Privacy Policy
The Society Promoting Environmental Conservation (SPEC) respects the privacy of our stakeholders – members, donors, volunteers, event participants, community partners and employees.
SPEC will not rent, sell, lease, or barter your information to any organization or individual.
We endeavour to adhere to the privacy principles set forth in the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) of BC, and Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). We value your trust and understand that upholding this trust requires us to be transparent and accountable as to how we use any information you provide to us.
Personal Information
Personal information is information about an identifiable individual such as someone’s name, home address, home phone number, personal email address, social insurance number, gender, income or family status. Personal information also includes donation information.
How we keep your information secure
We endeavour to maintain appropriate physical, procedural and technical safeguards for your personal information. Some information we collect may be stored and processed on servers located outside your jurisdiction of residence, including outside your country. As a result, this information may be subject to disclosure to governments, courts or law enforcement agencies in those areas, according to their laws, without notice to us or you. Your personal information is accessible only by designated staff or Directors.
Limits on Collection, Use and Disclosure
SPEC will only collect, use, and disclose personal information for the reasons you consented to when you gave it to us. If we do require your personal information for any purposes other than those for which it was originally obtained, we will first ask for your permission to do so.
SPEC will not rent, sell, lease, or barter your information to any organizations or individuals.
Consent for use of personal information
By providing personal information to us, you allow “deemed” consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your information in accordance with this policy.
All stakeholders have the ability to consent to the uses of their personal information. SPEC makes a reasonable effort to ensure that individuals are advised of the purposes for which information will be used. Much of the information we ask for is to get to know you better so we can find the best fit for opportunities in the SPEC community, or to fulfill something you’ve asked of us, such as processing a donation or adding you to our mailing list.
You will always have the option of canceling your membership and unsubscribing from SPEC’s mailing lists. You can do this online on our website, by unsubscribing on any of our newsletters, or by contacting admin@spec.bc.ca or 604-736-7732
Anonymous or aggregate data
In some cases, interacting with our web sites, social media accounts or emails provides us with “anonymous” data, such as IP address, link clicks, page visits, the time spent on a page, etc. We use Google Analytics on our website to learn where our readers are, when they are using our site and what content they find most interesting. This helps us understand how to best connect with our followers. This information however is not connected to any personal information you provide us.
We also sometimes pool data about things like location, age or other demographic factors to report on campaigns or community programs. For example, we might say that 25 people who live in Mount Pleasant have attended a workshop in the last month.
Use of third parties
In many cases, we don’t actually collect and store personal information in our systems, but instead use a third-party. Such services have resources dedicated to maintaining security and confidentiality, and we ensure that any third-party partner has written policies about never sharing your information with anyone other than SPEC. The third parties we use most often are:
- WildApricot for our member database, donation platform and website management. You can find their privacy policy here.
- Paypal for processing donations made by Paypal or credit card or on our website. You can find their privacy policy here.
- Canadahelps for processing monthly donations and some one-time donations. You can find their privacy policy here.
- MailChimp for sending newsletters. You can find their privacy policy regarding mailing lists under point 9 here.
Links to other websites
Our websites contain links to websites owned and operated by other organizations. They may have their own privacy policies and terms and conditions and are not governed by this policy. We encourage you to carefully review the privacy policy and terms of use of each website you visit.
Policy updates and changes
We may change this policy from time to time and changes will be reflected on this webpage.
Need more information?
Questions or comments about this policy should be directed to SPEC’s Executive Director, Oliver Lane or at 604.736.7732.