Online Privacy Notice

Effective Date: 10/30/2023

NYC Kids RISE, Inc. (“NYC Kids RISE”) respects your concerns about privacy. This Privacy Notice describes the types of personal information we collect about individuals through (1) the Save for College Program, including the NYC Kids RISE Savings Tracker portal (“Savings Tracker Portal”); and (2) our public-facing informational website, nyckidsrise.org (the “Informational Site”). This Privacy Notice also describes how we may use the information, with whom we may share it, the choices available to you, the measures we take to safeguard the information, and how individuals can contact us about our privacy practices.

Click on one of the links below to jump to the listed section:

• What is the Save for College Program?
• Information We Obtain
  • Automated Collection of Data
• How We Use the Information We Obtain
  • Third-Party Web Analytics Services
• Information Sharing
• Your Choices
• Other Online Services and Third-Party Features
• How We Protect Personal Information
• Updates to Our Privacy Notice
• How to Contact Us

The NYC Kids RISE Save for College Program is a scholarship and savings program designed to make college and career training more accessible for all NYC public school students—regardless of family income or immigration status.

Through the Save for College Program, every eligible student enrolled in a NYC public school (including participating charter schools) automatically receives an NYC Scholarship Account with an initial $100 allocation on their behalf, unless their parents or guardians “opt out” of the Program. Families can earn additional scholarship funds toward this account in rewards. Communities can also contribute additional money to groups of NYC Scholarship Accounts to demonstrate their community’s support for every child’s success.

The funds allocated to the NYC Scholarship Accounts are invested in an account in New York’s 529 College Savings Program Direct Plan that is owned and managed by NYC Kids RISE, a nonprofit organization, on behalf of participating students. Parents and guardians cannot make deposits to or withdrawals from the NYC Scholarship Accounts, which can only be used for qualified higher education expenses by the participating student. If a student in the Program does not claim their NYC Scholarship Account funds within 20 years after they complete kindergarten, then those funds will go back to NYC Kids RISE to support other Save for College Program students.

However, as the parent or guardian of a participating student, you may open and/or connect a college and career savings account that you own for the benefit of the participating student through the Program. Then, you can start saving in ways and amounts that make sense for your finances.

Altogether, the Save for College Program enables parents and guardians, family members, friends, schools, communities, businesses, and government to work together to build assets and support expectations of educational and economic success for every child.

In connection with the Save for College Program, unless an eligible student’s parent or guardian opts out of the Program, NYC Kids RISE receives certain “Directory Information” from the NYC Department of Education (“DOE”) about participating students. This information includes:

• Student’s identification number, which is unique to the Save for College Program;
• Student’s full name;
• Student’s home phone number;
• Student’s home address (and whether the home address changes);
• Student’s birth date;
• Student’s school name and current grade level;
• Preferred languages; and
• Transfers by the Student to other schools, if any, both inside and outside the NYC public school system.

In addition, NYC Kids RISE receives the following information from DOE about the parents or guardians of participating students:

• Internal identification number for parents or guardians, which is unique to the Save for College Program; and
• Parent or guardian full name, email addresses, and phone numbers.

When you visit our Savings Tracker Portal or our Informational Site, we also may obtain the following additional personal information about you, including:

• Contact information, such as name, zip code, email address and telephone number;
• Log-in credentials to the Savings Tracker Portal, such as email and password;
• Transaction history and account balance, including for any financial account you choose to link to your Savings Tracker Portal account;
• Language preferences; and
• Other information you choose to provide, such as through survey responses or electronic communications with us.

When you visit our Informational Site or Savings Tracker Portal, we may obtain certain information by automated means, such as cookies, web server logs, web beacons, and other technologies. A “cookie” is a text file that websites send to a visitor’s computer or other Internet-connected device to uniquely identify the visitor’s browser or to store information or settings in the browser. A “web beacon,” also known as an Internet tag, pixel tag or clear GIF, links web pages to web servers and their cookies and may be used to transmit information collected through cookies back to a web server.

The information we obtain in this manner may include your device IP address, identifiers associated with your devices, types of devices, web browser characteristics, device characteristics, language preferences, clickstream data, and dates and times of visits to the Site. These technologies help us (1) remember your information so you will not have to re-enter it; (2) track and understand how you use and interact with our online services; (3) tailor the online services around your preferences; (4) measure the usability of the online services; (5) understand the effectiveness of our communications; and (6) otherwise manage and enhance the online services.

Your browser may tell you how to be notified when you receive certain types of cookies or how to restrict or disable certain types of cookies. Please note, however, that without cookies you may not be able to use all of the features of our online services.

NYC Kids RISE uses the information we obtain about students and parents/guardians in connection with the Save for College Program to:

• Run and evaluate the Save for College Program, including communicating with parents and guardians of participating students, responding to inquiries, and researching and analyzing the Program; and
• Comply with applicable legal requirements, relevant industry standards, contractual obligations and our policies, including this Privacy Notice.

We also may anonymize the personal information we obtain and use such anonymized data in furtherance of the Save for College Program, such as to analyze and improve the Program.

We may use the information we obtain on our Informational Site to:

• Provide our Informational Site and other services;
• Personalize your experience on the Informational Site;
• Respond to your inquiries;
• Send you promotional and fundraising materials and other communications;
• Perform analytics (including research, trend analysis, financial analysis, and anonymization of personal information);
• Operate, evaluate and improve our organization and services (including developing new services; analyzing our services; managing our communications; performing data analytics; and performing accounting, auditing and other internal functions);
• Protect against, identify and prevent fraud and other unlawful or unauthorized activity, claims and other liabilities; and
• Comply with applicable legal requirements, relevant industry standards, contractual obligations and our policies, including this Privacy Notice and our Terms of Use.

In addition, we may use the information we obtain in other ways for which we provide specific notice at the time of collection and obtain consent where required by applicable law.

We may use third-party analytics services on our Informational Site and our Savings Tracker Portal, such as Google Analytics. The service providers that administer these services use automated technologies to collect data (such as email and IP addresses) to evaluate use of our Site. To learn more about Google Analytics and how to opt out, please visit https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en.

We may share the information we obtain through the Save for College Program or our Informational Site with professional services organizations (e.g., auditors and law firms) and third-party service providers who perform services on our behalf. For example, we share the personal information we obtain through the Save for College Program with our third-party service provider, VistaShare, which administers the Savings Tracker Portal on our behalf. We do not authorize our service providers to use or disclose the information except as necessary to perform services on our behalf or comply with legal requirements.

In addition, in accordance with applicable law and our contractual obligations to DOE and the City of New York, we may disclose information about you (1) if we are required to do so by law or legal process (such as a court order or subpoena); (2) in response to requests by government agencies, such as law enforcement authorities; (3) to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights; (4) when we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical or other harm or financial loss; (5) in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual illegal activity; (6) in the event we sell or transfer all or a portion of our organization or assets (including in the event of a reorganization, dissolution or liquidation); or (7) otherwise with your consent.

If you are a parent or guardian of an eligible student, and you do not want your student’s Directory Information to be shared with NYC Kids RISE, you may opt-out of your student’s enrollment in the Save for College Program within a 30-day “opt-out period” by returning a signed opt-out form to your school or opting out in your NYC Schools Account. Taking either of these actions means your child will not receive an NYC Scholarship Account, the $100 investment, or future funds from the Save for College Program. Please refer to your child’s opt-out form or visit the NYC Schools website for specific details.

After your 30-day opt-out period has ended, you may still cancel your child’s Program participation by visiting your NYC Schools Account or, you can download and return a Participation Status Change Form to your child’s district or charter school. The form can be downloaded here for district schools and here for charter schools, or you can request it from your child’s school.

To update your preferences, update or correct your information, limit the communications you receive from us, or submit a request, please contact us as specified in the How to Contact Us section of this Privacy Notice.

Our Savings Tracker Portal and our Informational Site may provide links to other online services for your convenience and information, and may include third-party features such as apps, tools, widgets and plug-ins (such as Twitter buttons). These online services and third-party features may operate independently from us. The privacy practices of the relevant third parties, including details on the information they may collect about you, is subject to the privacy statements of these parties, which we strongly suggest you review. To the extent any linked online services or third-party features are not owned or controlled by us, NYC Kids RISE is not responsible for these third parties’ information practices.

If you choose to donate to NYC Kids RISE via the Informational Site, you will be directed to a third-party site to do so. We do not obtain any information, such as credit card data, from this third-party service. Please be sure to review the Privacy Policy on that website to understand the privacy practices of this third-party organization.

We maintain administrative, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information we obtain through the Save for College Program and our Informational Site against accidental, unlawful or unauthorized destruction, loss, alteration, access, disclosure or use.

This Privacy Notice may be updated periodically and without prior notice to you to reflect changes in our personal information practices. We will post an updated Privacy Notice on the Savings Tracker Portal and our Informational Site and indicate at the top of the Privacy Notice when it was most recently updated.

To submit a request or ask us questions about this Privacy Notice, please contact us by clicking here.