Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 04/11/2025

Public Interest Experts is committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring that your personal information is handled in a safe and responsible manner. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, and disclose personal information when you interact with our organization, whether as a client, volunteer, donor, or visitor to our website.

By accessing our website or providing your personal information to us, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

1. Information We Collect

We collect the following types of personal information:

- Personal Contact Information: This includes your name, address, phone number, email address, and other contact details.
- Professional and Organizational Information: If you are an expert, volunteer, or partner organization, we may collect details about your professional qualifications, experience, and areas of expertise.
- Donor Information: If you make a donation, we may collect information related to your donation, such as payment details and billing information.
- Website Usage Information: We may collect information about how you interact with our website, including your IP address, browser type, device information, and browsing behavior, through cookies and analytics tools.
- Volunteer and Client Information: If you are involved in a project or receive services from us, we may collect details related to your involvement, such as case details, legal needs, or other relevant information.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the personal information we collect for the following purposes:

- To Provide Services: To match clients with  legal experts, facilitate communication between experts and clients, and provide ongoing support throughout the advocacy process.
- To Communicate with You: To respond to inquiries, provide updates, send newsletters, and notify you about our initiatives, events, or opportunities to get involved.
- To Process Donations: To process and acknowledge donations and to send receipts and thank-you notes.
- To Improve Our Services: To better understand how users engage with our website and services, improve the content and functionality of our website, and optimize our operations.
- To Comply with Legal Obligations: To comply with applicable laws and regulations or in response to legal processes, subpoenas, or other governmental requests.

3. Sharing Your Information

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information with third parties for their marketing purposes. We may, however, share your information in the following circumstances:

- With Service Providers: We may share your information with trusted third-party service providers who assist us in operating our website, processing donations, or facilitating our services (e.g., payment processors, IT support).
- With Legal Entities and Regulatory Agencies: We may disclose your information to legal entities or regulatory agencies if required by law, or in response to a subpoena, legal process, or legitimate request.
- With Volunteers and Partners: As part of our mission to provide services, we may share relevant information with experts, volunteers, or organizations who are involved in providing legal assistance or advocacy.

4. Data Retention

We retain your personal information to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. When your personal information is no longer needed, we will take reasonable steps to delete or anonymize it in accordance with our Records Retention Policy.

1. States, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia, among others, may provide their state residents with rights to:
   1. Confirm whether we process their personal information.
   2. Access and delete certain personal information.
   3. Correct inaccuracies in their personal information, taking into account the information's nature processing purpose (excluding Iowa and Utah).
   4. Data portability.
   5. Opt-out of personal data processing for:
      1. targeted advertising (excluding Iowa);
      2. sales; or
      3. profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects (excluding Iowa and Utah).
   6. Either limit (opt-out of) or require consent to process sensitive personal data.
2. Nevada provides its residents with a limited right to opt-out of certain personal information sales. Residents who wish to exercise this sale opt-out rights may submit a request. However, please know we do not currently sell data triggering that statute's opt-out requirements.

The exact scope of these rights may vary by state. To exercise any of these rights please contact us, or have your authorized representative, contact us as provided in this Privacy Policy, with the subject line “Data Subject Request”. In the event you have an authorized representative submit a request to delete, request to correct or request to know on your behalf, you will have to provide written authorization demonstrating this grant of authority, which can include a Power of Attorney. Authorized representatives may not submit any other types of requests on your behalf. 

For purposes of requests to delete, correct and to know, we will verify your identity based on information we have collected about you, including your name, address, and phone number, but will not fulfill your request unless you have provided sufficient information that enables us to reasonably verify that you are the consumer about whom we collected the Personal Information. If we are unable to verify your identity, we may deny your request.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.

7. Rights of Users from the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom

If you are a resident of the United Kingdom (“UK”), European Union, or European Economic Area (“EEA”), you may have certain data protection rights. “GDPR” means the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679, and the United Kingdom Data Protection Act 2018. Information that you provide may be transferred or accessed by entities around the world as described in this Privacy Policy. If you are located in the EEA or UK, you freely consent to the transfer of personal information outside of the EEA and UK. Your consent to this Privacy Policy together with your submission of personal information constitute your agreement to these transfers. If you are accessing or using the Services from within the EEA or UK, you may have the following rights under the GDPR (as well as other rights). If you wish to exercise any of these rights, you may do so by contacting us as provided in this Privacy Policy.

- Right of Access:  You have the right to obtain confirmation from us as to whether or not we process personal information from you and you also have the right to at any time obtain access to your personal information stored by us. 

- Right to Correction of your Personal Information:  If we process your personal information, we use reasonable measures to ensure that your personal information is accurate and up-to-date for the purposes for which your personal information was collected.  If your personal information is inaccurate or incomplete, you have the right to require us to correct it.   

- Right to Deletion of your Personal Information or Right to Restriction of Processing:  You may have the right to require us to delete your personal information or to restrict processing of your personal information. 

- Right to Withdraw your Consent:  If you have given your consent to the processing of your personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on the consent before the withdrawal.   

- Right to Data Portability:  You may have the right to receive the personal information concerning you and which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format or to transmit this data to another controller. 

- Right to Object:  You may have the right to object to the processing of your personal information as further specified in this Privacy Policy. 

- Right to Lodge a Complaint with Supervisory Authority:  You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority located in the European Union or UK.  Further information about how to contact your local data protection authority is available at the website of the European Commission.

This Privacy Policy is intended to provide transparency regarding how we handle your personal information and to ensure that we respect your privacy while fulfilling our mission. Thank you for your trust in Public Interest Experts.