Privacy Policy

Gilbert Toastmasters Club #499 (“Gilbert Toastmasters,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) is a nonprofit public-speaking club and a member club of Toastmasters International. This policy explains what information we handle through this website and the club's social media accounts, and how we use and protect it. We keep this deliberately simple, because our site collects very little.

The short version

This website is here to tell people about our club and help guests find a meeting. We use Google Analytics to understand, in aggregate, how many people visit and which pages they read. We do not use advertising trackers, we do not sell or rent anyone's information, and we do not build marketing profiles of visitors.

Information we collect

Information you choose to give us. If you email or call us using the contact details on this site, we receive whatever you include in that message (such as your name and email address) so we can reply. If you take part in an in-meeting activity such as our end-of-meeting voting ballot, the first name and last initial you enter are used only to run and tally that meeting's vote.

Information collected automatically. Like almost all websites, our hosting providers keep standard server logs (for example, IP address, browser type, and the pages requested) to operate the site securely and reliably. We do not use this data to identify individual visitors.

Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics, a web analytics service from Google, to see how our site is used: for example, how many people visit, which pages they view, roughly where they are visiting from (country or city), what kind of device and browser they use, and how they found us. Google Analytics uses cookies and similar technologies to collect this, and Google processes it under its own privacy policy. We see this information only in aggregate reports; we do not use it to identify you, and we do not combine it with anything you send us. You can learn how Google uses information from sites that use its services, and you can opt out of Google Analytics on every site with Google's opt-out browser add-on.

Embedded Instagram feed. Our home page shows recent posts from our Instagram account (@gilberttm499) through a third-party widget from Behold. When that widget loads, Behold and Instagram may process technical information about your visit under their own privacy policies.

How we use information

• To respond to questions and messages you send us.
• To operate, secure, and improve this website, including understanding which pages are useful to visitors.
• To run club activities such as meeting voting.

We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not sell, rent, or trade it.

Our social media accounts

We maintain public pages on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, and we use social-media management tools to publish our own club content to those pages. When we do this, we are posting on behalf of the club; we are not collecting personal information from your social media account. Any information you share by following, liking, or commenting on our pages is governed by that platform's own privacy policy. Aggregated page insights those platforms provide to us (such as how many people saw a post) do not identify you individually.

Cookies

Our pages use Google Analytics cookies to count visits, as described above. We do not use advertising cookies. Embedded third-party content, such as the Instagram feed, may set its own cookies or similar technologies. You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings, or use Google's opt-out add-on to stop Google Analytics specifically.

Service providers we rely on

We use a small number of reputable providers to run the site and our activities, each under its own privacy policy: our website host, Google (Google Analytics), Behold (the Instagram feed widget), and Cloudflare (which powers our meeting-ballot tool). We share information with these providers only as needed to operate those features.

Data retention

We keep information only as long as we need it for the purpose it was given. Email you send us is kept as long as needed to help you; meeting-ballot entries are cleared between meetings; server logs are retained for a limited period by our host; and Google Analytics data is kept for the limited retention period set in our Google Analytics account, after which Google deletes it.

Children's privacy

This website is intended for a general adult audience and is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information.

Your choices

You can contact us at any time to ask what information we hold about you, to correct it, or to ask us to delete it, and we will do our best to honor reasonable requests. Because we collect so little, there is usually very little to act on.

Toastmasters International membership

If you join our club, your membership record is handled by Toastmasters International as part of its worldwide membership system, under Toastmasters International's own privacy policy. That is separate from this website.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will change the “Effective” date at the top of this page.

Contact us

Questions about this policy? Reach us at vpm-499@toastmastersclubs.org or (602) 345-1008.