Welcome to ministrElife of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS). MinistrElife is an online platform that will allow members to employ, extend, engage and equip and is the exclusive product of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies(ABHMS). This privacy policy discloses the privacy practices for the ABHMS, as it relates to the ministrElife online platform found at www.ministrElife.org. Your privacy is important to the us. Our goal is to provide you with a personalized online experience that provides you with the information, resources, and services that are most relevant and helpful to you. This Privacy Policy has been written to describe the conditions under which ministrElife.org is being made available to you. The Privacy Policy discusses, among other things, how data obtained during your visit to ministrElife.org may be collected and used. We strongly recommend that you read the Privacy Policy carefully. By using ministrElife.org, you agree to be bound by the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not accept the terms of the Privacy Policy, you will not be able to enter the ministrElife.org portal. This privacy policy applies solely to information collected by ministrElife.org, except where stated otherwise. The privacy policy will notify you of the following:

• Who the platform serves;
• What information ABHMS collects, uses and shares and with whom;
• How and data collected is stored/protected;
• How you as the user can control your information;
• What you should know when linking to other sites;
• How policy changes will be communicated.

Who the platform serves:

MinistrElife.org is a private, members-only site (for persons 18 years of age or older). It is intended for use by ministry professionals only. In order to use ministrElife, a user must complete a membership application. The information in the membership application is used to verify that you fit the characteristics of the members that ABHMS serves. Information you provide on ministrElife’s membership application is used to create a member profile. By agreeing to the terms of use on ministrElife, you are acknowledging that the information provided about yourself is factual. User will have the option to make contact information public. Should the user do so, that contact information is provided to other members on our secure site to encourage and facilitate collaboration, research, and the free exchange of information among the registered ministrElife.org members. We expressly prohibit members from using member contact information to send unsolicited commercial correspondence. Our members may be automatically added to the ministrElife.org mailing lists. Your personally identifiable information will not be given to any third party or advertisers. By providing us with your personally identifiable information, you expressly consent to our storing, and processing your information for these purposes.

What information ABHMS collects, uses and shares and with whom:

ABHMS is the sole owner of the information collected on the ministrElife site. We only have access to/collect information that you voluntarily give us. We do not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to anyone for any purpose. We also do not partner with or have special relationships with any ad server companies. We will use your information to respond to you, regarding the reason you provided it to us. We will not share your information with any third party outside of our organization, other than as necessary to fulfill your request, e.g., to ship an order or to respond to requests related to legal processes, investigations or audits. Unless you ask us not to, we may contact you via email in the future to tell you about services, or changes to this privacy policy.

Please remember that any information that you disclose in public areas of our site, such as forums and communities, become public information that others may collect, circulate, and use. Because we cannot and do not control the acts of others, you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose information about yourself or others in public forums such as these.

In some sections of ministrElife, anonymous users are allowed to post content and/or participate in community discussions to protect their privacy. In such a case, no user name can be associated with such a user.

If you do not want your personally identifiable information collected and used by ministrElife.org, please do not visit the site or apply for registration.

Personally identifiable information:

Personally identifiable information is information that is associated with your name or personal identity. MinistrElife.org may use personally identifiable information to better understand your needs and interests and to provide you with better service. On some of ministrElife.org pages, you may be able to request information, participate in online discussions, collaborate on documents, provide feedback, submit information into registries, register for events, apply for membership, or join working groups. The types of personally identifiable information you provide to us on these pages may include but not be limited to name, address, phone number, e-mail address, or passwords.

MinistrElife.org may use non-personal data collected that is aggregated for reporting about our site usability, performance, and effectiveness. It may be used to improve the experience, usability, and content of the site.

Credit card information may be collected to facilitate membership applications or if you purchase a product or service from our site. Such information will not be kept longer than necessary for providing the services requested. Credit card numbers are used only for processing payment and are not permanently stored or used for other purposes.

Cookies

Our site may use a feature of your browser to set a “cookie” on your computer. Cookies are small packets of information that a user’s computer stores on your computer. MinistrElife.org can then read the cookies whenever you visit our site. We may use cookies in a number of ways, such as to save your password so you don’t have to re-enter it each time you visit our site, to deliver content specific to your interests and to track the pages you’ve visited within the site/portal. These cookies allow us to use the information we collect to customize your experience so that your visit to our site is as relevant and as valuable to you as possible.

Most browser software can be set up to deal with cookies. You may modify your browser preference to provide you with choices relating to cookies. You have the choice to accept all cookies, to be notified when a cookie is set or to reject all cookies. If you choose to reject cookies, certain functions and conveniences of our site may not work properly, and you may be unable to use those ministrElife’s services that require registration in order to participate, or you will have to re-register each time you visit our site. Most browsers offer instructions on how to reset the browser to reject cookies in the “Help” section of the toolbar. We do not link non-personally identifiable information from cookies to personally identifiable information without your permission.

Surveys

From time to time ministrElife requests information via surveys. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary and you may choose whether or not to participate and therefore disclose the requested information. Survey information will be used for purposes of informing, monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of the site.

Opting Out

From time to time ministrElife.org may email or text you announcements, surveys or other information. If you prefer not to receive any or all of these communications, you may opt out of any future contact from us at any time by changing your communication notification in the Settings area of the platform, contacting us by phone at 1-888-792-2467 or by email at [email protected].

 

How any data collected is stored/protected:

We take precautions to protect your information. When you submit sensitive information via ministrElife.org, your information is protected both online and offline. Wherever we collect sensitive information, that information is encrypted and transmitted to us in a secure way. You can verify this by looking for a closed lock icon at the bottom of your web browser or looking for "https" at the beginning of the address of the web page. While we use encryption to protect sensitive information transmitted online, we also protect your information offline. Only employees of ABHMS who need the information to perform a specific job function are granted access to personally identifiable information. The computers/servers on which we store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment.

How you as a user can control your information:

MinistrElife.org is committed to keeping the personally identifiable information of our members accurate. We provide our members with online access to their own personal profiles, enabling them to update or delete information at any time. To protect our members’ privacy and security, we also may take reasonable steps to verify identity and password, before granting access to modify personal profile data. Certain areas of the site may be inaccessible to general users. Specific individuals may have greater access based on the role given to that individual by the site administrators.

What you should know when linking to other web sites:

MinistrElife.org may provide links to third-party web sites for the convenience of our users. If you access those links, you will leave our site. MinistrElife does not control these third-party websites and cannot represent that their policies and practices will be consistent with this Privacy Policy. For example, other web sites may collect or use personally identifiable information about you in a manner different from that described in this Privacy Policy. Therefore, you should use other web sites with caution, and you do so at your own risk. We encourage you to review the privacy policy of any web site before submitting personally identifiable information.
 

How policy changes will be communicated:

Whenever there are significant changes made to this privacy notice all current members will be notified.

If you have questions regarding this privacy policy or if you feel we are not abiding by this Privacy Policy you should contact us by phone at 1-888-792-2467 or by email at [email protected].