For Our Donors

Here at Mel Trotter Ministries, your privacy and security are important to us. Whether you’re making a donation, signing up to volunteer or interacting with the Mission in other ways, we want you to know that your information is safe with us. Read this Privacy Policy to learn more about the information we collect, how we use it and how it helps us better serve you as we demonstrate the compassion of Jesus Christ, together.

While helping people overcome homelessness in greater Grand Rapids is our ultimate goal, the privacy and security of our donors is a high priority. Without supporters like you, the work we do would not be possible. Therefore, we strive to ensure that our donation processes are always user-friendly and secure.

When you give to Mel Trotter Ministries online, in person or by mail, it’s likely that you’ll voluntarily share with us certain personally identifying information.

We will never sell or rent your personally identifying information to any third parties. Please refer to our Donor Database Co-op policy below on how we may collaborate with other non-profit organizations.

There are specific instances where it is necessary to share this information with trusted and verified third party vendors in order to complete transactions and to keep you informed about things happening at the Mission based on your communication preferences.

Adoption of Donor Bill of Rights

Mel Trotter Ministries also subscribes to the Donor Bill of Rights, which was created by the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP), the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), and the Giving Institute: Leading Consultants to Non-Profits.

Donor Bill of Rights*

Philanthropy is based on voluntary action for the common good. It is a tradition of giving and sharing that is primary to the quality of life. To assure that philanthropy merits the respect and trust of the general public, and that donors and prospective donors can have full confidence in the nonprofit organizations and causes they are asked to support, we declare that all donors have these rights:

I. To be informed of the organization’s mission, of the way the organization intends to use donated resources, and of its capacity to use donations effectively for their intended purposes.

II. To be informed of the identity of those serving on the organization’s governing board, and to expect the board to exercise prudent judgment in its stewardship responsibilities.

III. To have access to the organization’s most recent financial statements.

IV. To be assured their gifts will be used for the purposes for which they were given.

V. To receive appropriate acknowledgement and recognition.                    

VI. To be assured that information about their donation is handled with respect and with confidentiality to the extent provided by law.

VII. To expect that all relationships with individuals representing organizations of interest to the donor will be professional in nature.

VIII. To be informed whether those seeking donations are volunteers, employees of the organization or hired solicitors.

IX. To have the opportunity for their names to be deleted from mailing lists that an organization may intend to share.

X. To feel free to ask questions when making a donation and to receive prompt, truthful and forthright answers.

*Copyright 2016, Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Updates

We may revise or modify this Privacy Policy from time to time. Please review our Privacy Policy periodically to ensure that you understand how we use and protect your information. By continuing to access our website or participate in donations and volunteer opportunities following any changes to this Privacy Policy, you agree to any amendments and/or modifications.

Warranties and Liabilities

We strive to keep all the information available on our website as up-to-date as possible; however, there may occasionally be delays, omissions or inaccuracies as we work to keep content updated. We do not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information available through this website, nor do we guarantee that this website will be error-free or continuously available at all times.

 

 

 

Information We Collect

Here at Mel Trotter Ministries, your privacy and security are important to us. Whether you’re making a donation, signing up to volunteer or interacting with the Mission in other ways, we want you to know that your information is safe with us. Read this Privacy Policy and to learn more about the information we collect, how we use it and how it helps us better serve you as together we change lives in the name of Christ.

Personally Identifying Information

Name, Addresses, Emails, and Phone Numbers

During your interactions with us in person, through the mail or online, you may decide to knowingly give us personally identifying information such as name, email addresses, street addresses, and phone numbers. We collect this information to better serve you through answering questions, responding to your requests, receiving donations, maintaining records of giving history, contacting you about future events and services in which you may be interested, maintaining online accounts, and for tax purposes.

We will never sell or rent your personally identifying information to any third parties. Please refer to our Donor Database Co-op policy below on how we may collaborate with other non-profit organizations.

Credit Card and Bank Information

When you give to the Mission, you may voluntarily give us bank or credit card information in order to process your transaction. The safety and security of your banking and/or credit card information is our top priority. We work with trusted third-party payment processors who conform to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI) for receiving and processing your financial transactions. Along with these companies, we conform to all applicable State and Federal laws and regulations required to receive and process information regarding your donations. The companies we work with to process credit card transactions have passed a Level 1 PCI DSS audit. Their compliance can be verified by Visa.

Communication Preferences and Access/Changes to Your Information

When you voluntarily give us personally identifying contact information such as an email address, street address or phone number, we may choose to send you information about Mission events and services and opportunities to volunteer or donate. However, you are responsible to communicate your preferences to us.

Our website provides you the opportunity to customize the types of communications you receive from us or to opt-out entirely. You cannot remove yourself from our database, but you can prevent unwanted communication. You may also update your contact information such as email or street address at any time using our donor portal or by calling us at 616-454-8249.

If you would like to access, modify, correct, or delete your personal information, please contact us. When you contact us, you may be required to provide us some details to verify your identity in this case. We may not accommodate a request to change or delete information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement, cause the information to be incorrect or we are unable to verify your identity.

Visiting Meltrotter.org

We do not collect personally identifying information about you when you visit Meltrotter.org, unless you choose to provide such information to us. Providing such information is strictly voluntary. Some basic demographic information is collected through the use of cookies to help us improve our services based on how users like you are connecting with us. Learn more about the information we collect through these cookies below.

The information we do collect and store when you visit our site includes the following: the name of the domain from which you access the Internet, the date and time you access our site, the internet address of the website from which you linked to our site, the internet address of the site you go to after visiting our website, the type of device with which you accessed our site, certain log information, and browser information.

We use this information to measure and track how visitors use the different sections of our site, what devices they are using and to help us make our site more useful to visitors in the future.

Use of SSL Technology

Mel Trotter Ministries uses industry-leading technology to keep your personal information as secure as possible and protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. Mel Trotter Ministries helps to protect your information by working with partners that provide a secure and safe environment for credit card donations. All information is stored in a secure database.

Cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that a website transfers to a visitor’s computer to increase usability, allow certain functionality or enable tracking of how the website is used to improve the user experience online. When you visit our website, we may use cookies to track how you are using our website, improve your experience with us online and enable streamlined login and transaction processes.

We do not use cookies to gather personally identifying information such as name, address, phone number, or email.

Disabling Cookies

You can disable cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser; however, disabling cookies will affect the functionality of our website and may also result in disabling certain features of this site.

We recommend that you do not disable cookies; however, we are not responsible for any failure by you or your browser to accurately implement or communicate your browser preferences or settings.

The Cookies We Set

Our cookies may record information about how you use our website so that we can continue to customize and optimize your online experience with us. The information we gather is used to help identify visitors, assess usage patterns, identify user preferences and settings, control the display of ads, diagnose problems with our servers, gather demographic information, analyze trends and usage patterns, conduct research, deliver editorial content, record registration and personalized information, and otherwise administer Mission products and services.

We will use cookies for the management of the signup process and general administration. In some cases they may remain for 30 days or until the cache is cleared to remember your site preferences when logged out.

When you are logged in, cookies help prevent you from having to log in every single time you visit a new page.

When you submit data through a form such as those found on contact pages, comment forms or donation pages, cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

We offer print and email subscriptions to our various publications and newsletters, and cookies may be used to remember if you are already registered and whether to show certain notifications which might only be valid to subscribed/unsubscribed users.

From time to time we may offer user surveys to provide you with insights, helpful tools, or to understand our user base more accurately. These surveys may use cookies to remember who has already taken part in a survey or to provide you with accurate results after you change pages.

Third-Party Cookies

We may use third party cookies to enable added functionality and site usage analytics software. These cookies are provided by trusted third-party companies and never collect personally identifying information. We do not control and are not responsible for cookies set by our third party partners to enhance our website functionality.

Children Under 13

We encourage parents and guardians to spend time online with their children and to use our site to help children learn about homelessness in our community. Parents should consider using parental control tools available from online services and software manufacturers to help supervise their children’s online activities. These tools can also prevent children from disclosing their name, address, and other personal information online without parental permission.

Consistent with the Federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”), we will never knowingly request personally identifying information including name, email, mailing address, and phone number from anyone under the age of 13 without requesting parental or legal guardian consent in compliance with COPPA. No information should be submitted to our website by visitors under the age of 13 without the consent of a parent or legal guardian. If you are concerned that your child’s information may have been submitted to us unknowingly, please contact us and let us know.

Updates

We may revise or modify this Privacy Policy from time to time. Please review our Privacy Policy periodically to ensure that you understand how we use and protect your information. By continuing to access to our website or participate in donations and volunteer opportunities following any changes to this Privacy Policy, you agree to any amendments and/or modifications.

Warranties and Liabilities

We strive to keep all the information available on our website as up-to-date as possible; however, there may occasionally be delays, omissions or inaccuracies as we work to keep content updated. We do not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information available through this website, nor do we guarantee that this website will be error-free or continuously available at all times.

 

 

Information We Share

Here at Mel Trotter Ministries, your privacy and security are important to us. Whether you’re making a donation, signing up to volunteer or interacting with the Mission in other ways, we want you to know that your information is safe with us. Read this Privacy Policy and to learn more about the information we collect, how we use it and how it helps us better serve you as together we change lives in the name of Christ.

Third Party Donor Data Management

In order to best serve you, we work with a trusted third party company and use their software to track, manage and update your personally identifying information, communication and donation history, mailing and communication preferences, and credit card and bank information for processing donations. This company keeps a secure copy of our database to help us best respond to your requests, manage the processing of your donation and continue to improve your experience with the Mission.

Third Party Payment Processing

We use a third party payment processor to process financial donations to the Mission. When you make donations to Mel Trotter Ministries, we may transfer certain information (including personally identifying information) to these payment processors for the sole purpose of facilitating the financial transaction, such as your name, address, and credit card and/or bank information. The companies we work with to process credit card transactions have passed a Level 1 PCI DSS audit.

Marketing and Mailings

We also may share your personally identifying information including name, address, phone number, email, or donation history with trusted third party companies for the sole purpose of creating mailings and marketing material such as receipts, reminder letters and other special updates from the Mission.

If at any time you decide you want to change the types of mailings we send to you, you can adjust your communication preferences online or contact us to let us know the kinds of information you would like to receive. Email us at [email protected] or call us at 616-454-8249.

Legally Mandated Disclosure

Though we make every effort to preserve donor and customer privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on our organization.

Donor Database Co-ops

In order to invite new donors to help support the work of the Mission and to better understand and cater content to our current supporters, we participate in various non-profit co-ops which share information about the donation habits of supporters of various non-profit organizations.

We never sell your personally identifying information or credit card information with these donor database co-ops.

Other companies or non-profits with whom you have a relationship may contribute to the database resulting in your information being added. However, if your personally identifying information such as address, phone number or email is available in the database, it was not added by Mel Trotter Ministries.

Updates

We may revise or modify this Privacy Policy from time to time. Please review our Privacy Policy periodically to ensure that you understand how we use and protect your information. By continuing to access to our website or participate in donations and volunteer opportunities following any changes to this Privacy Policy, you agree to any amendments and/or modifications.

Warranties and Liabilities

We strive to keep all the information available on our website as up-to-date as possible; however, there may occasionally be delays, omissions or inaccuracies as we work to keep content updated. We do not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information available through this website, nor do we guarantee that this website will be error-free or continuously available at all times.

 

 

 

Terms and Conditions

 1. Warranty Disclaimer and Liability Exclusion and Limitation Clauses

MTM offers the INFORMATION ON ITS WEBSITE without any representations, warranties or conditions of any kind, whether express or implied, and including without limitation implied conditions, warranties or representations of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, performance, durability, security, availability, or accessibility, all of which are hereby disclaimed by Pater to the fullest extent permitted by law.

Regardless of the nature of the claim or the reasons for the loss and damages, MTM’s liability is limited to foreseeable and typical damages. MTM will not under any circumstances be liable to You for any loss of use, loss of production, loss of income or profits (anticipated or otherwise), loss of markets, economic loss, special, indirect or consequential loss or damage or punitive damages, whether in contract, tort or under any other theory of law or equity, arising from, connected with, or relating to the use of the Web sites by You unless it concerns the loss of life, injury of body and/or physical health of a natural person.

2. Legal Claims

For all disputes between MTM and You or any other person arising from, connected with or relating to the Web sites, this Agreement, transactions facilitated or conducted through the Web sites, or any related matters or any legal relationship associated therewith or derived therefrom (“Disputes”), the relevant parties will attempt to find a reasonable solution least onerous to the parties. If a Dispute cannot be resolved by the parties, then the Dispute must be resolved before the Courts of Kent County, Michigan, USA and you hereby irrevocably submit and agree to the original and exclusive jurisdiction of those courts in respect of all Disputes. Proceedings regarding Disputes must be commenced in a court of competent jurisdiction in the County of Kent, Michigan, USA within six (6) months after the Dispute arose, after which time any and all proceedings regarding the Dispute are barred. Any shorter time limit provided by statute law remains unaffected.