Privacy Policy

GMF Data Privacy Statement

GMF respects the privacy of every individual who visits our website or sends us e-mail. Therefore, we comply with applicable data privacy legislation in regard to processing personal data. This Privacy Statement describes how GMF uses and protects personally identifiable information. This Privacy Statement, together with our Website Terms of Use, constitute the entire agreement between you and GMF relating to the publicly accessible portions of our website. Where permissible under applicable law, by your use of our website, you consent to be governed by this Privacy Statement.

We reserve the right to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this Privacy Statement, at any time. Any such modification would not result in the reduction of your privacy or rights and would only serve to enhance GMF’s Privacy statement and security. As stated below, at any time, you have the right to request access to any information that GMF stores about you and, at any time, you have the right to request to be forgotten and have all information that GMF stores about you deleted. We highly recommend that you review this Privacy Statement and the Website Terms of Use from time to time to ensure that you are familiar with the most recent version. The examples contained in this Privacy Statement are illustrations; they are not intended to be exclusive.

Personal data

You have the opportunity, via our website or other means, to provide us with personal information about you and your interests. This information may include, but is not limited to, your name, mailing address, e-mail address, policy interests, and regional interests.

If you choose to share any personal data with us via our website or via e-mail, we will store it and use that information for internal purposes; such as to send e-newsletters you have requested or event invitations. We use industry standard practices to review data quality and confirm that the information we have for you is up-to-date.

We also store data that you voluntarily provide during GMF events in order to keep you informed of other events of a similar nature.

At any time you may contact us if you no longer want us to use your personal information for these purposes.

Donations 

If you choose to make a donation to GMF, we request certain personally identifiable information from you. We encrypt this information using Secure Sockets Layer technology (SSL) and digital certificates from GeoTrust. 

We use this information for billing purposes. If we have trouble processing the donation, we will use this information to contact you.

GMF will not share or sell a donor's personal information with anyone else, nor send donor mailings on behalf of other organizations.

Transfer of the personal data to other GMF offices

Your personal data may be transferred for the above stated purposes to other GMF offices, whether located within the European Union or elsewhere, including the United States, if you have specifically provided your consent.

Sharing of the personal data with other organizations

For network communities, such as the Marshall Memorial Fellowship (MMF), GMF will share your information with other members of these communities (including any successors of GMF or other community members).

This information will not be shared outside of these communities. To avoid people receiving multiple invitations to the same co-sponsored event, GMF reserves the right to share your first name, last name, and employer with partner organizations for the purpose of de-duplicating the final invitation list. Except as described in this Privacy Statement, we will not share your phone number, e-mail address, or any other contact information.

GMF will not share your information with any third party unless we have your explicit consent.

GMF will not sell, rent, loan, trade, or lease any personal information collected online or offline. 

Security

GMF uses secure data networks that are protected by firewall and password protection systems that are consistent with industry standards. GMF’s security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary. Only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by GMF contacts. GMF’s database is located in the United States.

Should a data breach occur that affects your personal information, GMF will take appropriate action within 72 hours of discovering the breach.

“Cookies”

You may visit our website anonymously. Except as described in this Privacy Statement, we do not collect identification data of our visitors.

We do, however, use cookies (small computer files that stay on your computer and let us know when and how often you visit our site) to keep and track general information about website usage. Cookies do not identify the individual user, just the computer used.

Cookies and other similar technology can make it easier for you to use the website during future visits. Cookies only record which areas of the site have been visited by the computer in question, and for how long. This information allows GMF to understand how our website is being used, which helps with planning future website growth.

Allowing us to create a cookie does not give us access to the rest of your computer and we will not use cookies to track your online activity once you leave our site. Cookies are read only by the server that placed them, and are unable to execute any code or virus.

If you don’t like cookies…

You can have your browser reject the cookies. Most Internet browsers will allow you to erase cookies from your computer hard drive, block all cookies, or receive a warning before a cookie is stored. Please refer to your browser instructions to learn more about these functions.

 

Log Files

Like most standard Web site servers, GMF uses log files. GMF collects and stores only the following information about you: the name of the domain from which you access the Internet (for example, aol.com, if you are connecting from an America Online account, or princeton.edu if you are connecting from Princeton University’s domain), the date and time you access the site, and the Internet address of the website from which you linked to the GMF site. GMF uses this information to measure the number of visitors to the different sections of the site, and to make the site more useful to visitors. Upon request, GMF is required by law to disclose this and other information records to you.

Links

Throughout our web pages, we provide links to third-party servers and websites which may contain information of interest to our readers. We take no responsibility (and shall have no liability) for, and exercise no control over, the organizations, views, or accuracy of the information contained on third-party servers and/or sites. We encourage you to review their privacy policies.

Creating a text link from your website to our site does not require permission. If you have a link you’d like us to consider adding to our website, please send an email to [email protected] with the subject “Link request.”

Legal Disclaimer

Though we take industry standard measures and other efforts to preserve user privacy, GMF may need to disclose personal information (including personally identifiable information) when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process, and/or in connection with a verified request relating to criminal investigation or alleged illegal activity.

Opt-Out or Change Your Contact Information

When you receive e-mails from GMF you have the opportunity to opt-out of receiving future communications. You may choose to receive only specific communications or none at all. You may also update your contact information previously provided to us via the online form. If you unsubscribe from future e-mails, we will keep your e-mail address on file to ensure we no longer send you e-mails. We will only contact you according to the preferences you specify.

We will not share, sell, or trade your personal information with any entity not part of the organization, nor send donor listings on behalf of other organizations.

All information shall be kept absolutely confidential unless given consent to.

Access to information, data rectification, and erasure

You have at any time the right of access, modification, correction, and removal of your data collected in our database. You can request this by contacting GMF by e-mail or in writing at the address mentioned below. Upon request, GMF will delete all of the information stored about you within 30 days of the request.

How you can access and update your information

The accuracy of your information is important to us. Anytime you receive an e-mail from us, you may click the link at the bottom of the e-mail ‘Manage My Subscriptions’ and an e-mail will be sent to the e-mail we have on file for you with a link to update your information. If you need to change anything else, please e-mail us at: [email protected], or write to us at: The German Marshall Fund, 1744 R St NW, Washington, DC 20009. Alternatively, you can telephone 202-683-2650.

You also have the right to ask for a copy of the information GMF has about you.

Legal Basis for Processing

Where required by the EU General Data Protection with Regulation 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (“GDPR”), we will only collect and process personal information about you where we have a legal basis. Examples of legal bases include consent (where you have given consent), contract (where processing is necessary for entering into or the performance of a contract with you), and “legitimate interests”.

Where we process personal information based on consent, we will ask for your consent. You may withdraw your consent at any time, but that will not affect the lawfulness of the processing of your personal data prior to such withdrawal. Where we rely on contract, we will ask that you agree to the processing of personal data that is necessary for entering into or the performance of your contract with us, and we will inform you whether the provision of your personal data is mandatory and of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal data.

We may process your personal information for the purposes of our legitimate interests, provided that such processing does not outweigh your rights and freedoms. Where we rely on legitimate interests, you have the right to object. We process your personal information based on legitimate interests in order to:

- Solicit donations;
- Send marketing materials about our programs;
- Protect you, us, or others from data security threats;
- Comply with laws that apply to us; and
- Enable internal administrative processes, such as account administration.

How you can withdraw consent to be e-mailed or Unsubscribe from receiving  e-mails

If you wish to stop receiving e-mails from GMF, you may withdraw your consent. Any withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing your personal data based on consent before its withdrawal.

You may withdraw your consent to be e-mailed or unsubscribe from receiving e-mails by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of any e-mail. Alternatively, please email us at: [email protected], or write to us at: The German Marshall Fund, 1744 R St NW, Washington, DC 20009. Alternatively, you can telephone 202-683-2650.

You have the right to ask for a copy of the information GMF has about you.

Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf

If you receive emails from us, we pass your information to our third party service provider, Concep. If you give GMF a donation, your information is passed through Netsuite’s SuiteCommerce. However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties beyond the German Marshall Fund network for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.

E-mail Tracking     

When you receive an e-mail from GMF, to include event invitations, newsletters, or other communication, we may collect information about you in the following ways if you open or click on links in that e-mail:

• Opening e-mails: If you open the e-mail, we log that activity on our database. 
• Clicking on link View as web page: If you click on the "view as a web page" link, a tracking code is passed in the link so that the web page will be personalized the same way the e-mail is personalized.
• Clicking on links to web pages: If you click on any web link in the e-mail, we pass a tracking code in the link to the web page which we use to log that activity.
• Unsubscribing: If you unsubscribe from receiving e-mails, we will log this information in our database and we will continue to store your personal data on a “suppression list" so as to record your preference and not send you anymore e-mails.
• RSVPs for Events: In our event invitations and confirmations, we provide buttons to allow you to accept, decline, and cancel registration for that event. Clicking on these buttons will pass a tracking code so we can record your choice in our database to help us manage the event.

No cookies are used for e-mail tracking. The above tracking does not apply to e-mails sent to you from personal GMF e-mail accounts.

To opt-out of e-mail tracking, you may unsubscribe from GMF e-mails or request to be deleted from GMF’s records by emailing us at: [email protected], or write to us at: The German Marshall Fund, 1744 R St NW, Washington, DC 20009. Alternatively, you can telephone 202-683-2650.

Retention Period

We retain the information we collect from you when we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so. We will also retain your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

When we no longer need to process your personal data for the purposes set out in this Policy, we will delete your personal data from our systems.

Right to Complain

If you are in the European Economic Area (EEA), you have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal data. For more information, please contact your local data protection authority. Contact details for data protection authorities in the European Union are available at http://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/structure/data-protection-authori....

Automated Decision-making

We do not make use of automated decision-making. As defined under current data protection laws, automated decisions are defined as decisions about individuals that are based solely on the automated (i.e., no human involvement) processing of information and that produce legal effects or that significantly affect the individuals involved.

Contact us

The controller of your personal data, under applicable data privacy legislation and in regard to the processing of personal information, is:

The German Marshall Fund of the United States
1744 R Street NW 
Washington, DC 20009 
United States 
Tel: 202-745-3950 
Fax: 202-265-1662 
Email: [email protected]

If you have questions about our privacy practices, you may contact us at the above address or by e-mailing [email protected].