PRIVACY POLICY

Last Updated: August 25, 2023

Hopewell Fund, its affiliates, and its related entities (individually and collectively, “Heat Initiative,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) respect your privacy. We provide this website privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) to describe how we collect, use, disclose, or otherwise process such data (including personal data) that we and our suppliers collect through our website (“Collected Information”) and our other websites on which this Privacy Policy is posted as well as the services made available through such websites (collectively referred to as the “Websites”). This Privacy Policy also describes your choices regarding the use of your Collected Information and how we communicate changes to this Privacy Policy.

By accessing or using the Website, by accepting the Website’s Terms of Use, or by entering into any other agreement with Heat Initiative that governs access to or use of the Websites, you agree on behalf of yourself and any organization or company that you represent (together, “you”) that you have read, understand this Privacy Policy, and consent to the collection and use of information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, please do not access or use the Websites. 

This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and made a part of our Terms of Use and any other agreement that references this Privacy Policy or that governs access to or use of the Website.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

  1. Changes to this Privacy Policy
  2. Information You Submit
  3. Other Information Collected
  4. How We Use and Share Collected Information
  5. Retention
  6. Accuracy and Security
  7. Children
  8. Third Party Websites
  9. Contact Us


CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We reserve the right to update this Privacy Policy at any time. All updates will be effective immediately upon posting of the updated Privacy Policy on the Website. Material changes will be clearly posted on the Website or otherwise communicated to you.

INFORMATION YOU SUBMIT

Personal Information. You can visit the Website without submitting your personal information to us, but you will be required to provide your personal information in order to use or access certain other tools and features of the Website. We will collect any personal information from or about you that you choose to provide to us, which may include, without limitation, your email address. Any such information that you choose to submit will be collected by Heat Initiative. We will use your personal information as described below in this Privacy Policy, including setting up and administering your account and to communicate with you.

Marketing Communications. If you sign up or otherwise provide your email address to us, we will use this information to send you updates about Heat Initiative and promotional and other electronic communications. You may opt out of receiving updates and other emails from us at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions in the applicable email or by contacting us using the contact information provided below under “Contact Us.” Note that, even if you opt out of receiving promotional communications from Heat Initiative, you may still receive administrative communications from us with respect to your use of the Website. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp’s privacy practices.

OTHER INFORMATION COLLECTED

As you navigate and use the Website, certain information can be passively collected—that is, gathered without the user actively providing the information or being concurrently made aware of the collection of information—using various technologies. We passively collect a variety of types of information in a variety of ways, including:

IP Addresses and Related Data. The servers used to operate and provide the Website may collect data pertaining to you and the equipment, software, and communication methods you use to access the Internet and the Website, including Internet protocol (“IP”) addresses assigned to the computers and other devices from where you access the Internet, your Internet service provider (ISP), device ID numbers and unique identifiers, your media access control (MAC) address, your operating system, your computer screen resolution, your web browser type, the pages you access on the Website, the websites you access before and after visiting the Website, the length of time you spend on the Website, date and time stamps, clickstream data, your approximate geographic location, performance statistics, and usage data. Heat Initiative may use this information to administer the Website and its servers, to generate statistical information, to monitor and analyze Website traffic and usage patterns, to monitor and help prevent fraud, to investigate complaints and violations of our policies, and to improve the Website.

We may combine this information with other Collected Information (including personal information) and information obtained from third parties for security reasons and to protect our rights or the rights of others. The suppliers that we use to provide the Website may collect information about your visits to the Website and other websites. Some of this information may be collected using cookies and similar tracking technologies as explained below under “Cookies and Tracking Technologies.”

Analytics. The Website uses third-party analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics) to collect and process data about your use of the Website, including when you visit the Website, URLs of the websites that you visit prior to visiting the Website and when you visit those websites, and IP addresses assigned to the devices from where you access the Internet. Our analytics providers may set and read cookies to collect this data and your web browser will automatically send data collected by those cookies to our analytics providers. Our analytics providers use this data to provide us with reports that we will use to improve the Website’s structure and content.

For more information on how Google uses this data, visit Google’s Privacy Policy and Google’s page on How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps. To prevent this data from being used by Google Analytics, follow the instructions to download and install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on for each browser you use. Using the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on will not prevent Heat Initiative from using other analytics tools and will not prevent data from being sent to the Website itself or to Google. For more information about how Google Analytics uses cookies to measure user interactions on websites, visit Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites. You may disable cookies as discussed below, but that may impact your use and enjoyment of the Website. 

Advertising Networks, Personalized Advertising, Remarketing, & Retargeting. From time to time the Website may use or participate in advertising networks and related advertising services that are managed and provided by third-party advertising servers, advertising agencies, technology vendors, and research firms, including, without limitation, Google Ads. These services collect information about your visits to and interactions with the Website and other websites and will use that information to target advertisements for goods and services and to display those advertisements on other websites. The information collected may be associated with your personal information.

Advertising networks often gather data about consumers who view advertisements to make inferences about a consumer’s interests and preferences, which enables their computers to deliver advertisements directly targeted to the consumer’s specific interests. This practice is often referred to as “online behavioral advertising.” For example, a third-party advertising network might collect the type of web browser you use, the type of computer operating system you use, the domain name of a website you visit, whether or not you visit specific pages of the Website and other websites, the location of your Internet service provider, the date and time of a visit to a website, and other interactions between you and a website. 

We use Google Ads and Google Analytics advertising features on our Website, which we use for the purposes set forth in this Privacy Policy. Through Google Ads, Google uses your Internet searches, cookies, and similar identifiers (e.g., pixel tags) to collect information about your visits to the Website and your interaction with our products and services to generate targeted advertisements to you on other websites that you visit across the Internet. We may also enable and implement Google Analytics advertising features on the Website. To opt out of remarketing advertising provided through Google, to customize your ad preferences, or to limit Google’s collection or use this information, visit Google’s Safety Center and Google’s Ad Settings and follow Google’s personalized ad opt-out instructions. Opting out will not affect your use of the Website. 

To change your preferences with respect to certain online ads and to obtain more information about third-party ad networks and online behavioral advertising, please visit the National Advertising Initiative Consumer opt-out page or the Digital Advertising Alliance Self-Regulatory Program. Please remember that changing your settings with individual web browsers or ad networks will not necessarily carry over to other browsers or ad networks. As a result, depending on the opt-outs you request, you may still see our ads from time to time. Your device may also include a feature (“Limit Ad Tracking” on iOS or “Opt Out of Interest-Based Ads” on Android) that allows you to opt out of having certain information collected through apps used for behavioral advertising purposes.

Social Media. The Website may allow you to connect to and share information with social media platforms and we may be required to implement cookies, plug-ins, and APIs provided by those social media platforms in order to facilitate those communications and features. We may share information that you provide us or that we may collect about your use of the Website with those platforms and that information will be subject to their privacy policies. We encourage you to review the privacy policy of any social media platform that you use in connection with the Website. In addition, by choosing to use any third-party social media platform or choosing to share content or communications with any social media platform, you allow us to share information with the designated social media platform. We cannot control any policies or terms of such third party platform. As a result, we cannot be responsible for any use or disclosure of your information or content by third-party platforms, which you use at your own risk.

Heat Initiative is active on social media. You may have the opportunity to comment on those social media platforms regarding Heat Initiative and the products we offer and/or to submit or upload related photographs and other materials. Heat Initiative reserves the right to post on the Website, other websites, and social media pages any comments, photographs, or content that you post on our social media pages or provide to us through social media.

Cookies and Tracking Technologies. We use “cookies” on the Website. A cookie is a piece of data stored on a Website visitor’s hard drive by the visitor’s web browser. We use cookies to help us improve your access to the Website (for example, by remembering your contact and other information when you access or use the Website), to identify repeat visitors to the Website, to track how you access and use the Website, to learn when and how users visit the Website, to learn whether our Website and/or its pages are popular, to learn which search terms are used to find the Website, to learn which websites direct you to the Website, to help display certain information on the Website, and to improve your enjoyment of the Website. 

The Website may use both cookies that we implement, and cookies implemented by our suppliers and other third parties. “First-party” cookies allow your browser to talk to the actual website that you are visiting, whereas “third-party” cookies allow your browser to talk to third-party websites, such as the source of an ad that appears on the website you are visiting or a third-party analytics provider. Additionally, a cookie can either be a “session” cookie or a “persistent” cookie. Session cookies exist only for so long as you are visiting the applicable website. Session cookies are typically deleted or removed when you exit or quit your browser application. Persistent cookies exist for a set period of time, for example, six months or one year. Each time you visit a website that has implemented a persistent cookie, that cookie will remain active until its predetermined expiration date.

Our suppliers may use cookies and tracking technologies, such as pixel tags, to track Website visitors across the Internet to understand how you get to the Website and for the analytics purposes disclosed in this Privacy Policy. We do not have access or control over these cookies and this Privacy Policy does not cover the use of third-party cookies.

The types of information collected by a cookie and the purposes for which that information is used depends on the type of cookie. By way of illustration, the types of cookies used, the types of information collected by those cookies, and the purposes for which that information are used are described below. We may combine information collected by cookies with other Collected Information.

  • Operationally necessary cookies (also called essential cookies). These are cookies that are required for the operation of the Website. For example, these cookies are required to identify irregular website behavior, prevent fraudulent activity, and improve security. They also allow users of the Website to make use of its functions. Without these cookies, features and services you have requested will not be able to be provided.
  • Functional cookies. These cookies allow us to offer you enhanced functionality when accessing or using the Website. This may include to remembering choices you make, for example, remembering your preferences or settings, remembering if you reacted to something on or through the Website so that you are not asked to react to it again, remembering if you have used any feature of the Website before, remembering your username or preferences, remembering if you have used any feature of the Website before, restricting the number of times you are shown a particular advertisement, and enabling social media components. If functional cookies are disabled, various functions of the Website may be unavailable to you or may not work the way you want them to.
  • Performance cookies (also called analytical cookies). These cookies assess the performance of the Website, including as part of our analytic practices to help us understand how visitors use and interact with the Website, for example, which pages on our websites users visit most often. These cookies also enable us to personalize content and remember your preferences. These cookies help us improve the way our websites work and provide a better, personalized user experience.
  • Advertising or targeted cookies. These cookies record your visits to the Website, the pages you visit on our websites, and the links you have clicked. They gather information about your browsing habits and remember that you have visited a particular website. Heat Initiative and its third-party advertising platforms or networks may use this information to make the Website and its content more relevant to your interests (this is sometimes called “behavioral” or “targeted” advertising and is further discussed above). These cookies are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement and to help measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. To find out more about interest-based ads and your choices, please visit the Digital Advertising Alliance, the Network Advertising Initiative, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe, http://www.allaboutcookies.org, and http://www.youronlinechoices.com.


Most browsers automatically accept cookies. Browsers generally also allow users to manage cookies in the browser’s settings. For example, a browser may allow you to reject cookies from certain websites, reject certain types of cookies regardless of the website, reject or disable all cookies from all websites, and/or delete cookies stored previously. Some browsers also give you the option of being notified every time a cookie is sent to your browser by a website. You can disable or limit cookies but doing so may impact your use and enjoyment of the Website and other websites. For example, the Website may not be able to be personalized for you, may no longer capture or remember your preferences or other choices you have made on the Website in the past, and may not remember your name or contact information. Changing your cookie preferences in one browser will not necessarily carry over to other browsers, so you may need to adjust your preferences each time you get a new computer, install a new browser, upgrade an existing browser, or alter or delete a browser’s cookie file.

The Website may also use the following types of tracking technologies: web beacons (also called clear GIFs), flash cookies, and pixels (also called pixel tags). Web beacons are tiny graphics with unique identifiers that functions similar to how cookies function but, in contrast to cookies, web beacons are embedded invisibly on websites. Flash cookies collect and store information about your use of a website and are commonly used for advertisements and videos. Pixel tags can be placed on websites or within emails to track your interactions with those websites and when emails are opened.

How We Respond to Do-Not-Track Signals. Due to the automatic collection of data using cookies as described above, we do not respond to or honor “do not track” requests. For this reason, your selection of the “Do Not Track” option provided by your browser may not have any effect on our collection of information using cookies and other tracking technologies.

Embedded Content. The Website incorporates content, including feeds, scripts embedded in the Website’s code, and visible content (e.g., videos), provided by third parties. In some cases, those third parties collect data about how you interact with their content. For example, YouTube.

Information from Other Sources. We may obtain data about Website users from various third-party companies and public sources, whether offline or online (such as publicly available social media profiles), and we may combine that data with Collected Information. This enhances our existing information about our users and customers and improves our ability to contact you and our marketing’s relevancy.

HOW WE USE AND SHARE COLLECTED INFORMATION

In addition to, and consistent with, the uses and sharing described above, Heat Initiative and its suppliers may use and disclose Collected Information as described below:

  • Purpose Collected and Communication with You. We will use and share your personal information and other Collected Information for the purpose for which it was collected, for example, to process and communicate with you in connection with your purchases, your requests for information, and user-generated content you provide, to administer your account and Heat Initiative business activities, to provide customer support to Website users, and to provide you with information and communications that you request. User-generated content will be used for the purpose for which it was provided, including making that content available to other users of the Website, if applicable, as discussed above and in our Terms of Use. If you provide us with your telephone number, we may call you regarding your use of the Site or in response to your questions or comments and, as described below, we may send you text messages. 
  • Promotional Communications. We may use Collected Information to send you promotional communications about Heat Initiative and the Website and the related services to the extent permitted by applicable law and in accordance with your preferences. In order to provide you with a personalized experience, these communications may be tailored to your preferences based on, for example, inferences we make using your visits to the Website or the links you click on in the emails. You may opt out of receiving promotional email communications from us at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions contained in the email, where applicable, or by contacting us using the contact information provided below under “Contact Us.” Note that, even if you opt out of receiving promotional communications from Heat Initiative, you may still receive administrative communications from us with respect to your use of the Website.
  • Sharing with our Service Providers. We may disclose Collected Information to our suppliers and service providers as necessary for us to provide the Website and our products and services to you, to engage in the use and sharing of Collected Information as permitted by this Privacy Policy, and as may be otherwise required or permitted by applicable law. These third parties include, without limitation, our affiliates and related entities, website and software management and hosting suppliers, support service providers, third party payment processors, cloud storage providers, information technology security providers, marketing and public relations service providers, and email service suppliers. 
  • Data Aggregation. To the extent permitted by applicable law, we may aggregate personal information, user-generated content, and other Collected Information and use that aggregate data for our business purposes. 
  • Lawful Processes, Security & Protection of Rights. We may use and share Collected Information as required or permitted in accordance with subpoenas, court orders, valid law enforcement requests, governmental agency requests, and other legal processes. We may use Collected Information if we believe doing so is necessary or appropriate to protect our rights or the rights of others.
  • Business Transactions. If Heat Initiative undergoes a change in control, acquisition, merger, reorganization, or asset sale (in whole or in part), we may transfer, sell, share, or otherwise disclose Collected Information to the subsequent owner(s) or successor(s) of those transactions. We may also disclose Collected Information in connection with the evaluation of those transactions. 
  • With Your Consent. With your consent, we may use and share your personal information and other Collected Information in ways not specifically described in this Privacy Policy.


RETENTION 

Heat Initiative will retain personal information for as long as it is needed for or otherwise serves the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, subject to applicable law. 

ACCURACY AND SECURITY

Personal data you provide to us should be relevant to the purposes for which it is to be used, and, to the extent necessary for those purposes, should be accurate, complete, and up to date.

We have in place reasonable and appropriate technical, physical, and organizational procedures and security measures designed to safeguard and secure personal information from unauthorized loss, alteration, access, disclosure, and processing, taking into account the cost of implementing such measures commensurate with the risks posed by the particular type of processing, the nature of the personal information, and in accordance with applicable law. We value your trust in providing us your information; however, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure and reliable. We cannot guarantee the security of Collected Information.

CHILDREN

The Website is not directed at children under 13 years of age. Heat Initiative does not knowingly collect or use information from children under 13 through the Website.

THIRD PARTY WEBSITES

The Website may link to, or be linked to, websites, or services not maintained or controlled by Heat Initiative. Heat Initiative is not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of any third parties or any third-party websites, applications, or services. This Privacy Policy does not apply to any third-party websites, applications, or services or to any personal or other information that you may provide to such third parties. We encourage you to read the privacy policy for each website, application, and service you visit, use, or interact with.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our collection, use, or disclosure of information, please contact us via email at privacy@heatinitiative.org.