Privacy policy

Acceptance of the Privacy Policy

Welcome to the California School Garden Coalition website https://caschoolgardens.org (the "Website"), which is operated and maintained by Growing Together Bay Area Inc ("we," "us," or "our").

We are pleased to have you as a member of the community and provide you with access to our Website, as well as access to our newsletter, content, and any other current or future offerings (collectively, "Services"). We know you care about how your personal information is used and shared, and we take your privacy seriously. This Privacy Policy is incorporated by reference into our Terms of Use.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect and use user information, including how we treat personally identifiable information. It does not apply to websites or practices of companies that we do not own or control.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully before accessing the Website. By using the Website, you accept and agree to be bound by and abide by this Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. If you do not agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, promptly leave the Website. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at hello@caschoolgardens.org.

Data Collection

Information you provide us

When you sign up for our newsletter, we will ask you for certain personal information, including your name and email address, so we can contact you. We may also collect personally identifiable information from you with your consent when you submit the join form or make a donation through the giving form on the Donate page.

When organizations join the coalition, we may collect certain information about the organization, such as its legal name, logo, contact information, and other details provided for coalition purposes.

This information is collected for the purpose of identifying and recognizing coalition members, displaying member names and logos on the coalition website and related materials, administering coalition activities and communications, and promoting the mission and work of the coalition.

Logos and trademarks of coalition members remain the intellectual property of their respective owners. We use such logos and names with permission, solely for coalition-related purposes. If a coalition member withdraws or requests removal of its information, we will take reasonable steps to remove the member's identifying information from public-facing materials.

When an organization joins the coalition through the form on the Join page, we collect what the form asks for: the organization's name, website, county and a short description, a logo, and the name and email address of the person submitting. We use them to list the organization on this site and in coalition materials and to contact the submitter about the listing. The submitter also gets our newsletter. The listings live in the coalition's Airtable base. A logo you upload is stored briefly on Vercel's file service, at an unlisted address, until Airtable copies it into the listing. We delete that copy within two days.

Information collected automatically

This site does not set cookies of its own. A cookie is an identifier that a browser stores on the user's computer. The Donate page loads Givebutter's giving form and goal bar, which run under Givebutter's own privacy policy and may set their own cookies.

You can set your web browser software to disable cookies. To do so, please refer to the help section of your specific browser. If you disable cookies, you can still use the whole Website, but Givebutter's giving form on the Donate page may not work properly.

We collect data from every visitor to the Website to monitor traffic and fix bugs. This information includes web requests, the data sent in response to such requests, the Internet Protocol address, the browser type, the browser language, and a timestamp for the request.

What choices do I have? You can ask to see, change, or remove the information you have given us, including an organization's listing. Write to us at hello@caschoolgardens.org, and we will honor your request.

Data Use

Personal Information: We use your personal information to communicate with you and/or to provide you with our Services.

Usage Information: We may use data to enable us to determine the frequency of users to our Website and its pages so that we can improve and customize our Website and Services.

Data Sharing

Personal Information: We will not sell your personal information to third-party organizations for any reason.

Partners: We will sometimes share personal information with other organizations with whom we collaborate to develop and distribute our products and services. When your personal information is submitted to our partners, they will have no rights to share it with any third parties, and we require them to exercise reasonable care to protect your personal information.

Other required sharing: We do not otherwise share personal information you have provided to us without your consent unless we have a good faith belief that doing so:

• is appropriate to carry out your request;
• is necessary to enforce our Terms of Use;
• is necessary to detect, prevent, or address fraud, security, or technical issues;
• is necessary to otherwise protect our property, legal rights, or that of others; or
• is required by law, is necessary to comply with the law or legal process, or is pertinent to judicial or governmental investigations or proceedings.

Usage Information: Aggregated, anonymized data is periodically transmitted to external services, such as Vercel Web Analytics (traffic analysis, without cookies) and Vercel (website hosting and data storage), to help us improve the Website and service. We are not responsible for the privacy policies and/or practices of these third-party services, and you are responsible for reading and understanding these third parties' privacy policies.

Third parties may extract data such as those listed below.

• Vercel Web Analytics: anonymous (page views, country, browser type and referring site), without cookies
• Vercel: hosts the Website and stores related data, including standard server logs kept for a short period
• Vercel's file service: briefly stores a logo uploaded through the join form
• Airtable: stores organization listings and newsletter signups
• Givebutter: runs the giving form and goal bar on the Donate page and stores related data
• Google Drive: hosts some downloadable Website resources and stores related data
• YouTube: hosts some audio/video Website resources and stores related data

Hyperlinks: Information available on this Website may include links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies and/or practices of the websites you visit through these links, and you are responsible for reading and understanding these third parties' privacy policies.

Agents: We employ and contract with people and other entities that perform specific tasks on our behalf and who are under our control (our "Agents"). We may need to share personal information with our Agents so that we can provide services to you. Unless we tell you differently, our Agents do not have any right to use personal information or other information we share with them beyond what is necessary to perform their functions. You hereby consent to our sharing of personal information with our Agents.

Business Transfers: If our organization or some or all of its assets are acquired by or otherwise transferred to another company, or if we go out of business, or if we change our tax status, personal information provided by the user and information concerning the user's use of the Website may be transferred to or acquired by a third party.

Data Security

We intend to protect against unauthorized access to data about you that we store, including personal information. You can protect against unauthorized access to your personal information by limiting access to your computer and browser and closing your browser after your session. We are not liable for unauthorized disclosures of personal information due to no fault of our own, including errors in transmission, acts we did not authorize, and/or acts by third parties. While we have safety measures in place, be mindful that security over the Internet cannot be 100% guaranteed. Any personal information you provide is at your own risk.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Disclosure

We may use AI-based tools to sort and analyze personal information (such as names and email addresses) to improve our Services, facilitate internal workflows, or provide relevant content. All such processing is conducted in accordance with applicable privacy laws, and we maintain appropriate human oversight. These tools do not make final automated decisions that affect users without review.

Children's Policy

We do not solicit, intend to collect, or knowingly collect any personal information from children under the age of 13 through our Website. If we become aware that we collected personal information from a child under the age of 13, we will promptly delete the information from our records (subject to applicable law). If you believe a child under the age of 13 has provided us with personal information, please notify us at hello@caschoolgardens.org.

General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR")

Although our organization is based in the United States and our services are not specifically targeted to individuals in the European Union ("EU"), we recognize that EU residents may occasionally access our website or interact with us.

If you are an individual located in the EU, you may have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict the processing of your personal information, as well as the right to object to certain processing and to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

To the extent applicable, we will make reasonable efforts to accommodate valid requests from EU residents regarding their personal information. You may contact us at hello@caschoolgardens.org to make such a request or for more information.

Our lawful basis for processing any personal data from EU residents, if and when collected, will typically be based on your consent or our legitimate interests in operating the Website and communicating with users.

Communications

We may contact you by email or other means. For example, we may communicate with you about your use of the Website. We deliberately keep unsolicited communications with users to a minimum. In compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act, any promotional email you receive from us will include an unsubscribe link that will allow you to opt out of receiving future promotional emails.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

We may revise this Privacy Policy from time to time. Use of information we collect is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is collected. You are bound by any changes to the Privacy Policy when you use the Website after such changes have been first posted, and it is your responsibility to check this Privacy Policy periodically for changes. If we make any material changes to this Privacy Policy, the most recent revision date will be indicated above and below.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at hello@caschoolgardens.org.

Last revised October 2026.