Privacy Policy

Last Updated: January 3, 2023

Participate, Inc. (“Participate,” “our,” “us” or “we”) operates the participate.com website (the “Site”). This Privacy Policy applies to the Site, our service offerings (including our online learning platform) and to any other website offered by us that reference or links to this Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Services”).

We encourage you to read this Privacy Policy carefully to learn what information we collect from you through the Site and how we use that information. This Privacy Policy also describes the choices available to you regarding the use of, your access to and how to update and correct your personal information.

This Privacy Policy does not alter the terms of any other agreement that you may have with us. Your use of the Services constitutes your acceptance of this Privacy Policy. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH OUR POLICIES AND PRACTICES, DO NOT ACCESS OR USE THE SERVICES. By accessing or using the Services, you agree to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy.

1. INFORMATION WE COLLECT

Personal information is information that identifies a specific individual. We collect this information for registered users of the Services and for visitors who use the Site to learn more about us.

You may visit the Site without setting up an account, but the available functionality to you will be limited. When you engage in certain activities that we make available on the Site, such as opening an account, submitting or posting content or taking a course, we may ask you to provide certain personal information.

Account Registration and Profiles: Your name and email address or via single sign-on with Google, Facebook, Twitter or Clever login information is required to create an account. Our account profile allows you to provide additional optional biographical information to us such as your school or employer, your position or any other bio information you choose to include, such as information about your background including your expertise tags (e.g., geometry, space or American history), grade levels and social information such as social media and website addresses. In addition, you can upload or change your profile picture and you will have the opportunity to upload files to your profile and create collections around topics or subjects.

Contact Us Forms on the Site: If you contact us to request additional information or to submit comments, such as the “Contact Sales” form, we will collect the information you submitted (including required information: first and last name, work email address, name of organization, type of organization, district or school, your role at the organization and your question or request). We will use this information to respond to your request or to inform you about program services and events. Email messages we send in this regard will permit you to unsubscribe from future such messages.

Digital Course Badges: If you earn badges while using the Services and elect to share them, please be aware that the metadata attached to the badge contains personal information such as your name, email, profile information and the date the badge was obtained. All of this information will be shared according to your profile preferences and may be shared with your organization as explained in Section 3 below.

Published Collections, Courses, Blogs, and Discussions: If you collaborate with other users of the Services through published collections, courses, blogs, communities or other discussions, the information submitted by or to you may be publicly available. You should be aware that comments, opinions or other information submitted via published collections, courses, blogs, communities or other discussions can be read, collected or used by other users of the Site and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the information you choose to make public in this manner. For more information regarding the proper use of published collections, courses, blogs, communities or other discussions, please refer to our Terms of Service.

Social Media: When you interact with us through various social media - for example, by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn - we may collect information including your email address, location and other biographical information. The information we receive from your social network depends on your privacy settings. You should always review and, if you prefer, adjust your privacy settings on third-party websites and services before linking or connecting them to our Services.

Surveys and Other Communications: We may receive personal information when you provide it to us in response to surveys and other communications.

Automatic Data Collection and Technologies Used to Collect That Information:

Whenever you visit or interact with the Services, we, as well as our service providers, may use assorted technologies to gather certain information automatically or passively about how the Services are accessed and used by you. When you visit the Site, we receive and record information from your browser. We may refer to this information as “traffic data.” This information may include Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, device type used to access the Services (i.e., computer or mobile device), internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, click path taken through the Services, your use of features or applications on the Services and other usage information. This information helps us manage, improve and customize the Services. Traffic data is generally non-identifying, but if we associate it with you as an identifiable person, we will treat it as personal information.

Technologies we use on the Services to collect traffic data, directly or through our service providers, may include cookies (data files placed on your computer or other devices used to access the Services), analytics software (e.g., Google Analytics) and pixel tags (transparent graphic image, sometimes called a web beacon or tracking beacon, placed on a web page or in an email, which indicates that a page or email has been viewed).

We may utilize a short-lived form of cookie when you visit the Services. A cookie is used to identify one unique visitor from another visitor during a particular session. A session is the period of active Services-use while that unique visitor is linked to our server. We may use cookie technology during a session as a tool to carry forward your input information. This enables the visitor to input their information once and have the information appear later. No personal information is stored on the cookie. A pixel tag may tell your browser to get content from another server. We, or our service providers, may place cookies or similar files on your computer or other devices used to access the Services for security purposes, to facilitate Services navigation and to personalize your experience while visiting the Services.

To learn how you may be able to reduce the number of cookies you receive from us, or how to delete cookies that have already been installed in your browser’s cookie folder, please refer to your browser’s help menu or other instructions related to your browser. If you do disable or opt out of receiving cookies, please be aware that some features and services on the Services may not work as intended and you may not have access to all of the services and features we may offer.

2. HOW WE USE THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We use the information we collect to provide the Services, to fulfill your requests, to respond to your questions and to administer your account, as well as for surveys, sweepstakes and other promotional events. While you can choose whether to engage in any such activity, if you do not provide personal information enabling us to contact you, you will be denied access to the activity. We may also use personal information to do all things necessary to administer our Site, products and services and manage, protect and improve them.

In addition to the uses described above, we use the information we collect in the following ways:

To send you email notifications about our products and services and to send you announcements via the Services.
To manage, protect and enhance the operation of the Services.
To troubleshoot and accomplish other administrative tasks.
To analyze our user base and usage trends.
To enforce our Site Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy, comply with applicable law and cooperate with law enforcement activities.
As we mentioned above, we also use the traffic data we collect to improve our Services.

We will share your personal information with third parties as described in this Privacy Policy and in compliance with applicable privacy protection laws and our contractual obligations of confidentiality (collectively, the “Privacy Obligations”). Subject to the Privacy Obligations, we may share your information, including personal information, in the following circumstances:

We may share your personal information and other information we collect with third-party service providers that require access to your personal information for business (but not for commercial) purposes.
We may share your information with other users of the Services depending on your account settings. For example, Community Facilitators on the Services will be able to see your profile and initiate messages with you via the Services or if you are a member of certain communities in the Services, then other members of those same communities may be able to communicate with you via the Services.
We may share your information, including personal information, with third-party service providers as needed for such providers to provide certain services related to our business purpose. These third-party service providers perform functions on our behalf in accordance with the Privacy Obligations, like sending out our administrative and promotional emails or providing customer service or to facilitate platform communication.

We reserve the right to transfer any information, including personal information, in the event all, or a portion, of our business or assets are sold or transferred, including in connection with a sale, merger, consolidation, change in control, transfer of assets, reorganization or liquidation of our business, provided the transferee is obligated to comply with this Privacy Policy
We may share your personal information as required for our protection and for the protection of others. We may share information when we believe release is required to comply with requests from law enforcement or if we are required to do so by law, treaty, regulation, court order or by a governmental entity, such as with a subpoena, bankruptcy proceeding or similar legal process; to enforce this Privacy Policy, our Terms of Service, or other agreements; or to protect the rights, property or safety of the Site or the Services, its users or others or when we have a good faith belief that the sharing conforms to legal requirements or is necessary to conduct investigations into possible breaches of law or to cooperate in any legal investigation.
We may share your personal information with our customers (like a school system, for example) who have provided you professional development content or purchased access for you to professional development modules or other premium features or content of our service platform. This information may include but is not limited to reports or information regarding your completion of professional development modules or other details regarding your usage of our services platform. Normally, when a customer has purchased access to our services platform for you, we will create an account using your school email address. You may contact your organization to inquire about such reporting.
We may also share personal information submitted through in other circumstances for which you have consented to the disclosure.

4. DO-NOT-TRACK REQUESTS AND THIRD-PARTY TRACKING

Unless your browser settings are configured to make your online activities and publicly available information about your online activities invisible to usage analytics tools, we do not presently have the capability to omit you from Site usage information we collect to the extent your browser only sends us a “do not track” message and does not otherwise screen you from tracking without any action on our part. To learn more about browser tracking signals and “Do Not Track”, please visit allaboutdnt.org.

Third parties, other than our vendors (such as our website host, analytics vendor and LinkedIn and Twitter, which serve ads for us), do not have authorization from us to track which websites you visited prior and after visiting our website. That said, we cannot control third-party tracking and there may be some third-party tracking that occurs without our knowledge or consent.

5. UPDATING AND CORRECTING INFORMATION AND USER CHOICES

We encourage you to promptly update your personal information if it changes. To access and edit your personal information, visit your account on the Site or contact us at privacy@participate.com.

You may elect to include or delete certain profile information, and you may also delete/deactivate your account by visiting your account, selecting “Edit Profile” and then selecting “Request account deletion” or by contacting us at privacy@participate.com. If you believe that an unauthorized profile has been created about you, you can request for it to be deleted by contacting us at privacy@participate.com.

You can let us know that you do not wish to receive promotional emails from us when you open an account with us. In addition, you can opt-out of promotional emails at any time after you open an account by:

Visiting your account, selecting “Email Preferences” and then adjusting the “Email preferences” setting or
Hitting the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of any of these emails.

Once you unsubscribe, we will not send you any further promotional emails unless you specifically request that we do so later. Your option not to receive promotional material will not preclude us from corresponding with you, by email or otherwise, regarding your existing or past business relationships with us (e.g., any purchase of our products or use of our services or responses to requests for information you pose to us either through use of the Site or by other means), and will not preclude us from accessing and viewing your personal information in the course of maintaining and improving our Site, products and services.

6. LINKS TO OTHER SITES

We may make content or services from other sites available to you from links located on our Site. These other sites are not controlled by us and are not subject to this Privacy Policy. Our Privacy Policy only applies to information we collect from you while you are on the Site. We recommend that you review the privacy policy at each such site you may choose to access to determine how that site protects your privacy. Use of third-party social networking websites, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, are governed by the privacy policies and practices of those websites.

7. YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS

Pursuant to Section 1798.83 of the California Civil Code, residents of California have the right to request from a business, with whom the California resident has an established business relationship, certain information with respect to the types of personal information, if any, the business shares with third parties for direct marketing purposes by such third party and the identities of the third parties with whom the business has shared such information in the immediately preceding calendar year. We do not currently share any personal information with third parties for direct marketing purposes by such parties. If you have any questions, comments or requests related to this Section, please contact us by email at privacy@participate.com. A number of states are currently considering enacting laws similar to the California law above. If you are a resident of a state that enacts such a law, please use the contact information above to contact us with any questions, requests or comments.

8. OUR POLICIES REGARDING CHILDREN

The Site is not intended for use by individuals under the age of 16. If you are under the age of 16, then do not use the Site or the Services. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 16, and no part of our Site or Services is designed to attract anyone under the age of 16. If we learn that we have collected personal information of a child under 16 in the United States, then we will take steps to delete the information as soon as possible. If you are a minor in your jurisdiction of residence, please do not submit any information to us.

9. NOTICE TO RESIDENTS OF COUNTRIES OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES

We are headquartered in the United States. Personal information may be accessed by us or transferred to us in the United States or to our service providers elsewhere in the world. If you are located outside of the United States, be advised that any information you provide to us through a Site will be transferred to and stored in the United States and that, by submitting information to us, you explicitly authorize its transfer and storage within the United States. We will protect the privacy and security of personal information collected through a Site according to this Privacy Policy regardless of where it is processed or stored. If you are in a jurisdiction outside of the United States and under the age of 16 please do not use the Site or Services or submit any information to us.

10. CHANGES TO PRIVACY POLICY

We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy from time to time by posting the revised Privacy Policy in the “Privacy Policy” section of our Site and the revised Privacy Policy will go into effect once posted. You acknowledge that it is your responsibility to review our Site and the Privacy Policy periodically to learn of any modifications. Your continued use of our Site after the posting of the revised Privacy Policy shall constitute your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy.

If we make any material changes to this Privacy Policy, we may (but are not required to) notify you by email (sent to the email address specified in your account) or by means of a notice on the Site prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.

11. CONTACTING US

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please contact us:

EMAIL

privacy@participate.com

ADDRESS

Participate, Inc.
ATTN: Privacy Officer
201 Sage Road, Suite 100
Chapel Hill, NC 27514