Privacy policy
The Church Initiative, Inc. (“Church Initiative”), a nonprofit ministry, operates several websites including https://www.griefshare.org/. It is Church Initiative’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites.
Guiding principles
Your identity, unless you choose to reveal it to us, remains anonymous as a visitor to our websites. If you do reveal your identity to us, we do not rent or sell your information.
In the more detailed language below, you’ll see that we do attempt to identify which website pages our guests visit and how they use them. The sole use of this information is to help us make our websites more usable and relevant to people who access them and to understand how people utilize our sites.
In order to do this, we utilize industry-standard statistical software that helps us track usage patterns. This software and related processes operate in a way that respects your privacy and allows you to remain anonymous, unless you choose to reveal your identity to us. Below is a more detailed description of the safeguards we’ve instituted to guard your privacy while honoring your requests for service.
Website visitors
Church Initiative’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Church Initiative’s visitors use its websites.
As is true with most responsible website operators, Church Initiative collects non-personally identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. From time to time, Church Initiative may release non-personally identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.
Church Initiative also collects potentially personally identifying information like internet protocol (IP) addresses. This information is not used to identify its visitors and is not disclosed other than as described below.
Gathering of personally identifying information
Certain visitors to Church Initiative’s websites and social media pages choose to interact with Church Initiative in ways that require Church Initiative to gather personally identifying information. The amount and type of information that Church Initiative gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up for the daily emails to provide their first name, email address, and zip/postal code.
Those who engage in transactions with Church Initiative–by purchasing through our Leadership Store, for example–are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process transactions.
In each case, Church Initiative collects only the information needed to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Church Initiative. Information collection, use, and storage are always secured using widely accepted modern technology.
Church Initiative does not disclose personally identifying information other than as described below. Visitors may always refuse to supply personally identifying information, with the caveat that it may limit their ability to benefit from certain Church Initiative website-related functionality.
Aggregated statistics
Church Initiative may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, Church Initiative may monitor the most popular searches on its Find a Group search function.
Church Initiative may display statistical or behavioral information publicly or provide it to others. However, Church Initiative does not disclose personally identifying information other than as described below.
Protection of certain personally identifying information
Church Initiative discloses potentially personally identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors, and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Church Initiative’s behalf or to provide services available at Church Initiative’s websites, and (ii) have agreed not to disclose it to others.
Some of those employees, contractors, and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using Church Initiative’s websites, you consent to their access to such information as Church Initiative operatives.
Church Initiative will not rent or sell potentially personally identifying information to anyone.
Other than to its employees, contractors, and affiliated organizations, as described above, Church Initiative discloses potentially personally identifying information only when required to do so by law, or when Church Initiative believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Church Initiative, third parties or the public at large.
If you are a registered user of a Church Initiative website and have supplied your email address, Church Initiative may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Church Initiative and ministry curriculum tools or opportunities. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish the request in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users.
Church Initiative uses modern technology as part of its procedures to reasonably protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction of potentially personally identifying information.
Cookies
A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, which the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Church Initiative uses cookies to help serve visitors by identifying and tracking visitor usage of Church Initiative websites as well as their website access preferences and as a way to provide visitors with additional information that may be of interest. Church Initiative visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using Church Initiative’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Church Initiative’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
Privacy policy changes
Although most changes are likely to be minor, Church Initiative may change its privacy policy from time to time, and at Church Initiative’s sole discretion. Church Initiative encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its privacy policy. Your use of this site constitutes your acceptance of all site policies.