Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2, 2026

Who we are

A Better Way Out WA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN 92-1581139) based in Whatcom County, Washington. This policy covers the website at abetterwayoutwa.org. It does not cover our Facebook page, our YouTube channel, or the donation platform we use, each of which has its own privacy policy.

Information you give us

The only place on this site where you can enter personal information is the Stay Connected newsletter form on our home page. If you fill it out, we receive the email address (and any name) you provide.

We use it for one purpose: sending you occasional updates about our programs, events, and the people we serve. We do not add you to any other list. You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing us at the address below, and we will remove you promptly.

The form itself is provided by Google Forms, so your submission is stored in a Google account we control and is also subject to Google's privacy policy.

Information collected automatically

Like most websites, we use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used — which pages people visit, how long they stay, roughly where they are (city level), and what kind of device and browser they use. This helps us see whether the site is working and which content is useful.

Google Analytics uses cookies and similar technologies to do this. The data we see is aggregated and does not identify you by name. We do not use it for advertising, we have not enabled Google's advertising or remarketing features, and we do not link it to any information from the newsletter form.

You can read how Google handles this data at How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services, and you can opt out entirely with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Our site is hosted on GitHub Pages, which may log basic technical information such as IP addresses for security and operational purposes. See GitHub's privacy statement.

Third-party services on this site

A few parts of the site are provided by other companies. When you use them, their privacy policies apply:

• Zeffy — our donation platform. Clicking "Donate" takes you to Zeffy's website, where the transaction happens. See Zeffy's privacy policy.
• YouTube — embedded videos on our Events and Interviews pages. We use YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode, which means YouTube does not set tracking cookies until you actually press play.
• Google Fonts — the typefaces on this site are loaded from Google's servers, which means your browser sends a request to Google when a page loads.
• Facebook — we link to our Facebook page for volunteering and event updates. We do not embed Facebook tracking on this site.

Donations

We never see or store your credit card or bank information. All payment processing is handled by Zeffy. What we receive from Zeffy is your name, email address, donation amount, and date, which we use to thank you, to issue tax receipts, and to keep the records a nonprofit is required to keep.

We do not publish donor names or amounts without your explicit permission.

What we do not do

• We do not sell, rent, or trade your information to anyone.
• We do not share donor or subscriber lists with other organizations.
• We do not run advertising on this site or use your data to target ads elsewhere.
• We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 through this website. Our youth programs are coordinated in person and through parents and guardians, not through online forms.

Your choices and your rights

You can ask us at any time to tell you what information we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it. For newsletter subscribers, that means removing you from the list. For donors, we may need to keep certain records for tax and accounting purposes, but we will tell you exactly what and why.

You can also block or clear cookies in your browser settings. The site will still work; we just won't be able to count your visit.

Changes to this policy

If we add a new form, tool, or service that changes what we collect, we will update this page and change the date at the top. We will not quietly expand what we do with your information.

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