out of this type of data collection, you can disable cookies in your web browser. Please note that disabling cookies may diminish the experience of the websites you visit, including The Earth Organization’s.

In some cases, our site uses securely encrypted contribution response forms for visitors who choose to use these forms to provide information, request information, and make donations. We collect your willingly submitted contact information (such as your email address), unique identifiers (in some cases, an LAEO’s donor account number), and financial information (such as a credit card type, number, and expiration date). Contact information from these response forms is used to process donations, as well as to provide receipts and other information about The Earth Organization to our customers. The visitor’s contact information is also used to get in touch with the visitor when necessary in order to resolve customer service issues or questions. Users may readily opt out of receiving future communications; see the “opt out” and “modifying your information” sections below. Financial information that is collected is used to bill the user for donations pledged. Unique identifiers (such as a The Earth Organization account number) may be collected from website visitors to assist in matching current donation information with donor history in our record systems.

Those who choose to register through various “guestbook”-type features on our site may choose to give us certain contact information (such as their email address). These features may also request optional demographic information (such as zip code, age, or income level). Unless you opt out, we may use this contact information to send you additional information about The Earth Organization and its programs either through direct mail, direct email, and/or a platform such as MailChimp. Your voluntarily-provided contact information may also be used to contact you when necessary in order to resolve customer service issues or questions. You may readily opt out of receiving future communications; see the “opt out” and “modifying your information” sections below.

Our online surveys may ask visitors for contact information (such as their email address) as well as a variety of demographic and practical questions. We may use contact data from our surveys to send the user information about The Earth Organization. The user’s contact information may also be used to contact the visitor when necessary. Users may opt-out of receiving future mailings; see the “opt out” and “modifying your information” sections below.

Online Data Security

All response forms requesting confidential information (such as credit card numbers) on The Earth Organization’s website utilize the Internet security protocol known as “Secure Sockets Layer” or “SSL.” This is a certification and encryption technology designed to make using your credit card as safe as possible on the Internet.

Independent agencies report that, statistically speaking, using a credit card on the Internet through SSL is far safer than submitting your credit card to a clerk in the grocery store, or over an open telephone line. In fact, they report that there are no recorded instances of someone “breaking” SSL encryption and using credit card information stored therein for fraudulent purposes.

The SSL technology depends on secure Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) which are certified by a certifying authority such as Thawte. Secure URLs always begin with “https://” rather than “http://” and if you are using one from a browser that recognizes SSL, you will generally also receive a preceding message and/or see a symbol, such as a lock, that signifies that you are on a secure page. Any information you enter on such a page is encrypted at your browser, sent over the public Internet in encrypted form, then de-encrypted at our servers.

If your browser doesn’t support SSL technology, you will receive an error message when trying to access our SSL page.

Once we receive your credit card information, it is accessible only to a small number of trusted staff of The Earth Organization who have been specially trained in processing this information.

Opt out

Most points on our site provide users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us at the point where we request contact information about the visitor. There are, however, a few places where users do not have the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications. Should you wish to opt-out, please email us at info@TheEarthOrganization.org or call +1 (818) 330-9528 and we will unsubscribe you from receiving further communications from us.  Users may also opt-out at any time by contacting us following the methods provided in the “modifying your information” section below.

This site contains links to other sites. The Earth Organization United States is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such Web sites.

Modifying your information

This site gives users the following options for removing their information from our database to not receive future communications or to no longer receive our service; or for changing or modifying information previously provided.

1. Send us a message at info@TheEarthOrganization.org with your request.
2. You can send postal mail to the following address:
   16215 Askin Dr., Suite 201, Pine Mountain Club, CA 93222-6842
3. You can call the following telephone number: +1 (818) 330-9528

When contacting us to change your status, be sure to include any information that would help us identify you on our lists, such as complete contact information (name, postal address, telephone number, and email address).

Referral Programs

The Earth Organization may offer features which allow you to inform an individual about our us and our programs. If you chose to use our referral features, we will ask you for your referral’s email address or in some cases mailing address, to send them either an electronic or paper communication inviting them to participate with us in some way (generally through donation, membership, and/or volunteering). We will store this information for the sole purpose of sending this email or paper communication and tracking the success of these efforts to expand the reach of our work. If you choose to participate in our referral programs, you represent and warrant that you have a personal relationship with your referral and that you are authorized to share their information with The Earth Organization for the purpose of sending this invitation to them.

Changes to this policy

We reserve the right to make changes to this privacy policy without advance notice.

Changes to this policy were last made on March 29^th, 2021.

Contacting the website

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this website, please contact us at info@TheEarthOrganization.org or call us at +1 (818) 330-9528.