Privacy Policy
SARSEF: Southern Arizona Research Science and Engineering Foundation (“we,” “us,” “our,” or “SARSEF”) is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your data when you visit our website.
Who we are
Our website address is: https://sarsef.org.
Personal Information
We may collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you:
- Register for an account
- Submit a project or application
- Contact us through our contact forms
- Subscribe to our mailing list
- Participate in surveys or provide feedback
This information may include:
- Name and contact information (email address, phone number, mailing address)
- Demographic information (age, grade level, school name)
- Project information and research data
- Account credentials
We may collect payment information necessary to process your donation or fee related to a SARSEF program. This information may include:
- Payment instrument number
- Security Code
- Zip Code
- Billing Address
- Name
All the personal information you provide must be true, complete, and accurate. Please notify us of any changes to your information.
Automatically Collected Information
When you visit our website, we automatically collect certain information about your device, including:
- IP address
- Browser type
- Device Type and Operating system
- Pages visited and time spent on pages
- Referring website addresses
- Country, region, and city where you are visiting our site from
We employ privacy-first analytics through Fathom. Any web traffic data we collect does not include personally identifiable information.
How We Use Your Information
We use the collected information for the following purposes:
- To process and manage your registration and participation in SARSEF programs and events
- To communicate with you about your projects, applications, and SARSEF activities
- To send newsletters, updates, and promotional materials (with your consent)
- To improve our website functionality and user experience
- To analyze website usage and trends
- To protect against fraudulent or unauthorized activity
- To comply with legal obligations
Information Sharing and Disclosure
We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to third parties. We may share your information in the following circumstances:
- Service Providers: We use third-party service providers who assist us in operating our website, conducting our programs, or servicing you. You can review the privacy policies of our service providers on their website (also linked). Our service providers are:
- Educational Institutions & Program Partners: We may share information with schools, educational institutions, and program partners for program coordination purposes
- Legal Requirements: We may disclose information when required by law or in response to legal processes
- Password reset: If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email
Your privacy and AI
Artificial intelligence, or AI, may be used to support productivity, research, communications, and fundraising activities when aligned with SARSEF’s mission and values.
Confidential, proprietary, or sensitive data will not be uploaded to AI systems without CEO approval, including:
- Personally identifiable information (PII)
- Data from clients, donors, grantees, employees, partners, or contractors
- Financial information
- Passwords or security credentials
- Proprietary or non-public organizational information
- Contracts or agreements
When AI tools are used with organizational information, data is minimized and anonymized whenever possible.
AI-generated content may introduce risks related to bias, transparency, accuracy, and data privacy. Employees must review outputs for bias, verify facts using reliable sources, and clearly indicate when content has been AI-assisted when appropriate.
Comments
Visitors can leave a comment on a fair project at https://virtualfair.sarsef.org/. We collect the data shown in the comments form (name, email, and comment), and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. Your email address will not be published when leaving a comment.
All comments are held for approval before publishing. Approval is manually handled by the SARSEF team on a rolling basis while comments are open. Team members will be able to see the IP address, name (if provided), and email (if provided).
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
Embedded content from other websites
Pages on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these external sites.
Children’s Privacy
SARSEF serves students of various ages, including minors. We are committed to protecting children’s privacy and complying with applicable laws, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). We:
- Require parental or guardian consent before collecting personal information from children under 13
- Limit the collection of information from minors to what is necessary for participation
- Do not condition participation on providing more information than is reasonably necessary
- Provide parents with the ability to review and request deletion of their child’s information. (See: What rights you have over your data).
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Opting Out of Communications
You can unsubscribe from our marketing and promotional communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in emails we send, emailing us at director@sarsef.org, or calling us at 520-619-7836.
Policy Changes
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by the “Last Updated” date below. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy regularly.