VocalEssence will provide a secure environment for collecting donations and maintaining internal controls governing the safekeeping of all confidential donor financial and personal information. In all financial information systems and financial transactions, VocalEssence will work to protect the financial information of donors and earn the trust they have placed in the organization. VocalEssence does not share personal donor information outside of the organization. Donor information is kept secure through the following actions:

• Credit Card numbers are not retained on-site physically or electronically. All donation envelopes containing credit card or personal information are shredded after the gifts are entered into the database.
• All access to donor financial information is strictly limited to professional staff of VocalEssence whose job requires them to process this data. No such data is given to any person, organization or group who does not need to access those data. Donor records are kept in a secure file cabinet.
• VocalEssence accepts online donations through GiveMN which uses secure SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) technology to accept online credit card donations. VocalEssence recommends that donors protect their credit card data by using a secure online gift service and never sharing personal information through email or over the phone. VocalEssence cannot absolutely guarantee that credit card data handled by a third party processor will be secure and is not liable for the information a donor shares with others.
• VocalEssence maintains address, phone and email information in a secure database and also notes donor preferences regarding when and how they wish to be contacted and/or acknowledged. Any donor may request to see the information retained in their personal record at VocalEssence. If a donor wishes to change their information, they should contact Laura Holst at laura@vocalessence.org or 612-547-1473.
• All gifts provided by donors who wish to remain anonymous are entered into the system as anonymous gifts and included in any reports under the heading “anonymous.” A preference for anonymity is noted in their personal record.
• All donors are offered tax receipt acknowledgements for their gifts and have the right to refuse a receipt or acknowledgement.
• VocalEssence uses website cookies. Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored on and retrieved from your computer by our website for record-keeping purposes. The use of cookies is an industry standard and you will find them in use at most major websites. The VocalEssence website uses cookies in a variety of ways and for internal use only. For example, cookies are the simplest way for us to track user trends and patterns, such as how many people use different parts of the website. This helps us better understand which parts of our site users find valuable and know what areas to improve. Most computers are set up to automatically accept cookies. However, you can reset your browser settings to refuse cookies, or alert you when a cookie is being sent so you can choose whether to accept it. Unfortunately, if you choose to refuse our cookies, some parts of our site, in particular the Search function, may not function properly.

VocalEssence Board Approved: 12/16/13, Updated: 1/21/20

Please contact us if you have any questions regarding this policy.
Mary Ann Aufderheide, VocalEssence
Executive Director
1900 Nicollet Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55403
maryann@vocalessence.org
612-547-1454