Privacy Policy

Last updated: April 21, 2026

INTRODUCTION

Civic Nation (a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization) and Civic Nation Action (a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization) (collectively, “Civic Nation”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) work to strengthen civic culture, civic power, and civic participation through our online services and associated platforms.

This website, civicnation.org, and any other websites we own and operate that link to this Privacy Policy (“Policy”), and the related content, platforms, services, products, and other functionalities offered on or through our services, (collectively referred to as the “Sites”), is operated by Civic Nation.

We work hard to protect your privacy.  This Policy explains how we collect, use, share, and process personal information.

UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the date at the top of the policy and, in some cases, we may provide you with additional notice (such as an added statement on our homepage or by email notification). We encourage you to review the Privacy Policy whenever you access the Sites to stay informed about our privacy practices and the ways you can protect your privacy.

INDEX

1. OUR COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We use the term “personal Information” in this Policy to mean data or information that identifies, relates to, describes, or is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked with a particular person. This does not include information considered de-identified or publicly available under applicable law. We collect personal information that (a) you provide us, (b) we receive from third parties, or (c) are automatically collected, in the ways described below: a. Personal Information You Provide Us This is information you explicitly take steps to share with Civic Nation. Some of the ways you provide information to Civic Nation include, but are not limited to:
  • Completing forms on our Sites, 
  • RSVPing to and attending our events, 
  • Completing surveys addressed to specific individuals or groups,
  • Applying for an endorsement or partnership,
  • Joining our volunteer community, and
  • Donating through our Sites.
The information you may provide us includes but is not limited to the following:
  • Account Information: For example, account username and password for our platform.
  • Activity Information: For example, your activity on our platform, such as projects and organizations you volunteer for, causes or organizations you like or follow, and any other activity information.
  • Audio or Visual: For example, your photo, video, or voice captured when you attend an in-person or virtual event, leave us voicemails, or voluntarily send in videos, photos, or voice recording.
  • Contact Information: For example, first and last name, email address, postal address, or phone number.
  • Demographic Information: For example, age, citizenship status, ethnicity/race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and household information. These categories are considered “Sensitive Personal Information” under state consumer privacy laws, and you may withdraw your consent for our processing of this information as described in the “Your Choices” section below.
  • Donation Information: For example, payment information, billing address, profession, or donation history. Civic Nation utilizes third-party providers to process donations on our behalf.
  • Inquiry and Communications Information: For example, user-provided information submitted through web forms on our Sites, to our email addresses, or via phone. 
  • Interaction: For example, donation history, membership status, and advocacy actions taken.
  • Interests: For example, programs, sweepstakes and campaigns you express interest in hearing about, or information about your personal and professional interests that are relevant to your interest and involvement with Civic Nation and our work. 
  • Preferences: For example, your preferred method(s) of communication.
  • User-created content: For example, the stories and information you provide to Civic Nation as a part of programs and work on issues that we may feature on our websites or in our communications. This includes photos, videos, audio, and other information you may submit to us. 
  • Other: Any other information you voluntarily provide, which could include information deemed “sensitive” personal information under certain laws, such as religious beliefs, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, or citizenship status. 
b. Personal Information We Receive from Third Parties This is information we may receive from third parties, such as partners and affiliates, including but not limited to the following categories:
  • Other individuals who interact with our Sites, such as when others refer you to our Sites, 
  • Social media, such as when someone engages with our social media networks, or other social media networks that may share our information,
  • Service providers performing services on our behalf, such as HubSpot and other vendors, database administrators and marketing providers that may collect personal information on our behalf and often share some or all of this information with us,
  • Consultants and volunteers who need access to information to carry out work for the purposes described in Section 2 on our behalf,
  • Community and coalition partners, such as organizations or entities that align with our mission and partner with us on programming and/or services,
  • Data cooperatives for nonprofits, commercial voter file and consumer research providers, and various public records data;
  • Other sources, such as publicly available sources, third-party service providers, or other activities consistent with our mission. 
  • Personal Information We Automatically Collect
c. Personal Information We Automatically Collect We, our service providers (such as HubSpot), third-party affiliates and partners may collect information automatically when you access the Sites, read our emails and/or texts, or otherwise interact with us. This information may be collected through tracking technologies, including cookies, web beacons, pixels, or other related technologies. This may include: 
  • Information about your device, such as your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, device manufacturer, type or model, operating system, date and time of access, and unique IDs that allow us to identify you when you engage with our Sites;
  • Information about how you access and use our Sites, such as how you got to our Sites, which pages you visited, what links you clicked, the frequency of your visits, and other browsing behavior; 
  • Location information, such as a general geographic location that we or our third-party providers may derive from your IP address or other relevant information; 
  • Analytics information that our third-party providers may use to help us understand how our Sites are being accessed and used.

If you would prefer not to accept cookies, most browsers will allow you to: (i) change your browser settings to notify you when you receive a cookie, which lets you choose whether or not to accept it; (ii) disable existing cookies; or (iii) set your browser to automatically reject cookies.

2. WHY WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We collect and use your personal information to power our mission of strengthening civic culture, civic power, and civic participation. This includes and is limited to the following, unless otherwise specified or we specifically obtain consent:  

  • Services and Operations: We may use your personal information to fulfill your requests and tailor our communications with you to things that may be relevant to your interactions with us. For example, we may communicate with you regarding upcoming events, new partnerships, or information about our activities. We may also use your personal information for business purposes, such as data analysis, enhancing our website, improving our services, identifying usage trends and determining the effectiveness of our programs; and to send you important information regarding the Site, changes to our terms, conditions, and policies and/or other administrative information. 
  • Fundraising: Civic Nation relies on donor support to enable its operations. To do this, we use your personal information to process and solicit donations. 
  • Outreach and Research: We may share information with you about issues of concern or importance to Civic Nation and our partners. To do this, we may use your personal information to communicate with you about opportunities to support our mission through various channels, including targeted advertising, based on your membership profile or interaction history. 
  • Building Volunteer Networks: We may share your information to connect you with others and to grow our volunteer community, who we may notify of other issues and organizations we support. 
  • Contests and Sweepstakes: Civic Nation conducts contests or sweepstakes from time to time and may use your information to notify you of the contest or sweepstakes’ occurrence, and to notify and contact contest or sweepstakes entrants of the status of their entry. 
  • When Required by Law or Public Interest: As a nonprofit organization, Civic Nation is required to submit donation information to governmental entities where required by law and other legal obligations. We may use your personal information to fulfill these obligations. Additionally, we may share your personal information if required (a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

3. HOW WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Your Personal Information may be disclosed to the following third parties in the following ways:

  • We may share information you voluntarily provide us with our affiliates, partners, and like-minded organizations as part of our initiatives and programming. You can opt-out of this practice as provided in Section 8 below.
  • We may share your information with our third-party service providers (such as HubSpot, Google, and WordPress) who provide services such as website hosting, data analysis, database administration, infrastructure provision, IT services, customer service, email/text delivery services, and other similar services to enable them to provide services.Please note that in some instances, third-party service providers may use information collected from us to train their artificial intelligence tools or features of services they provide to Civic Nation. Additionally, we may permit service providers to create and use de-identified data for their broader business purposes, including sharing certain aggregated analyses or measurement data with their other customers, affiliates, or third parties.
  • To a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business or assets (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings).
  • As we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

We only allow our service providers to handle your personal data if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal data.

Online Petitions
If you sign an online petition, you understand that such petition is public information and that we may make the petition, and your name, city, state, and any comments provided in connection therewith publicly available.  In addition, we may provide such petitions or compilations thereof, including your comments, name, city, and state to national, state or local leaders, or to the press.

Social Sharing Features
The Sites may offer social sharing features and other integrated tools (such as the Facebook “Like” button), which let you share actions you take on our Sites with other media, and vice versa.  The use of such features enables the sharing of information with your friends or the public, depending on the settings you establish with the entity that provides the social sharing feature. For more information about the purpose and scope of data collection and processing in connection with social sharing features, please visit the privacy policies of the entities that provide these features.

4. HOW WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION

a. Sites Security

We use reasonable organizational, technical and administrative measures to protect Personal Information under our control. However, no security system is impenetrable. As such, we are not able to nor do we guarantee that our security systems are 100% safe. If we become aware of a breach of security, we will take reasonable steps to investigate the incident and where appropriate, notify the relevant parties regarding what information may have been compromised, and take other steps in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

b. Financial Donations

Civic Nation treats our donors’ credit card information with the highest level of privacy and security, following industry best practices. Our donation pages use a secure (SSL/https) connection to send credit card data directly to a leading payment processor that is certified Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant. Civic Nation never has access to or stores credit card numbers in any format on any of our servers.

5. THIRD-PARTY SITES OR SERVICES

This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information or other practices of any third parties beyond our obligations as a controller or processor in relation to that third party, including any third party operating any site to which this Site contains a link. The inclusion of a link on the Site does not imply endorsement of the linked site by us or by our affiliates. To learn more about the privacy practices of third parties, please visit their respective privacy notices.

6. TARGETED ADVERTISING, SALE OF DATA, AND SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION


a. Targeted Advertising

We may use your personal information to display targeted advertisements to you on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, to fundraise and amplify our initiatives and organizing activities. By doing so, we may share your personal information with social media platforms to serve targeted advertisements to specific individuals (for example, one-to-one matching), including you, or to display to people who share similarities with our existing audiences (for example, “lookalike” audiences”) who are members or volunteers with Civic Nation. We do this to support fundraising and programmatic operations by optimizing our ability to communicate effectively with existing and potential supporters.

b. Sale of Data

We do not exchange your personal information for monetary consideration or value whatsoever. However, some state privacy laws consider the exchange of personal information for any form of valuable consideration to be sale of data. Civic Nation will occasionally exchange donor and contact personal information with other like-minded nonprofit organizations and nonprofit data cooperative vendors. When you opt out of sales of data, you will be removed from both practices.

c. Profiling

Some state privacy laws provide consumers with the right to opt out of profiling or automated decision-making that can significantly impact their legal or economic well-being. Civic Nation does not conduct these activities.

Sensitive Personal Information

We collect the following information classified as “sensitive personal information “ under state consumer privacy laws with your consent:

  • Race and ethnic background
  • Sexual orientation and sexuality
  • Status as trans or nonbinary
  • While Civic Nation does not solicit information about the following categories, information in these categories may be shared in the course of our events and in responses to our surveys: 
    • citizenship or immigration status
    • Health information 
    • Religious beliefs

We use this sensitive information for the purposes set forth in Sections 2 and 3 of the Policy. You may be able to withdraw your consent for our processing of sensitive information as described in Section 8 below. 

7. YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS

If you are a resident of the following states (Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Utah, or Virginia), you may be able to exercise the rights listed below in relation to the personal information we have collected about you (subject to identity verification): 
  1. Right of Access — You have the right to obtain: 
    • Confirmation of whether and where we are processing your personal information; 
    • The categories of your personal information we process, the purposes for which we process your personal information, and what our retention policies are for your personal information; 
    • The categories of third parties with whom we may share your personal information; and 
    • A readable copy of the personal information we hold about you.
  2. Right of Portability — You may request up to twice a year, subject to the applicable laws (some states only provide for once a year), a copy of the personal information you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format that supports re-use, or to request the transfer of your personal information to another person.
  3. Right to Correct — You have the right to request that we correct inaccuracies in any personal information that we hold about you. 
  4. Right to Delete — You have the right to request that we delete the personal information that we hold about you, except information that we are required or permitted to keep in compliance with applicable law and obligations. If any information cannot be deleted, we will notify you upon the completion of your request. 
  5. Right to Opt-Out — You may have the right to opt-out of targeted advertising or sale of data activities. 
  6. Right to Withdraw Consent — In instances where you have provided consent for the processing of your sensitive personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. While we will cease processing activities, this will not affect the lawfulness of use prior to your withdrawal. 
  7. Right to Appeal — If we decline to fulfill your request to exercise any of the above rights, you have the right to appeal our decision. If your appeal is denied, you may contact your state’s attorney general through the process provided on their website. 

We are not obligated to make a data access or data portability disclosure if we cannot verify the requestor’s identity as the person about whom we collected information or as someone authorized to act on such person’s behalf. Any personal information we collect from you to verify your identity in connection with your request will be used solely for the purposes of verification.

All exercise of these rights are subject to the consideration of the interests of others. If permitted by applicable law, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive. We will notify you of the fee with explanation of the decision before completing your request.

We are required under most state consumer privacy laws to respond without undue delay but within 45 days of receipt of your request. Depending on factors such as the type and complexity of the request, we may extend the time for response once for 45 additional days, as long as we notify you within the original 45 days.

If we decline to take action regarding your request, we must notify you without undue delay, but within 45 days of the receipt of the notice and provide information on our appeal process. We are required to provide justification and provide information on the appeal process within a reasonable time after the communication of the decision to decline.

8. YOUR CHOICES

You may exercise your privacy rights by submitting a data privacy request using the methods below: 

  1. Email: You may email us regarding your privacy rights at info@civicnation.org. 
  2. Phone: 202-838-6964 
  3. Universal Opt-Out Signals: Civic Nation recognizes and honors opt-out preference signals that meet the requirements under applicable laws, such as the  Global Privacy Control (GPC), in regard to opt-out requests for targeted advertising and sale of data when we are able to connect the opt-out signal to the requesting individual. 

Other parties may be authorized to submit opt-out and/or deletion requests on your behalf subject to certain state consumer privacy laws. To do so, please indicate that you are an authorized third-party on your request. We are only obligated to fulfill requests of authorized agents whose authority we are able to verify.  

9. MOBILE TERMS AND CONDITIONS

There is no fee from Civic Nation to receive text messages. Message and data rates may apply — this can be checked with your mobile service provider. Charges are billed and payable to your mobile service provider or deducted from your prepaid account. Consent is not a requirement for purchase.

Data obtained from you in connection with this SMS service may include your mobile phone number, your carrier’s name and the date, time and content of your messages. We may use this information to contact you and provide the services you request from us. Alerts sent via SMS may not be delivered if the mobile phone is not in range of a transmission site, or if sufficient network capacity is not available at a particular time. Even within a coverage area, factors beyond the control of the wireless operator may interfere with message delivery, including the customer’s equipment, terrain, proximity to buildings, foliage, and weather. Wireless operators do not guarantee message delivery and will not be held liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

We will not be liable for any delays in the receipt of any SMS message as delivery is subject to effective transmission from your network operator.

By subscribing to Civic Nation mobile alerts, the user consents to receive automated text messages to help build a more inclusive and equitable America. Recurring messages. Message & data rates may apply. If you have any questions, text HELP to the number you received a text message from or contact us at info@civicnation.org. To stop receiving messages reply STOP.

10. USE OF SITES BY MINORS

The Site is not intended for children under the age of thirteen (13). 

We do not knowingly, directly or passively, collect information from children under the age of thirteen (13). To respect the privacy of children and to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, children under the age of 13 should not provide any Personal Information on this Site. 

If you believe that we may have collected or received personal information from a child under thirteen, please contact us at info@civicnation.org to request deletion of that information.

11. CONTACT US

If you have any specific questions about how Civic Nation controls or processes your data which are not answered here or you would like to exercise any of your rights under applicable law, please contact info@civicnation.org. If you are not satisfied with our response to your inquiry then you can appeal or request further information by info@civicnation.org.