Privacy Policy

When you sign up, join, give, RSVP to an event, offer to volunteer, use the site assistant, ask for something or write to us, we keep what you tell us. That's usually your name, email address and zip code, what you write, and how you lean politically if you tell us. If you sign in with another service, such as Google, it gives us your name and email address.

If you invite someone, we keep their name and email address and the message you wrote, to send the invitation. If you publish a statement about why you joined, it appears on the site with your name, and with your photo if you choose. A note you leave on a statement goes only to our team, unless it's on a part of our Vision and you tick "Show it publicly": once our team approves it, it appears on that part's page, signed with the name you chose or, if you leave that blank, anonymously. Untick it or delete the note and it comes off the page.

If you send us a video of yourself reading one of our scripts, we keep it privately while we review it. If we publish it, it appears on the site, and may be posted on our social media accounts, with the name you chose, as the release you agreed to describes. We keep a record of that agreement: what it said, when you agreed, and the internet address and browser you used. You can withdraw the video from your account at any time: we then delete it and our own posts of it, and keep only the record that you agreed and withdrew. If we turn a video down, we delete it 30 days later.

If you send a question to Chris Borgia, the party's founder, while he's answering live on the site, we keep it the way we keep conversations with the site assistant. If he answers it in public, your question and his answer appear on the site, including at pragmatists.org/chris, without your name; if he answers privately, only you see it. If he invites you on his call-in show and you join, the call is broadcast live on the party's YouTube channel and recorded there, with the name you choose, and we keep a record of the release you agreed to: what it said, when, and the internet address and browser you used.

We also keep records of people we meet or hear from in other ways, such as at an event, and our team's notes on our contact with them.

When you give, federal law requires us to ask for your mailing address, employer and occupation, and to confirm you're eligible to give. Stripe processes the payment, and we never see your full card number. We report the name, address, employer and occupation of anyone whose gifts total more than $200 in a calendar year to the Federal Election Commission, which makes its reports public. Federal law forbids anyone to use them to ask for contributions or for commercial purposes.

Open Books, our public record of every dollar, is published from the day our 100th donor gives, back to the first gift. It lists the name, state and total for the year of each person who gives, unless they untick "Show my name on Open Books" on the donate form or at the Shop's checkout. Untick it and you're counted without your name. People who gave before we asked aren't named, and if you ask us to delete your information, your name comes off Open Books.

To verify that you're a real person, you can give us your name, address, date of birth and the last four digits of your Social Security number. We send them, with your email address, your phone number if you give it, and your IP address, to our verification provider, Truest Human, which checks them against credit bureau records and asks you a few questions only you should be able to answer. We keep whether each detail matched, and the questions with your answers. We never keep your Social Security number or date of birth. Once you're verified, a badge shows beside your name where it appears on the site. Verifying online needs gifts totaling $12 or more, so the badge can also show that you've given.

Like most sites, ours records the pages you visit and what you click, with your IP address, browser and device, using cookies and two analytics services, PostHog and Google Analytics. PostHog also keeps replays of some visits: a recording of how the page changed as you used it, with everything you type hidden, and the words on signed-in pages masked. Once you're signed in or have sent us a form, we link that record to you.

When you're signed in, we also keep our own log of the pages you open and the actions you take, with the time, your IP address and your browser. It never includes what you type into forms.

We use essential cookies to keep you signed in and the site working, and one advertising tool, Meta's pixel. It tells Meta which of our pages you visit and when you create an account, ask to get involved or start a gift, so we can show our ads to people who've been here and see which ads bring people in. Meta handles that under its own privacy policy. You can turn off ads based on your activity in your Facebook and Instagram ad settings. We don't join any other ad network.

We don't sell or rent your information, or share it with anyone for their own marketing, apart from what Meta's pixel sends Meta (above). The companies that run parts of the site for us handle it only to do that work: Vercel and Neon host the site and its data; DigitalOcean hosts our own speech server, which turns the videos members send us into captions and keeps no audio; Cloudflare protects the site, stores its files and, when needed, checks that a visitor is a person (its Turnstile Privacy Addendum, at cloudflare.com/turnstile-privacy-policy, says what that check collects), and carries the calls on Chris's call-in show; YouTube broadcasts that show and keeps its recordings; SendStitch sends and receives our email; Stripe takes payments; Twilio sends texts; Anthropic answers the questions you ask the site assistant, so please don't put anything sensitive in them; PostHog and Google Analytics measure how the site is used; Meta measures our ads; Truest Human verifies identities; and the AI services our team uses in its own work (Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI and Google) may read records when the team asks them to, never your text-message consent.

To find your districts, we send the street address you type to the U.S. Census Bureau, keep the districts it returns, and discard the address. We also share information when the law requires it, such as our reports to the Federal Election Commission.

If you sign up for text messages on your profile, we keep your mobile number, whether you've confirmed it, and a record of your consent: when you agreed, the exact wording you agreed to, and the IP address and browser you used. We keep the same kind of record each time you pause, resume or stop texts, including by replying STOP or START. We keep consent records even after you stop texts or close your account, because they show what we were allowed to send.

We keep a log of each text we send you and each text you send us (the number, the message, when, and whether it was delivered) so we can honor opt-outs and fix delivery problems. One-time codes are never stored; the log shows them blanked out.

We send texts through Twilio, which delivers them to your mobile carrier and processes your number and messages only to do that.

No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes, including other campaigns, committees or causes. All the above categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information won't be shared with any third parties.

You can stop texts any time by replying STOP, or from your profile. Reply HELP for help. Up to 4 messages a month. Message and data rates may apply.

We keep what we collect for as long as we run the party's work, unless you ask us to delete it. To see, correct or delete your information, write to info@pragmatists.org, or delete your account from your account page and we'll erase it within 30 days. Every invitation and account email we send has a link to stop our emails to that address; receipts and replies to your requests don't.

When we delete your information, we keep only what the law or the party's own records require: contributions and loans, for three years after the report that covers them; your consent to texts and the texts we sent; a block that stops our email, if you asked for one; and your name where it appears in the party's record of its own decisions, such as a vote. Our backups hold older copies of the database: the automatic ones age out within 12 months, and a few we take by hand before major changes are kept longer.

The site isn't meant for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information. If we learn we have, we delete it.

We protect your information with reasonable safeguards, though nothing sent over the internet is perfectly secure. If we change this policy, we'll post the new version here with a new effective date. Questions? Write to info@pragmatists.org.