General Principles
The Trevor Project (“The Trevor Project” or “we” or “us” or “our”) is a 501c3 nonprofit organization with a charitable mission of ending suicide among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) young people. We carry out our mission through providing suicide prevention and crisis intervention services for LGBTQ youth and serving as a leading voice in education, advocacy, and research relating to LGBTQ youth and mental health.
We offer programs and services to LGBTQ young people (i) within this website at TheTrevorProject.org (this “Website”) and (ii) through crisis counseling over the phone, online, and through text (collectively and individually, our “Crisis Services”). The Trevor Project also welcomes you to support our mission by making a donation to The Trevor Project (“Donations”). This privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) provides our general privacy terms and also specifically explains our information collection and use practices relating to the following: (i) the Website (ii) Crisis Services (as defined above), and (iii) any Donations you may make to us.
You should know a few things about our privacy practices. If you are a young person in crisis or in need of a safe place to talk, you can use our Crisis Services and be assured that we do not disclose any information you share with us except in the limited number of circumstances described in this Privacy Policy, such as a situation in which someone might be hurt. Unless otherwise required by law, we will not disclose sensitive information you share while using Crisis Services to parents, legal guardians, or other individuals. Please read further below about circumstances where we may disclose personal information.
You should also know that, in addition to the information you knowingly provide to us, we may collect certain information automatically from your use of the Website, including internet protocol (“IP”) addresses, de-identified web browser information, internet service provider (“ISP”) data, referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, location, and click data, and a unique identifier associated with your browser or device. Some of this information that is automatically collected is later passed along to third parties like Google and Facebook to increase awareness about our services, to attract new volunteers, and to encourage more funding.
Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. If you want to learn more about the information collection, use, and disclosure practices for various aspects of The Trevor Project (e.g., the Website, Crisis Services, and/or Donations), use the links above to jump to the relevant section of the policy. The Trevor Project strongly respects your privacy; we will not share your personal information except as disclosed in this policy.
This Privacy Policy is subject to change, so you are encouraged to review it from time to time. We reserve the right to alter, modify, update, add to, subtract from, or otherwise change this Privacy Policy. Any changes will become effective upon being posted unless we tell you otherwise. We will post any changes on this page, and update the “Last Updated” date at the top, so be sure to check back periodically to stay aware of any changes.
By using the Website or our Crisis Services, or by making a Donation, you agree to this Privacy Policy. Please note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to TrevorSpace. Please visit the TrevorSpace website for links to the Terms and Privacy Policy for TrevorSpace.
Information Collection, Use, and Disclosure
The Trevor Project’s Website
Information Collection
During your use of the Website, you may be prompted to provide personally identifiable information, including your name, location, and email address. We also may collect certain information automatically from your use of the Website, such as IP addresses, de-identified web browser information, ISP data, referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, location, and click data, and a unique identifier associated with your browser or device.
A cookie is a small text file sent by a web server to a user’s browser that is used for authentication, record-keeping, and tracking a user’s activity on a website. Although we may use cookies on this site, we do not link them to personally identifiable information.
Volunteers and job applicants may also submit personally identifiable information to this Website when applying to work with The Trevor Project. For volunteers and employee applicants, we may collect information including name, address, email address, phone number, birthdate, URLs, education information, employment information, social media account handles, and other information those individuals provide to us as part of their applications. Employee and volunteer applicants may also be prompted to enter information such as confirmation of ability to work in the U.S., confirmation of their requirement for a visa, race, age, gender identity, employment information, education information, disability status, medical information, financial information, veteran status, familial status, sexual orientation, and information related to personal references.
Information Use
We use the information we collect about you to provide this Website and our Services. We may also use your information to improve our Services, contact you when necessary, provide anonymous reporting internally, and fulfill your requests. For applicants, volunteers and employees, we use their personally identifiable information to make staffing decisions, as appropriate and as permitted by applicable laws.
We also provide certain information to third-party service providers to optimize the Website’s functionality and improve our Services. For example, we work with third-party service providers, such as Google and Facebook, to analyze your use of the Website and to provide advertising services where we deliver advertisements to you regarding The Trevor Project’s services and events on our website and on third-party sites. We only partner with entities like Google and Facebook to advertise Trevor’s Website and Services, to increase awareness about our services, to attract new volunteer counselors, and to encourage more funding. The analytics data we collect is used to help us improve the functionality of the Website, Crisis Services, and Donations.
You may receive an initial email after you sign up for emails on the Website. We may also communicate with you in response to your inquiries as necessary. From time to time, we may send you announcements and newsletters about The Trevor Project, LGBTQ youth and mental health, and related issues. You may unsubscribe from the mailing list in order to stop receiving them.
The Trevor Project may occasionally conduct promotions such as sweepstakes, contests, give-aways, and other promotions. Participation in these promotions is voluntary, and you have a choice of whether or not to disclose any of your information relating to those promotions. In the course of operating any of those promotions, we may collect additional information from you. Please refer to the terms and conditions regarding a particular promotion for additional information.
Information Disclosure
We may use third-party service providers to perform services on our behalf, including administering announcements and newsletters. These service providers are prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for any other purpose. Any use and sharing of information gathered through promotions and newsletters will be disclosed to you during the sign-up process.
We may also disclose personally identifiable information we collect from you to third parties if we believe disclosure is necessary: (i) to comply with the law, including in response to a subpoena, court order, government request, or other legal process; (ii) to protect the interests, rights, safety, or property of The Trevor Project (including our Crisis Services), our affiliates, officers, directors, employees, volunteers, representatives, other related parties, or the individuals we serve; (iii) to enforce our Terms (including this Privacy Policy); (iv) in connection with a sale, merger, or or corporate reorganization of The Trevor Project or our affiliates, or the transfer of any of our operations, or (v) to address fraud, security (physical or cybersecurity), technical issues, or to operate or improve this Website or our infrastructure systems.
Advertising
As stated above, the information we may provide to Google, Facebook, and other advertising providers may include your IP addresses, web browser information, ISP data, referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, location, click data, and a unique identifier associated with your browser or device. This information is primarily used to analyze trends, to administer the Website, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. However, this information may also be used by third parties such as Facebook to serve you certain advertisements as part of their re-targeting practices.
How We Respond to Do Not Track Signals
California law requires us to let you know how we respond to web browser Do Not Track (DNT) signals. We do not respond to DNT signals.
Crisis Services
Information Collection
During your use of our Crisis Services, the information we automatically collect depends on how you contact us and what you disclose to us. We collect IP addresses or other location information of visitors to the Crisis Services entry points on our Website and store this temporarily to verify that you are in the United States. For Crisis Services via phone and text, we collect your phone number; and for Crisis Services via our online chat service, we collect your IP address and user agent.
We also collect information about you that you may provide to us during the course of your use of our Crisis Services, which may include your name, phone number, IP address, city/state, education history, employment information, medical information, race, familial status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, sexual history, and disability status, and other content contained in communications. We may also use third-party sources, including publicly available data we obtain through internet search engines, to attempt to obtain additional information about you for purposes of crisis interventions (see below for more information).
As part of our text Crisis Services, we offer the ability to communicate with you via text (SMS) messages through our dedicated short code program. To use our text Crisis Services, you must agree (or “opt-in”) to receiving the communications through our text Crisis Services short code program. Your opt-in will apply only for the duration of a specific conversation and you can opt-out and ask us to stop texting you at any time. You may opt-in to our text Crisis Services short code program via keyword, by texting “START” to 678678. Messages and data rates may apply. Message frequency may vary by user depending on the conversation.
If you are waiting to speak to a counselor, you can cancel the text Crisis Services short code program by texting “STOP,” “STOPALL,” “UNSUBSCRIBE,” “CANCEL,” “END,” or “QUIT” to 678678. After you send the message to us, we may send you a reply message to confirm that you no longer wish to receive text Crisis Services-related messages from us. After this, you will only receive text Crisis Services-related messages from us if you opt in to rejoin the queue, or if we feel further texts are necessary for your health and safety.
If at any time you need technical support, forget what keywords are supported, or require assistance with our text Crisis Services short code program, just text “HELP” to 678678. After you send the message “HELP” to us, we will respond with instructions on how to use our service as well as how to unsubscribe.
We may terminate or suspend your access to all or part of our text Crisis Services short code program, without notice, for any conduct that is in violation of our Crisis Services Terms, or that we, in our sole discretion, believe is in violation of any applicable law or is harmful to the interests of any other person, other third-party entity, or our Crisis Services.
Information Use
We use the information we collect about you to provide Crisis Services to you. We may also use your information to improve our Services, contact you when necessary, and provide anonymous reporting (see more information below).
Information Disclosure
We deeply value transparency and would like our users to understand how, when, and why their information may be shared, and would like to call attention to a few specific situations where personal or sensitive information may be disclosed (in addition to other permitted disclosures described in our Crisis Services Terms or this Privacy Policy).
We do not share your mobile number or any of the information you provide during your use of our Crisis Services with third parties, except as described in this Privacy Policy and in our Terms of Service. We may disclose information gathered through Crisis Services only in the following circumstances:
Crisis Interventions. The Trevor Project cares deeply about the health and wellbeing of our community, and thus we make disclosures as needed to protect LGBTQ youth and others. Our policy is to alert law enforcement, state authorities, or emergency services if your communications with The Trevor Project indicate that you are at imminent risk of death or serious injury (i.e., if you have suicidal desire, a plan, access to means, and an imminent timeline).
Abuse and Imminent Threat Reports. If your communications indicate that a minor or vulnerable dependent adult has been or is currently being subjected to emotional or physical abuse or neglect, we may report this to the applicable state agency or other authority, which may include disclosing information relating to the particular situation, and may include personal or sensitive information you disclose to us.
We may also make a report to an appropriate party, and make any disclosures we reasonably believe necessary, to prevent another person’s death or serious injury. Unless otherwise required by applicable law (including in response to a subpoena that we reasonably believe is valid), we will not disclose personal or sensitive information to parents, legal guardians, or other individuals.
Our counselors are located in multiple states in the United States; while all of our counselors are trained, they are not working as licensed mental health workers and may not be trained in your state’s law. Other state laws may apply to your communications, and those state laws may not protect your communications to the same degree, or in the same way, as the laws of your state.
Research and Innovation. We may use information, including the content of conversations occurring within Crisis Services, to create, or permit a third-party researcher or partner to create, aggregate information, that does not include names or other personal identifiers, for the purpose of promoting suicide prevention research and the advancement of crisis intervention, and to produce statistics and metrics that will help us and others better understand and analyze the impact of our Crisis Services. We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information and content of conversations occurring through the Crisis Services, with our partners, researchers, or third parties for these purposes. only; we will never share personal information for commercial purposes. We may also publicly publish the results of our research efforts, including statistics and metrics, such as in research reports and other briefs, and otherwise provide information about our innovation efforts and use of our services. Individual users will not be linked or identified by sharing this aggregate information.
Advocacy. We are passionate about saving LGBTQ lives, and our work involves various efforts, such as advocating for laws that protect LGBTQ youth from conversion therapy and advancing LGBTQ-inclusive suicide prevention policies in schools. The information we collect relating to our Crisis Services can be used as valuable evidence in supporting these efforts. We may use and disclose personal and sensitive information, in an anonymized form without using names or personally-identifying information, for these purposes, including using this information in amicus briefs, litigation, legislative testimony, and other activities.
Additional Disclosures. We may also disclose personally identifiable information we collect from you to third parties if we believe disclosure is necessary: (i) to comply with the law, including in response to a subpoena, court order, government request, or other legal process; (ii) to protect the interests, rights, safety, or property of The Trevor Project (including our Crisis Services), our affiliates, officers, directors, employees, volunteers, representatives, other related parties, or the individuals we serve; (iii) to enforce our Terms (including this Privacy Policy); (iv) in connection with a sale, merger, or corporate reorganization of The Trevor Project or our affiliates, or the transfer of any of our operations, or (v) to address fraud, security (physical or cybersecurity), technical issues, or to operate or improve our Services or infrastructure systems.
To the extent that you use our Website, please see our information collection and use practices disclosed above.
Donations
Information Collection
When we collect donations, we may collect information including name, email address, birth date, phone number, billing address, financial information, education information, employment information, age, race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and any other information that you provide to us while making a donation or is necessary to complete the donation. We may also use third-party sources to collect additional information about donors.
Information Use
We may use service providers to verify and process your payment. Except as may be required by law, we will not otherwise share your personal information without your permission. We will not send you charitable solicitations from outside entities on their behalf. To the extent that any donations are processed by means of a third-party service provider for initiatives benefiting The Trevor Project, we will only engage with providers who confirm they will not share your contact information with other nonprofit organizations, marketers, or any other third party. We may also verify your personal information with third parties in the course of processing a gift, event registration, or other related donor activity. By making a donation, you agree that your personal information will be handled as described in this Privacy Policy.
Other Information Disclosure
We may disclose personally identifiable information we collect from you to third parties if we believe disclosure is necessary: (i) to comply with the law including in response to a subpoena, court order, government request, or other legal process; (ii) to protect the interests, rights, safety, or property of The Trevor Project (including our Crisis Services), our affiliates, officers, directors, employees, volunteers, representatives, other related parties, or the individuals we serve; (iii) to enforce our Terms (including this Privacy Policy); (iv) in connection with a sale, merger, or corporate reorganization of The Trevor Project or our affiliates, or the transfer of any of our operations, or (v) to address fraud, security (physical or cybersecurity), technical issues, or to operate or improve our Services or infrastructure systems.
You may voluntarily remove your name and/or contact information from our internal marketing and communication lists (i.e., “opt out”) by contacting us in writing at [email protected]. We may identify you by name as a donor in our annual report and other public documents. You may choose to have gifts listed in public as “anonymous” by contacting us in writing at [email protected] or by marking “anonymous” at the time of your donation. You must request removal if you do not want your name to potentially appear in public as a supporter, and in limited circumstances we may need to disclose your name if required by law. Please note that The Trevor Project reserves the right to contact you regarding gifts even after you have removed yourself from marketing and communications lists.
Donor List Exchanges
We also may share donor names, email addresses, and mailing addresses with other nonprofit organizations in exchange for the names, email addresses, and mailing addresses of their donors.
We never sell our donor lists. We only occasionally exchange them with nonprofit groups, under the following conditions:
- At no time and under no circumstances will we trade, sell, exchange, or otherwise make our donor lists available to political parties, campaigns, or political action groups, and we will not buy or otherwise secure lists from those groups.
- Donors will be informed of their right to remove their name from lists to be exchanged and those requests will be promptly honored.
- We control the exchange of any lists by dealing directly with the nonprofit organization or by securing the written agreement of a third-party broker to adhere to our policy on this matter.
- Lists would be exchanged for a one-time use only and may not be used for any other purpose (e.g., telemarketing, phone solicitation, etc.).
- No information will be shared about a donor’s giving history.
If you are a donor and wish to “opt out” of these exchanges, or if you have any questions, feel free to email us at [email protected]. This opt-out will not affect any exchange occurring prior to your opt-out (and it may take a number of weeks for the opt-out to be processed for paper mailings); we encourage you to contact the third party organization directly if you no longer wish to receive their information.
To the extent that you use our Website, please see our information collection and use practices disclosed above.
Children Under 13 Years of Age
As a 501c3 nonprofit organization, The Trevor Project is not subject to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). However, we take children’s privacy seriously, and we encourage users and their parents to review this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service to understand our information collection practices.
Your Choices Regarding Personal Information
You have certain choices concerning our collection, use, and sharing of personal information about you. For example, if you have requested marketing email communications from us (e.g., newsletters and communications regarding our Crisis Services) but do not wish to receive further information, you may “opt out” of receiving these by following the instructions contained in those email messages. If any of your personally identifiable information changes, or if you no longer desire to receive email communications from us, you may edit or delete your information by unsubscribing from the mailing list. At any time, you may also change your browser cookie settings.
Certain laws enable individuals to request information concerning whether their data has been disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes. We never share your data with third parties for their own marketing purposes, but the information we share with Facebook may be used to deliver you certain advertisements.; this is solely to increase awareness about our services, to attract new volunteer counselors, and to encourage more funding.
International Transfers
We are based in the United States. Use of our Crisis Services from outside the United States is not permitted. While we do not actively service or target international users, if you are an international user, the information you submit to us and that we automatically collect as a result of your using the Website or our Crisis Services will be transferred to the United States, where the privacy and data protection rules may differ from those in your country.
Information Security
We are committed to maintaining your confidence and trust, and we take security measures to protect your information. However, no transmission or electronic storage of information is guaranteed to be secure. We therefore urge you to always use caution when transmitting information over the internet. Despite all of The Trevor Project’s security procedures, the internet is not a perfectly secure environment, and The Trevor Project cannot guarantee protection from intruders or interceptors. You further agree to use our Website and Crisis Services and submit information at your own risk. You agree that The Trevor Project has no liability regarding unauthorized access to our Website or Crisis Services.
Interpretation of Privacy Policy
The terms “or” and “including” and similar terms will be interpreted non-exclusively to mean “and/or” or “including, but not limited to” or the equivalent, respectively.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us:
The Trevor Project
P.O. Box 69232
West Hollywood, CA 90069
Effective February 15, 2023