Privacy Statement

Last updated: November 2, 2026

Institute for Nonprofit News and its affiliates (collectively, “INN,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) wants you to be familiar with how we collect, use, and disclose information. This Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information that we collect through:

Websites operated by us from which you are accessing this Privacy Policy, including inn.org, findyournews.org, and ruralnewsnetwork.org (collectively, the “Websites”);
Social media pages from which you are accessing this Privacy Policy, which may include our pages on Bluesky, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms from time to time;
HTML-formatted email messages that we send to you that link to this Privacy Policy or other communications with you; and
Offline business interactions you have with us.

Collectively, we refer to the Websites, Social Media Pages, emails, and offline business interactions as the “Services.”

PERSONAL INFORMATION

“Personal Information” is information that identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable individual. The Services collect Personal Information, including:

Name
Postal address
Telephone number
Email address
Business and professional information, such as your organization or employer
Account or profile information, including membership affiliation and communication preferences
Billing and transaction information, including information about donations, membership dues, event registrations, and other transactions
Communications and other content you provide to us
IP address (we may also derive your approximate location from your IP address)

Collection of Personal Information

We and our service providers collect Personal Information in a variety of ways, including:

Through the Services.

We collect Personal Information that you provide directly through the Services, such as when you subscribe to communications, make a donation, pay membership dues, register for an event, submit materials for an award or other program, or contact us. This may include your contact information and billing and transaction information. Payment card information may be collected and processed directly by our third-party payment service providers rather than by us.
We may also receive Personal Information through third-party platforms that we use to administer memberships, event registrations, and awards, including when you create an account or submit information through those platforms. This information may include contact information, names of publications and publication contributors, and professional headshots.

From Other Sources.
We receive your Personal Information from other sources, for example, when someone makes a donation in your name, or a member organization provides your work contact information; from social media platforms, such as information about interactions with our Social Media Pages; and from publicly available sources, including member websites and RSS feeds.

We need to collect Personal Information in order to provide the requested Services to you. If you do not provide the information requested, we may not be able to provide the Services. If you disclose any Personal Information relating to other people to us or to our service providers in connection with the Services, you represent that you have the authority to do so and to permit us to use the information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Use of Personal Information

We and our service providers may use Personal Information for the following purposes:

Administering the Services and fulfilling your requests.

To provide the Services’ functionality to you, such as arranging access to your registered account and providing you with related services and support.
To process or facilitate donations, membership dues, event registrations, and other transactions, and verify your information.
To administer memberships, events, awards, member benefits, and other programs in which you choose to participate.
To respond to your inquiries and fulfill your requests.
To send administrative information to you, such as changes to our terms, conditions, and policies.

Providing you with our newsletter and/or other marketing materials and facilitating social sharing.

To send you newsletters, member communications, event invitations, sponsored communications, and other updates that may be of interest to you.
To facilitate social sharing functionality that you choose to use.

Analyzing Personal Information for business reporting and providing personalized services.

To analyze or predict our users’ preferences in order to prepare aggregated trend reports on how our digital content is used, so we can improve our Services.
To better understand your interests and preferences, so that we can personalize our interactions with you and provide you with information and/or offers tailored to your interests.
To better understand your preferences so that we can deliver content via our Services that we believe will be relevant and interesting to you.

Aggregating and/or anonymizing Personal Information.
We may aggregate and/or anonymize Personal Information so that it will no longer be considered Personal Information. We do so to generate other data for our use, which we may use and disclose for any purpose, as it no longer identifies you or any other individual.

Accomplishing our business purposes.

For data analysis, for example, to improve the efficiency of our Services;
For audits, to verify that our internal processes function as intended and to address legal, regulatory, or contractual requirements;
For fraud prevention and fraud security monitoring purposes, for example, to detect and prevent cyberattacks or attempts to commit identity theft;
For developing new products and services;
For enhancing, improving, repairing, maintaining, or modifying our current content, programs, and services, as well as undertaking quality and safety assurance measures;
For identifying usage trends, for example, understanding which parts of our Services are of most interest to users;
For determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns, so that we can adapt our campaigns to the needs and interests of our users; and
For operating and expanding our business activities, for example, understanding which parts of our Services are of most interest to our users so we can focus our energies on meeting our client’s interests.

Disclosure of Personal Information

We disclose Personal Information:

To our third-party service providers, to facilitate services they provide to us.
These can include providers of services such as website hosting, data analysis, fraud prevention, information technology and related infrastructure provision, customer service, email delivery, auditing, and other services.
To our third-party partners who provide related services, when you choose to engage directly with those partners and request that we share your Personal Information with them.

By using the Services, you may elect to disclose Personal Information.
On message boards, chat, profile pages, blogs, and other services to which you are able to post information and content (including, without limitation, our Social Media Pages). Please note that any information you post or disclose through these services will become public and may be available to other users and the general public.

Other Uses and Disclosures

We may also use and disclose Personal Information as we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) to comply with applicable law, to respond to requests from public and government authorities, to cooperate with law enforcement, and for other legal reasons; (b) to enforce our terms and conditions; and (c) to protect our rights, privacy, safety, or property, and/or that of you or others. We may use, disclose, or transfer Personal Information to a third party in connection with any proposed or actual reorganization, bankruptcy, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer, or other disposition of all or any portion of our assets or stock.

INFORMATION COLLECTED AUTOMATICALLY

We and our service providers may collect information automatically in a variety of ways, including:

Your browser or device.
Certain information is collected by most browsers or automatically through your device, such as your Media Access Control (MAC) address, computer type (Windows or Mac), screen resolution, operating system name and version, device manufacturer and model, language, Internet browser type and version and the name and version of the Services you are using. We use this information to ensure that the Services function properly.
Cookies and similar technologies.

We and our service providers use cookies, pixels, and similar online tracking technologies (collectively, “Cookies”) on the Services. Cookies allow us to collect such information as browser type, time spent on the Services, pages visited, language preferences, how you interact with our Services, content you view, click on, or share, screen actions, and other traffic data.
This information is used for security purposes, to power the interactive features of our Services, to facilitate navigation, to display information more effectively, to develop and improve the performance, functionality, and design of the Services, and to help keep the Services free of bugs or errors. We also gather statistical information about use of the Services in order to improve their design and functionality, understand how they are used, and assist us with resolving questions regarding the Services. Cookies are also used to track the actions of users of the Services (including email recipients) and compile statistics about usage of the Services.
We do not currently respond to browser do-not-track signals. If you do not want information collected through Cookies, most browsers allow you to automatically decline Cookies or be given the choice of declining or accepting a particular Cookie (or Cookies) from a particular website. You may also wish to refer to http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/index.html. If you do not accept Cookies, you may experience some inconvenience in your use of the Services.
Analytics.
We use Google Analytics, which uses cookies and similar technologies to collect and analyze information about use of the Services and report on activities and trends. This service may also collect information regarding the use of other websites, apps, and online resources. You can learn about Google’s practices by going to www.google.com/policies/privacy/‌partners/, and exercise the opt-out provided by Google by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

IP Address
Your IP Address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider. An IP Address may be identified and logged automatically in our server log files whenever a user accesses the Services, along with the time of the visit and the pages visited. We use IP Addresses for purposes such as calculating usage levels, diagnosing server problems, and administering the Services. We may also derive your approximate location from your IP Address.

Uses and Disclosures of Information Collected Automatically

We may use and disclose information collected automatically for any purpose, except where we are required to do otherwise under applicable law. If we are required to treat the information as Personal Information under applicable law, we may use and disclose it for the purposes for which we use and disclose Personal Information, as detailed in this Privacy Policy. In some instances, we may combine information collected automatically with Personal Information. If we do, we will treat the combined information as Personal Information so long as it is combined.

SECURITY

We seek to use reasonable organizational, technical, and administrative measures to protect Personal Information within our organization. Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us in accordance with the “Contact Us” section below.

CHOICES AND ACCESS

We give you choices regarding our use and disclosure of your Personal Information for marketing purposes. If you no longer want to receive marketing-related emails from us on a going-forward basis, you may opt out by clicking on the opt-out or unsubscribe link in each such email or by emailing us at info@inn.org.

We will try to comply with your request(s) as soon as reasonably practicable. Please note that if you opt out of receiving marketing-related emails from us, we may still send you important administrative messages, from which you cannot opt out.

USE OF SERVICES BY MINORS

The Services are not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and we do not knowingly collect Personal Information from individuals under 13.

JURISDICTION AND CROSS-BORDER TRANSFER

We are located in the United States. We may store and process your Personal Information in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers. By using the Services, you understand that your information will be transferred to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have data protection rules that are different from those of your country.

SENSITIVE INFORMATION

Unless we request it, we ask that you not send us, and you not disclose, any sensitive Personal Information (e.g., social security numbers, information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health, biometrics or genetic characteristics, criminal background, or trade union membership) on or through the Services or otherwise to us.

UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

The “LAST UPDATED” legend at the top of this Privacy Policy indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Services.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at info@inn.org or 8549 Wilshire Blvd. #2294, Beverly Hills, CA 90211.