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Educare Chicago Privacy Policy

Last Revised: August 31, 2021

Introduction 

Educare Chicago – a program of Start Early (formerly known as the Ounce) (“Educare Chicago”, “Company “or “We “) respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it through our compliance with this policy. 

This policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you visit the website www.EducareChicago.org (our “Website“) and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing that information. It does not apply to information collected by: 

  • Us offline or through any other means, including on any other website operated by Company or any third party; or 
  • Any third party, including through any application or content (including advertising) that may link to or be accessible from or on the Website. 

Please read this policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, your choice is not to use our Website. By accessing or using this Website, you agree to this privacy policy. This policy may change from time to time (see Changes to Our Privacy Policy). Your continued use of this Website after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the policy periodically for updates. 

Children under the Age of 13 

The Website is not directed to or intended for use by minors. Start Early and the Website do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13. If you are under age 13, you are not permitted to use the Website or to submit any Personal Information to the Website. If you are between 13 and 17 years of age, you may post messages, but you may not submit any personal information. If we become aware that a Website user is under age 18 and has provided Personal Information, we will take steps to remove his or her Personal Information from our files. If you are a parent or guardian and believe we may have inadvertently collected personal information from your child, please notify us immediately at: 

Start Early 
33 W. Monroe 
STE 1200 
Chicago, IL 60603 
Info@StartEarly.org 

California Minors: While the Website is not intended for anyone under the age of 18, if you are a California resident who is under age 18 and you are unable to remove publicly-available content that you have submitted to us, you may request removal by contacting us at: Info@StartEarly.org. When requesting removal, you must be specific about the information you want removed and provide us with specific information, such as the URL for each page where the information was entered, so that we can find it. We are not required to remove any content or information that: (1) federal or state law requires us or a third party to maintain; (2) was not posted by you; (3) is anonymized so that you cannot be identified; (4) you don’t follow our instructions for removing or requesting removal; or (5) you received compensation or other consideration for providing the Content or information. Removal of your content or information from the Website does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal of that content or information from our systems or the systems of our service providers. We are not required to delete the content or information posted by you; our obligations under California law are satisfied so long as we anonymize the content or information or render it invisible to other users and the public. 

Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It 

We collect several types of information from and about users of our Website, including information: 

  • By which you may be personally identified, such as name, postal address, e-mail address, telephone number, or any other identifier by which you may be contacted online or offline (“personal information”); 
  • That is about you but individually does not identify you; and/or 
  • About your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our Website, and usage details. 

We collect this information: 

  • Directly from you when you provide it to us, including but not limited to, registrations for any product, service, or event on our Website; donations to Start Early made through the Website; subscriptions or purchases to receive one of our products or services; registrations to receive email subscriptions and/or e-newsletters and submission of a contact request. 
  • Automatically as you navigate through the site. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies. 

If you make a donation to Educare Chicago, we will ask for financial information such as a credit card number, expiration date, CVV number, billing address, and company name for payment processing (see our Donor Privacy Policy). Educare Chicago relies on CyberSource and Braintree for payment processing (see the CyberSource and Braintree websites for more information). 

Information You Provide to Us 

The information we collect on or through our Website may include: 

  • Information that you provide by filling in forms on our Website. This includes information provided at the time of subscribing to our service or requesting further services. We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our Website. 
  • Records and copies of your correspondence (including email addresses), if you contact us. 

You also may provide information to be published or displayed (hereinafter, “posted“) on public areas of the Website, or transmitted to other users of the Website or third parties (collectively, “User Contributions“). Your User Contributions are posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. We cannot control the actions of other users of the Website with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your User Contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. 

Information We Collect Through Automatic Data Collection Technologies 

As you navigate through and interact with our Website, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including: 

  • Details of your visits to our Website, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on the Website. 
  • Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type. 

The information we collect automatically is only statistical data and does not include personal information, but we may maintain it or associate it with personal information we collect in other ways or receive from third parties. It helps us to improve our Website and to deliver a better and more personalized service, including by enabling us to: 

  • Estimate our audience size and usage patterns. 
  • Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Website according to your individual interests. 
  • Speed up your searches. 
  • Recognize you when you return to our Website. 

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include: 

  • Cookies (or browser cookies). A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our Website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Website. 
  • Flash Cookies. Certain features of our Website may use local stored objects (or Flash cookies) to collect and store information about your preferences and navigation to, from, and on our Website. Flash cookies are not managed by the same browser settings as are used for browser cookies. For information about managing your privacy and security settings for Flash cookies, see Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information. 
  • Web Beacons. Pages of our Website and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the Company, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity). 
  • Google Analytics.  We use Google Analytics, which is a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses cookies to help the website analyze how individuals use the Website. The non-personal information generated by the cookie about your use of the Website will be transmitted to and stored by Google. Google will use this information for the purposes of evaluating your use of the Website, compiling reports on Website activity for our purpose, evaluation and providing other services relating to the Website activity and Internet usage. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may disable cookies within your browser as described above, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of the Website. By using this Website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above. For certain browsers, you can also prevent Google from collecting information (including your IP address) via cookies and processing this information by downloading this browser plugin and installing it: www.tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. 
  • Internet Based Advertising. We incorporate remarketing by utilizing third parties (such as Google) to display content specific advertisements to visitors who have previously visited Start Early Website and/or expressed interest in our services when such visitors go to other websites that also incorporate similar remarketing tools. Start Early and other third parties, use first-party cookies and third-party cookies together to inform, optimize and serve ads based on a user’s past visits to Start Early site. You may opt out of this use of cookies by visiting the National Advertising Initiative site. 


We do not collect personal information automatically, but we may tie this information to personal information about you that we collect from other sources or you provide to us. 

How We Use Your Information 

We use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information, such as your name, email address and postal address: 

  • To present our Website and its contents to you. 
  • For our internal business purposes, Website analysis or administration, communications with users, order payment and fulfillment, order delivery. 
  • We specifically may use your email address to communicate with you about events, fundraising opportunities and other messages on other third-party platforms (like Facebook). If you do not wish for your information to be used in this way, you may contact us at Info@StartEarly.org to opt out. 
  • To fulfill any other purpose for which you provide it. 
  • To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection. 
  • To notify you about changes to our Website or any products or services we offer or provide though it. 
  • To compile a subscription list to which you voluntarily submit your name, mailing address, and/or email address. You will have the ability to opt out of further communications. 
  • In any other way we may describe when you provide the information. 
  • For any other purpose with your consent.

Disclosure of Your Information 

We may disclose aggregated information about our users without restriction. We may disclose personal information that we collect or you provide as described in this privacy policy: 

  • To our subsidiaries and affiliates. 
  • To contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support our business and who are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them. 
  • To a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of Start Early’s assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by Start Early about our Website users is among the assets transferred. 
  • To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it. 
  • For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information. 
  • With your consent. 

We may also disclose your personal information: 

  • To comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request and other agreements, including for billing and collection purposes. 
  • If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of Start Early, our customers, or others. 

Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information 

We strive to provide you with choices regarding the personal information you provide to us. We have created mechanisms to provide you with the following control over your information: 

  • Tracking Technologies and Advertising. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when cookies are being sent. To learn how you can manage your Flash cookie settings, visit the Flash player settings page on Adobe’s website. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this site may then be inaccessible or not function properly. 

We do not control third parties’ collection or use of your information to serve interest-based advertising. However these third parties may provide you with ways to choose not to have your information collected or used in this way. You can opt out of receiving targeted ads from members of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI“) on the NAI’s website. 

Nevada residents who wish to exercise their sale opt-out rights under Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 603A may submit a request to this designated address: Info@StartEarly.org. However, please know we do not currently sell data triggering that statute’s opt-out requirements. 

We respect your privacy and give you an opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from Start Early and/or having your personal information disclosed. To opt out, you may contact us at Info@StartEarly.org. 

Data Security 

We have implemented measures designed to secure your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers behind firewalls. All donations and membership dues received via credit card are processed securely by Start Early’s payment processing vendors, CyberSource and Braintree, using measures that comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (“PCI DSS”). 

The safety and security of your information also depends on you. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password for access to certain parts of our Website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone. 

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to our Website. Any transmission of personal information is at your own risk. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Website. 

Changes to Our Privacy Policy 

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our privacy policy on this page. If we make material changes to how we treat our users’ personal information, we will post the changes on the Website and the new Privacy Policy will be effective immediately upon posting and will apply only to information collected thereafter. The date the privacy policy was last revised is identified at the top of the page. You are responsible for ensuring we have an up-to-date active and deliverable email address for you, and for periodically visiting our Website and this privacy policy to check for any changes. 

Contact Information 

To ask questions or comment about this privacy policy and our privacy practices, contact us at: 

Start Early 
33 W. Monroe Street 
STE 1200 
Chicago, IL 60603 
Info@StartEarly.org