We want you to know how Death with Dignity National Center and Death with Dignity Political Fund (“Death with Dignity”) collects, uses, protects, or otherwise handles your information.*

Privacy Policy of Death with Dignity

Death with Dignity values, respects, and takes your privacy seriously. We champion your right to know what information we collect from you, how we use, store, and protect it, and how you can control both at all times. Whether you are a caller, a casual website visitor, an activist, or a donor, your privacy and your control over your information are important to us.

Personally Identifiable Information Collected at DeathwithDignity.org

When contacting Death with Dignity by phone, mail, or email, subscribing to our email updates, taking an advocacy action, making a donation, or using other features on our website, you may be asked to provide your name, email address, mailing address, credit card information, or other details to facilitate communication or transaction.

We will never ask for your social security number.

Donor Privacy

When you make a donation using our online donation form, your information is collected and stored in two ways:

  1. By our cloud-based Customer Relationship Management database Salesforce, where we will store the date you made your gift, the amount of your gift, your first and last (and middle, if applicable) names, address, and email address. Your credit card information is not stored in this system.
  2. By our credit card processor. None of the information collected this way is stored on our servers, computers, or other means accessible by us. We do not have access to nor do we store your credit card or bank account information.

When you make a donation using an EFT, check, stock, or other offline means communicated via mail or phone, we transfer or enter your information, including your first name, last name, mailing/billing address, phone number (if applicable), and gift information (date, amount) to Salesforce. Any information pertaining to credit cards, including number and expiration, is destroyed immediately after processing. Any paperwork associated with your donation, e.g. check, correspondence, or credit slip, is stored in a locked cabinet in a locked office for a period of 3 (three) years, after which period it is destroyed.

We keep our donors’ information private and confidential. We do not publish any donor information, including names, on the website or any other marketing/communications means, except when compelled to do so by campaign finance disclosure laws.

We do not sell donor information to third parties. From time to time, we may share your first name, last name, mailing address, and email address, but not gift information, with partner organizations for advocacy purposes. You may opt out of your Personally Identifiable Information being shared in this or any other way by checking a “Do Not Share” box on our remittance forms or by sending us a request (see Contacting Us below).

You may opt out of our fundraising or any other mail communications at any time by checking an opt-out checkbox included on all our remittance forms or by making a request (see Contacting Us below). You can also request your information be removed from our system in the same ways.

Online Contact Forms

When you contact Death with Dignity using the online form at our Contact Us page or other pages on the website, we will retain your name, email address, and zip code in the recipient email account for a response and future reference.

In addition, if you check the optional subscription box on the contact form (“Yes, sign me up for email updates!” or similar text), your name, ZIP code, and email address as you entered them will be added to our email list, managed through the cloud-based tool Action Network, which uses Secure Socket Layer (“SSL”) technology to protect your privacy.

Online Forms

When you subscribe to our email updates or add your information to our email list using one of several forms on our website, the information you provide will be added to our email list maintained at Action Network, an online advocacy platform. Required fields on signup/subscription and other forms include first name, last name, email address, and ZIP code; forms used for other purposes, e.g. surveys or volunteering inquiries, may include additional fields required to process and manage the action, such as your phone number, mailing address, and custom fields.

Additionally, if you opt in to receive mobile messages and enter your mobile phone number, the instance and date of your opt-in and your mobile phone number will be added and managed in Action Network the same way.

You may opt out of our electronic (email) communications at any time using a link provided in every email or by emailing us your opt-out request; similarly, you may opt out of our mobile messages by replying to the message with the word “STOP”.

Similarly, when you take an advocacy action on our website, the information you enter will be automatically added to our Action Network database. Required information includes your first name, last name, email address, and ZIP code; additional fields, depending on the action, may include your phone number, mailing address, and custom fields.

Phone Calls

Unless you provide us your phone number explicitly, in a voicemail message or by entering it on a paper or online form, or are making a donation over the phone, we do not retain or store your phone contact information.

Mail

Donor information we collect via mail is outlined in the Donor Privacy section above.

Other information you provide via mail is processed and used in facilitating the requested transaction or service, e.g. mailing you informational/educational materials or forwarding your correspondence to a third party. We store all mail correspondence we receive for 2 (two) years, after which period the correspondence is destroyed.

Age Restrictions

Death with Dignity does not knowingly or purposefully collect information from minors under the age of 18 (eighteen), including and especially those less than 13 (thirteen) years of age. If you are under 18, do not submit any information to Death with Dignity.

If you are a parent, legal guardian, or other concerned person and become aware that we have collected information from a minor, including and especially one under 13 years of age, please contact us immediately and we will take steps to delete and remove any such information.

How we Protect Your Information

We are committed to protecting the security of your personal information and to honoring your choices for its intended use. To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we strive to maintain physical, electronic, and administrative safeguards and implement a variety of security measures.

SSL Certificates

All Personally Identifiable information you supply to us through our website is encrypted using SSL (Secure Socket Layers), whether the SSL certificate is implemented through our domain host or third-party servers. Your personal information is contained behind secured networks and is only accessible by a limited number of persons who have special access rights to such systems and are required to keep the information confidential.

Our website’s Content Management System, WordPress, uses a number of security products and measures to safeguard it from malicious attacks, viruses, malware, and spam. The website is protected with SSL, the active presence of which you may verify by checking there is a green lock icon to the left of the website URL in your browser’s address bar.

All information collected in our email inboxes is stored on the servers of our email host and protected through Google’s SSL certificate.

All information collected in Salesforce is stored on Salesforce servers, and we access it through an SSL-protected online interface using unique usernames, complex passwords, and private security tokens.

All information collected in Action Network is stored on Action Network servers, and we access it through an SSL-protected online interface using unique usernames and complex passwords.

PCI Compliance

We process your financial transactions securely using the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (“PCI DSS”), the credit card industry’s most stringent security standard, with which we are fully compliant.

Our security measures to protect your credit card information include:

  • physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards;
  • sophisticated security monitoring tools;
  • documented security policies;
  • use of strong encryption (SSL) for transmissions of information to and from our credit card processor;
  • restricted access of Personally Identifiable Information; and
  • periodic security audits.

All credit card transactions are processed through a gateway provider and are not stored or processed on our servers.

Cookies

Cookies are small files that our website transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your web browser. A cookie cannot be read by any website other than the one that set it up. You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies. You can do this through your browser settings. Since every browser is a little different, look at your browser’s Help Menu to learn the correct way to modify your cookies.

The online advocacy toolkit Action Network may place a cookie on your computer to later recognize you.

Death with Dignity may use cookies to recognize your browser and capture and remember aggregate, i.e. non-personalized, data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can improve site experience and tools in the future. We may also use trusted third-party services that track this information on our behalf.

External Links

Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include links to external websites in the text on this website. These third-party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our website and welcome any feedback about these sites.

Fair Information Practices

We adhere to Fair Information Practices Principles to comply with U.S. privacy laws and protect your personal information.

In order to be in line with Fair Information Practices we will take the following responsive action, should a data breach occur:

  • We will notify you via email within 1 business day.
  • We will notify you via in-site notification within 1 business day.
European Union Residents

Our geographic scope is the United States of America. We have done our best to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (“GDPR”), for whose purposes Death with Dignity collects, stores, controls, processes, and protects the personal data you have provided us in ways outlined throughout this Privacy Policy.

You may opt out of our communications at any time either using links or other means provided therein or emailing us. Similarly, you may revoke any permissions you previously gave us to handle your data in ways outlined in this Policy.

You may request a review of the data we have about you at any time by emailing us. Following such a review or any other request by you, we will promptly remove and delete any Personally Identifiable Information we have from our systems; in case of information about your charitable contribution(s), we will retain the donation amount and date.

We will not share your data with any third parties.

We will notify you within 1 business day and the relevant European Union authorities within 72 hours of any data breach that may occur in which your data is affected.

Contacting Us

If you have any questions regarding this privacy policy, you may contact us by

  • Mail: Death with Dignity, PO Box 2009. Portland, OR 97208
  • Phone: 503.228.4415
  • Email

* Personally Identifiable Information, as described in U.S. privacy law and information security, is information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context.

Last update: December 8, 2021