Respecting your privacy

This website is owned and operated by the International Rescue Committee (IRC). We recognize that visitors to our site may be concerned about the information they provide to us, online or otherwise, and how we treat that information. This Privacy Policy addresses those concerns.

The IRC respects the privacy of all our supporters, whether donors, members of our mailing lists, or visitors to our website. Should you have questions regarding our privacy policy, you may contact us at donorservices@rescue.org.

Information collected and processed by the IRC

On our website we do not collect personally identifiable information from individuals unless they provide it to us voluntarily and knowingly. This means we do not require you to register or provide information to us in order to view our site. In all cases, we collect personal information about you in accordance with the principles outlined in this Policy and applicable law.

Information About You: The IRC only gathers personally identifiable information, such as names, addresses, zip/postal codes, email addresses, payment information etc., when voluntarily submitted by a visitor. For example, personally identifiable information may be collected in order to respond to a stated desire to apply for a position, volunteer time to the IRC, make a donation or sign up to be part of an IRC mailing list. 

We also collect information about you when you subscribe to receive text messages from us or if you send text messages to us. Data obtained about you in connection with these SMS services may include your mobile phone number, your carrier’s name and the date, time and content of your messages. We may use this information to contact you and provide the services you request from us. Except for our service providers who assist us in sending SMS messages, we do not share your text message consents with other parties. Alerts sent via SMS may not be delivered if the mobile phone is not in range of a transmission site, or if sufficient network capacity is not available at a particular time. Even within a coverage area, factors beyond the control of the wireless operator may interfere with message delivery, including the customer’s equipment, terrain, proximity to buildings, foliage, and weather. Wireless operators do not guarantee message delivery and will not be held liable for delayed or undelivered messages. Normal text and data rates may apply.

Internet or Other Electronic Network Activity Information: As with most other Internet sites, our web server automatically recognizes certain information about your device when you visit our website. This information includes your browser type and operating system; web pages on our website that you view; links you click; your device’s IP address; the length of time you visit our website; and the referring URL, or the webpage that led you to our website. We use the information we automatically collect to help diagnose problems with our server, to improve the content of our website, and for our online marketing efforts.

We may share or sell your information, including personal information, as follows:

Affiliates. We may disclose the information we collect from you to our affiliates or subsidiaries; however, if we do so, their use and disclosure of your personally identifiable information will be subject to this Policy.

Service Providers. We may disclose the information we collect from you to vendors, service providers, contractors or agents who perform functions on our behalf, such as hosting our website and processing payments. The IRC requires that all service providers hold personal information in strict confidence.

Non-affiliated Charities and Not-for-Profit Organizations. We may disclose certain information that we collect with other not-for-profit and charitable organizations for their own fundraising purposes. You may opt-out of such sharing as described in the Opt-Out Policy section below.

We may also share information in the following circumstances:

Business Transfers. If we are or may be acquired by or merged with another organization, including a non-profit or a for-profit entity, if substantially all of our assets are transferred to another organization, or as part of a bankruptcy proceeding, we may transfer the information we have collected about you to the other organization.

In Response to Legal Process. We may disclose the information we collect from you in order to comply with the law, a judicial proceeding, court order, or other legal process, such as in response to a court order or a subpoena.

To Protect Us and Others. We may disclose the information we collect from you where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, violations of our Terms and Conditions or this Policy, or as evidence in litigation in which we is involved.

Aggregate and De-Identified Information. We may share aggregate, anonymous, or de-identified information with other entities for marketing, advertising, research or similar purposes.

Storing and Protecting Your Personal Information 

We store personal information about you on computer systems operated by us or our service providers. We keep various records that contain personal information in accordance with applicable state and federal regulations, or pursuant to contractual obligations. In general, we aim to keep personal information only for as long as necessary and only for the reason(s) we collected it. It may be necessary to keep personal information longer than we otherwise would for legal or regulatory reasons, including litigation. To support us in managing how long we hold personal information and our record management, we maintain a data retention policy which includes clear guidelines on retention and deletion. 

The same personal information about you may be included in more than one record and used for more than one purpose, each of which may be subject to different retention periods based on the factors listed above.

We have implemented measures designed to protect against accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure of your personal information. 

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we try to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to our site. 

The IRC’s online donation site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of information under our control.  We have implemented measures designed to protect against the collection and transmission of sensitive user information, including credit card information, by using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption technology. This method reflects industry standard security protocol. 

Credit card numbers are not stored on any IRC servers. In IRC’s software application, credit card numbers are replaced with reference tokens that are used to process future transactions (e.g. for recurring gift pledges). IRC’s staff cannot access your credit card information at any time.

Additional Information for Residents of Colorado

If you are a resident of Colorado, you have various rights with respect to your personal information, the information we have about you, and the context in which it was obtained. We may choose to extend these rights to you even if we are not required to do so. 

To the extent we have collected information about you, and subject to certain limitations, these rights include:

We do not discriminate against you if you choose to exercise any of these rights.

These rights do not apply to pseudonymous data if the information necessary to identify the consumer is kept separately and is subject to controls that prevent access to the information. Pseudonymous data is personal data that can no longer be attributed to a specific individual without the use of additional information, if the additional information is kept separately and is subject measures to ensure that personal data is not attributed to the specific individual.

Data solely retained for data backup or archive purposes is principally excluded from these rights until it is restored to an active system or next accessed or used for a sale, disclosure, or commercial purpose.

Please note that under applicable privacy law, we are only obligated to respond to personal information requests from the same consumer up to two times in a 12-month period. In addition, under applicable privacy law, and for the protection of your personal information, we may be limited in what personal information we can disclose.

We will maintain all of your Consumer Data Rights requests for at least 2 years. This information will not be used for any other purpose except to review compliance processes; it will not be shared except as necessary to comply with a legal obligation. 

You may also be entitled to request in writing a list of the types of personal information that we have disclosed to a third party for their direct marketing purposes during the preceding year and to whom that information was disclosed.

Submitting Privacy Requests

You can exercise your privacy rights by submitting requests to us to exercise those rights and by taking other steps that will limit how information about you is collected, used, and shared.

We must verify your identity before fulfilling your personal information request. To verify your identity, we will collect information from you, including, to the extent applicable, your name, date of birth, contact information, your account information, or other personal identifying information. We will match this information against information we have previously collected about you or against information available from consumer reports to verify your identity and to respond to your request. Information collected for purposes of verifying your request will only be used for verification and to respond to your personal information request.

If you maintain an account with us, we may require you to log in to that account as part of submitting your request. If we are unable to verify your identity as part of your request, we will not be able to satisfy your request. We are not obligated to collect additional information in order to enable you to verify your identity. For deletion requests, you will be required to submit a verifiable request for deletion and then confirm separately that you want personal information about you deleted.

If you would like to appoint an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf, we require you to verify your identity with us directly before we provide any requested information to your approved agent. Alternatively, your authorized agent may provide evidence of having power of attorney or acting as a conservator for you. Note that we may require you to verify your identity with us directly before we provide any requested information to your authorized agent unless your authorized agent has power of attorney or acts as a conservator, in which case we will not contact you directly. We may also request that any authorized agents verify their identity and may reach out to you directly to confirm that you have provided the agent with your permission to submit the request on your behalf. There may be circumstances where we will not be able to honor your request. For example, if you request deletion, we may need to retain certain personal information to comply with our legal obligations or other permitted purposes. We will notify you if we are unable to honor your request. You have the right to appeal our decision with regard to your request. You have the right to contact the Attorney General if you have concerns about the result of the appeal.

Opt-out policy: If you supply us with your postal address, email address or phone number, you may receive periodic communications from us with information on our programs and services. If you do not want to receive postal mail, email or phone calls from us in the future, or if you would like us to no longer share your information with other not-for-profit and charitable organizations for their own purposes, please let us know by sending your request via email to donorservices@rescue.org.

Exceptions to opt-out policy: The IRC may disclose personal information if compelled by law or a regulatory authority.  In addition, we may need to disclose personal information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury or interfering (either intentionally or unintentionally) with the IRC’s rights or property, IRC’s supporters, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities.

How we use "cookies"

Visitors should be aware that non-personal information and data may be automatically collected by the IRC’s website through the use of "cookies."  Cookies are small text files that a website can use to recognize repeat visitors, facilitate visitors’ ongoing access to and use of the site, and allow a site to track usage behavior and compile aggregate data that will facilitate content improvements.

Cookies are not programs that come onto a visitor’s system and damage files. Generally, cookies work by assigning to the visitor a unique number that has no meaning outside the assigning site. If a visitor does not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows the visitor to deny or accept the cookie feature. For more information about how to disable cookies, refer to the “help” or “customer support” section of your specific browser application.

We also use clear GIFs, which are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on your device, clear GIFs are embedded invisibly on web pages. We may use clear GIFs (a.k.a. web beacons, web bugs or pixel tags), in connection with our site to, among other things, track the activities of site visitors, help us manage content, and compile statistics about website usage. We and our service providers also use clear GIFs in HTML emails to our customers, to help us track email response rates, identify when our emails are viewed, and track whether our emails are forwarded.

The IRC uses cookie and other online tracking technology to improve visitors’ online experience and facilitate their visit within our site, to better understand how visitors use our website, and to assist us with our online marketing efforts.

We use automated devices and applications, such as Google Analytics, to evaluate usage of our site. We use these tools to help us improve the performance of our site and our user’s experience on our site. These entities may use cookies and other tracking technologies, such as web beacons or local storage objects (LSOs), to perform their services. To learn more about Google’s privacy practices, please review the Google Privacy Policy at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy. You can also download the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on to prevent your data from being used by Google Analytics at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

We use network advertisers to serve online advertisements on non-affiliated websites or other media (e.g., social networking platforms). This enables us and these network advertisers to target advertisements to you for products, services, and organizations in which you might be interested. Ad network providers, advertisers, sponsors and/or traffic measurement services may use cookies, JavaScript, web beacons (including clear GIFs), Flash LSOs and other tracking technologies to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content to you. These cookies and other technologies are governed by each entity's specific privacy policy, not this one. We may provide these advertisers with information, including personal information, about you.

As noted above, we disclose certain information (such as your email address) to Facebook Custom Audiences (for more information on Facebook Custom Audience go here or to opt-out, go to the Facebook ad preferences page) and Google (to opt-out of Google Analytics Audiences and other Google advertising, go here)—so that we can better target ads and content to you and others with similar interests on third parties’ websites or media (“Custom Audiences”). We may also work with other ad networks and marketing platforms that enable us and other participants to target ads to Custom Audiences submitted by us and others. You may also control how Facebook and other third parties display certain ads to you, as explained further in their respective privacy policies or by using the opt-outs described below.

Users may opt out of many ad networks. For example, you may go to the Digital Advertising Alliance ("DAA") Consumer Choice Page for information about opting out of interest-based advertising and their choices regarding having information used by DAA companies. You may also go to the Network Advertising Initiative ("NAI") Consumer Opt-Out Page for information about opting out of interest-based advertising and their choices regarding having information used by NAI members.

Opting out from one or more companies listed on the DAA Consumer Choice Page or the NAI Consumer Opt-Out Page will opt you out from those companies' delivery of interest-based content or ads to you, but it does not mean you will no longer receive any advertising through our site, services, or on other websites. You may continue to receive advertisements, for example, based on the particular website that you are viewing (i.e., contextually based ads). Also, if your browsers are configured to reject cookies when you opt out on the DAA or NAI websites, your opt-out may not be effective. Additional information is available on the DAA's website at www.aboutads.info or the NAI's website at www.networkadvertising.org.

Do-Not-Track. Currently, our systems do not recognize browser “do-not-track” requests.

International Personal Information

The General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) is a European Union regulation concerning the use and processing of personal information of individuals located in the European Union. GDPR is effective as of May 25, 2018. We are committed to processing your information in compliance with the GDPR, as applicable.

We will use reasonable efforts to securely process all personal information in line with the rights specified under the GDPR, in particular those related to the following requests:

We will hold your information and use it as described in this Privacy Policy. We consider that the IRC has a legitimate interest in collecting and processing your information. The IRC responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future and pursuing these aims is not in conflict with your rights. This provides our lawful basis to use your personal information, within the limitations set forth herein.

This website is published in the United States and is subject to laws of the United States. Specifically, the laws of the State of New York shall govern this Privacy Policy regardless of your location. You hereby expressly consent to exclusive jurisdiction and venue in the federal and state courts located in New York, New York, for all matters or disputes arising out of or relating to this Privacy Policy or your access or use of the website. 

If you are located in a country outside the United States and voluntarily submit personal information to us, you thereby consent to the general use of such information as provided in this Privacy Policy and to the transfer of that information to, and/or storage of that information in, the United States. The IRC shall not be liable under any circumstances for damages resulting from use of information collected from visitors to this website.  We note that you are under no obligation to disclose any personal information to the IRC if you do not want to.

Links to third-party sites

In order to provide certain services and materials, our website may allow you to “click” over to other websites. This Privacy Policy only applies to Rescue.org.  This Privacy Policy does not apply to any third-party sites. The IRC is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of such other websites, even if our name and logo appear on the screen.  We recommend that you review the privacy policies on third-party sites before you use any services or programs they offer.

Children’s privacy

The IRC does not knowingly ask children ages 13 and under for any information. Visitors 13 and under should ask their parent or legal guardian for assistance when using Rescue.org and should not submit any personally identifiable information to the IRC.

If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under the age of 13, we will promptly delete the information. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child, please contact us via the methods listed below in the “Contact Us” section at the bottom of this Privacy Policy.

Changes to Privacy Policy

The IRC may revise this Privacy Policy from time to time without advance notice. Accordingly, we recommend that you check for updates to this Privacy Policy on an ongoing basis. Changes were last made to this Privacy Policy on July 15, 2024.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact:

International Rescue Committee
122 East 42nd Street
New York, New York 10168-1289
Phone: +1 855 9RESCUE (973-7283)
Email: donorservices@rescue.org

By using the IRC’s website, you signify your agreement to this Privacy Policy. Further, your continued use of our website following the posting of changes to this Privacy Policy will mean you accept those changes.

By subscribing to the International Rescue Committee mobile alerts or text messages, the user consents to receive automated and non-automated texts to help those affected by humanitarian crises. Message & data rates may apply. Recurring messages will vary. If you have any questions, text HELP to the number you received a text message from or contact us at donorservices@rescue.org. To stop receiving messages reply STOP.

However, you are under no obligation to disclose any personal information to the IRC if you do not want to. If you are not comfortable with IRC’s uses of your personal information, you may always choose to opt out or decide not to use those website services or features that require your personal information.

International Rescue Committee does not charge you a fee to receive text messages from us. Message and data rates may apply- please check with your mobile service plan or your mobile services provider for how you may be billed for text messages. Consent to receive text messages is not a requirement to purchase goods or services from IRC.

We will not be liable for any delays in the receipt of any SMS message as delivery is subject to effective transmission from your network operator. Wireless operators do not guarantee message delivery and will not be held liable for delayed or undelivered messages.