We have updated our Privacy Notice, effective from 1/30/2025, to:
- clarify how we collect, use, disclose, and otherwise process personal information in connection with our services.
If you have any questions about these changes, do not hesitate to contact us at akchumanefund@akc.org
Prior versions of this Privacy Notice are available here.
Last Updated: 1/30/2025
Welcome! We are AKC Humane Fund, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to giving back to dogs on a broad and sustainable scale through education, grant making and outreach promoting responsible pet ownership. This Privacy Notice explains how AKC Humane Fund (“AKC Humane Fund”, “we”, “us” or “our”) collects, uses, discloses, and otherwise processes personal information (as defined below) in connection with our websites (the “Sites”) and other websites we own and operate that link to this Privacy Notice, and the related content, platform, services, products, and other functionality offered on or through our online services (collectively, the “Services”). It does not address our privacy practices relating to AKC Humane Fund job applicants, employees and other personnel.
When we use the term “personal information” in this Privacy Notice, we mean information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, to an individual. It does not include aggregated or deidentified information that is maintained in a form that is not reasonably capable of being associated with or linked to an individual.
We collect personal information in a variety of ways. For example, we may link or combine your activities and information collected from you on our Services with information we receive from third parties. We may also collect information automatically through tracking technologies (defined below). This allows us to provide you with a personalized experience regardless of how you interact with us.
More specifically, we may collect the following personal information in connection with our Services:
- Contact Information, including first and last name, email address, mailing address, employer, job title, company name, phone number and communication preferences. We use this information primarily to fulfill your request or transaction, to communicate with you directly, and to send you marketing communications in accordance with your preferences.
- Inquiry and Communications Information, including information provided in custom messages sent through the forms, to one of our email addresses, or via phone. This also includes information provided in order to subscribe to any of our newsletters (such as email address), or contact information provided on our Services. You can stop receiving promotional email communications from us by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link provided in such communications.
- Grant and Scholarship Information, including first and last name, job title, legal structure, employee identification number (EIN), contact name and title, mailing address, phone number, email address, employer or organization information, previous grant or scholarship information, and any other information you provide to us. Please note we utilize a third-party provider to process payments on our behalf and do not accept payment directly through our Services.
- Donation Information, including first and last name, display name, donor recognition information, email address, mailing address, phone number, club affiliation, AKC membership information, donation type, donation amount, recurring gift amount, preferences, financial and/or payment information, payment history, and any other information you choose to provide. Please note we utilize a third-party provider to process payments on our behalf and do not accept payment directly through our Services.
- Log Data, including IP address, browser ID, date/time of visit, and pages visited which are collected automatically.
- Analytics Data, including automatically recorded electronic paths taken to our Sites, through our Sites and when exiting our Sites, as well as usage and activity on our Sites.
- Location Data, including general geographic location based on the Log Data automatically collected on our Sites.
- Third Party Data. We may also obtain personal information relating to the users of our Services through other individuals and our affiliates, partners, social media providers and our service providers.
We also may collect this information when you make a contribution through a third party or our partners, at an event, in person, over the phone or by mail.
As is true of most digital platforms, we and our third-party providers may also use (i) cookies or small data files that are stored on an individual’s computer and (ii) other, related technologies, such as web beacons, pixels, embedded scripts, location-identifying technologies and logging technologies (collectively, “cookies”) to automatically collect this personal information.
All of the information collected automatically through these tools allows us to improve your customer experience. For example, we may use this information to enhance and personalize your user experience, to monitor and improve our products and services, to offer communications features such as live and automated chat, and to improve the effectiveness of our products, services, offers, advertising, communications and customer service. We may also use this information to: (a) remember information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the Sites; (b) provide custom, personalized content and information, including targeted content and advertising; (c) identify you across multiple devices; (d) provide and monitor the effectiveness of the Services; (e) monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, usage, and demographic patterns on our Sites; (f) diagnose or fix technology problems; and (g) otherwise to plan for and enhance our products and services.
To manage cookies, you may change their browser settings to: (i) notify you when they receive a cookie, so you can choose whether or not to accept it; (ii) disable existing cookies; or (iii) automatically reject cookies. Please note that doing so may negatively impact your experience using our Services, as some features and offerings may not work properly or at all. Depending on your device and operating system, you may not be able to delete or block all cookies. In addition, if you want to reject cookies across all browsers and devices, you will need to do so on each browser on each device you actively use. You may also set your email options to prevent the automatic downloading of images that may contain technologies that would allow us to know whether you have accessed our email and performed certain functions with it.
We use personal information we collect to:
- Communicate with donors, sponsors and other third parties, and to respond to their inquiries;
- Process donations and payments;
- Operate, maintain, provide, evaluate, and improve the features, functionality and experience of our Services;
- Process grant information and allocate grants, scholarships and donations;
- Determine qualifications and eligibility for donations, grants and scholarships;
- Provide our educational resources, including the AKC Library and Archives;
- Communicate with individuals;
- Market to individuals;
- Manage our organization, enforce and carry out our contracts and agreements, and comply with legal obligations;
- enforce our Terms of Use, to resolve disputes, to carry out our obligations and enforce our rights, and to protect our business interests and the interests and rights of third parties;
- For any other lawful purpose or other purpose that you consent to; and
- Perform functions as otherwise described at the time of collection.
Where you choose to contact us, we may need additional information to fulfill the request or respond to inquiries. We may provide you with additional privacy-related information where the scope of the inquiry/request and/or personal information we require fall outside the scope of this Privacy Notice. In that case, the additional privacy notice will govern how we may process the information provided at that time.
We disclose personal information in the following ways:
- Affiliates: We may share personal information with other companies owned or controlled by AKC Humane Fund, and other companies owned by or under common ownership as AKC Humane Fund, which also includes, but is not limited to, American Kennel Club, Inc. and our subsidiaries (e., any organization we own or control) or any AKC Humane Fund affiliate, particularly when we collaborate in providing the Services.
- Service Providers: We engage other third-party service providers that perform business or operational services for us or on our behalf, such as website hosting, infrastructure provisioning, IT services, analytics services, marketing services, payment processing services and administrative services.
- Social Media: When you interact with our Services through various social media networks, such as when you “Like” us on Facebook or follow us or share our content on Facebook or other social networks, we may receive some information about you that you permit the social network to share with third parties. The data we receive is dependent upon your privacy settings with the social network, and may include your profile information, profile picture, username, and any other information you permit the social network to share with third parties. You should always review and, if necessary, adjust your privacy settings on third-party websites and social media networks and services before sharing information and/or linking or connecting them to other services. We use this information to operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of the Services, as well as to communicate directly with you, such as to send you email messages about products and services that may be of interest to you.
- Business Relationships: We enter into certain select partnerships with shelters, recues, scholarships, sponsors and other organizations that provide products or services that we believe may be of interest to users of the Services. We will share personal information, or any information collected through the Services with those organizations in order to facilitate donations, grants, and scholarships, and to help them send you information that we believe will be of interest to you.
- Your Employer / Organization: If you interact with our Services through your employer or organization, we may disclose your information to your employer or organization, including another representative of your employer or organization.
- Business Transaction or Reorganization: We may take part in or be involved with a corporate business transaction, such as a merger, acquisition, joint venture, or financing or sale of company assets. We may disclose personal information to a third party during negotiation of, in connection with or as an asset in such a corporate business transaction. Personal information may also be disclosed in the event of insolvency, bankruptcy or receivership.
- Legal Obligations and Rights: We may disclose personal information to third parties, such as legal advisors and law enforcement:
- in connection with the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims;
- to comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process;
- to protect our rights and property and the rights and property of others, including to enforce our agreements and policies;
- to detect, suppress, or prevent fraud;
- to protect the health and safety of us and others; or
- as otherwise required by applicable law.
- With Your Consent: We may disclose personal information about an individual to certain other third parties or publicly with their consent or direction. For example, with an individual’s consent or direction we may post their testimonial on our Sites or service-related publications.
You may control your information in the following ways:
- Communications Preferences. You can stop receiving promotional email communications from us by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link provided in such communications.
- Modifying or Deleting Your Information. If you have an account with us, you have the ability to modify certain information in your account (e.g., your contact information) through your account settings. Not all personal information is maintained in a format that you can access or change. If you have any questions about reviewing, modifying, or deleting your information, you can contact us directly at akchumanefund@akc.org. We may not be able to modify or delete your information in all circumstances.
- Cookies. For information about our and third parties’ use of cookies and related technologies to collect information automatically, and any choices you may have in relation to cookies, please see the Our Collection of Personal Information section above.
Our Services are not directed to, and we do not intend to, or knowingly, collect or solicit personal information from children under the age of 13. If an individual is under the age of 13, they should not use our Services or otherwise provide us with any personal information either directly or by other means. If a child under the age of 13 has provided personal information to us, we encourage the child’s parent or guardian to contact us to request that we remove the personal information from our systems. If we learn that any personal information we collect has been provided by a child under the age of 13, we will promptly delete that personal information.
Links to Third-Party Websites or Services
Our Services may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Except where we post, link to or expressly adopt or refer to this Privacy Notice, this Privacy Notice does not apply to, and we are not responsible for, any personal information practices of third-party websites and online services or the practices of other third parties. To learn about the personal information practices of third parties, please visit their respective privacy notices.
Our policy is to retain the personal information we collect about you for no longer than reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, and in accordance with our legitimate business interests and applicable law. However, if necessary, we may retain personal information for longer periods of time as required under applicable law or as needed to resolve disputes or protect our legal rights.
To determine the appropriate duration of the retention of personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of personal information and if we can attain our objectives by other means, as well as our legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, and other applicable obligations.
Once retention of the personal information is no longer reasonably necessary for the purposes outlined above, we will either delete or deidentify the personal information or, if that is not possible (for example, because personal information has been stored in backup archives), we will securely store the personal information and isolate it from further active processing until deletion or deidentification is possible.
State-Specific Disclosures
- California – Your California Privacy Rights: If you are a California resident, California Civil Code Section 1798.83 – also known as California’s “Shine the Light” – permits you to request information regarding the disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the immediately preceding calendar year. Although we do not currently disclose personal information to third parties for these purposes, please contact us at akchumanefund@akc.orgto submit such a request.
- Nevada:If you are a resident of the State of Nevada, Chapter 603A of the Nevada Revised Statutes permits a Nevada resident to opt out of future sales of certain covered information that a website operator has collected or will collect about the resident. Although we do not currently sell covered information, please contact us at akchumanefund@akc.org to submit such a request.
- Colorado:If you are a resident of the State of Colorado, Colorado Revised Statutes §§ 6-1-1301 (effective 7/1/2023) – also known as the Colorado Privacy Act – provides you the right to access, correct, and delete your personal information, and the right to opt out of the sale, collection and use of your personal information. To request access, correction, or deletion of your personal information, or to opt out of the sale, collection and use of your personal information, please contact use at akchumanefund@akc.org.
Updates to This Privacy Notice
We will update this Privacy Notice from time to time. When we make changes to this Privacy Notice, we will change the date at the beginning of this Privacy Notice. If we make material changes to this Privacy Notice, we will notify individuals by email to their registered email address, by prominent posting on our Services, or through other appropriate communication channels. All changes shall be effective from the date of publication unless otherwise provided.
If you have any questions or requests in connection with this Privacy Notice or other privacy-related matters, please send an email to akchumanefund@akc.org.
Alternatively, inquiries may be addressed to:
AKC Humane Fund
Attn: Secretary
c/o American Kennel Club
101 Park Ave, Fifth Floor
New York, NY 10178
