Privacy Policy

Version 2.0. Effective September 24, 2026. This Privacy Policy replaces all prior privacy notices posted on this website.

This privacy notice discloses the privacy practices for this website owned and managed by The Community Economic Development Fund Foundation, Inc., a Connecticut nonstock corporation (the “Foundation,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). This privacy notice applies solely to information collected by this website, meaning the websites located at cedf.com and cedf.org and any successor or replacement domain we operate (the “Site”). It does not apply to information you provide on a page operated by a third party, even if you reached that page from a link or redirect on the Site, and it does not apply to information governed by a signed loan agreement or other written contract with us. It will notify you of the following:

What personally identifiable information is collected from you through the website, how it is used and with whom it may be shared.
The choices available to you regarding the use of your data.
The security procedures in place to protect the misuse of your information.
How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.
How long we keep your information, and how you may contact us with a question or a request.

Information Collection, Use, and Sharing

We collect information in two ways. First, we collect the information you give us directly, for example when you send us an email, complete a contact or application form, register for a program or event, or use a chat feature on the Site. That information may include your name, business name, email address, telephone number, mailing address, and the details you choose to include about your business or your inquiry.

Second, information is collected automatically when you visit the Site. This includes your IP address, device and browser type, operating system, referring page, the pages you view, the links you select, and the dates and times of your visit. This information is collected through cookies, pixels, tags, and similar technologies placed on the Site by us and by the third-party services we use, and it may be collected by those third parties directly. The measurement tools delivered to the Site through Google Tag Manager are Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity. Microsoft Clarity records how visitors interact with the pages they open, including clicks, scrolling, and the order in which pages are viewed, and it produces session recordings and heat maps that Microsoft processes under its own terms. A current list of the specific technologies in use on the Site, and the categories of information each one collects, is maintained by the Foundation and is available on request. That list is also published in the cookie declaration at https://www.cedf.org/privacy-policy/cookie-declaration/, which is updated each time the Site is scanned.

We do not sell your personal information for money, and we do not give your name, contact details, or application information to anyone for that party's own marketing. We do use the advertising and measurement tools described under Advertising and Measurement below. While those tools are active, information about your visit is shared with the advertising platforms that deliver and measure our advertising, and Connecticut and California law treat that kind of sharing as sharing for targeted or cross-context behavioral advertising. Those tags sit in the marketing category of our consent tool, which is configured to withhold cookies and tags that are not strictly necessary until you consent, so they do not run unless you allow them. You may decline them, change your choice at any time through the preferences link in the banner, or send a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser, which we honor.

We will use your information to respond to you regarding the reason you contacted us. We will not share your information with any third party outside of our organization other than as described in this Policy. We also use it to operate, maintain, secure, and improve the Site; to evaluate and process applications and inquiries; to administer programs, events, and educational offerings; to keep records; and to comply with law.

We share personal information with service providers that perform work for us, including website hosting, online form and application intake, email delivery, analytics, and chat services. Our current form and application intake provider is Jotform, Inc. Service providers are permitted to use the information only to provide services to us. We may also share information with our affiliates, The Community Economic Development Fund Corporation, The Community Economic Development Fund I, LLC, and The Community Economic Development Fund Pool 2, LLC; with our professional advisors; with funders, regulators, and auditors where required; in connection with a merger, reorganization, or transfer of assets; to comply with law or a lawful request; to enforce our agreements; and to protect the rights, property, or safety of any person. Two exceptions are described where they are named in this Policy: Microsoft, which provides Clarity, and the advertising platforms described under Advertising and Measurement also process information under their own terms.

Unless you ask us not to, we may contact you in the future to tell you about specials, new products or services, or changes to this privacy policy. Every marketing email we send includes a way to unsubscribe. We will still send you communications about your application, your account, or our business dealings with you.

Advertising and Measurement. We advertise the Foundation's programs, classes, and lending services on third-party platforms. The platforms and tools we use for that purpose include Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Google Ads and the Google Ad Grants program, and programmatic display platforms such as StackAdapt, together with the measurement tags those platforms supply. We may add, replace, or stop using an advertising or social media platform from time to time, and this Policy applies to every platform we use for these purposes.

These tags let us show our programs to people who have already visited the Site, measure whether an advertisement led to a visit or an inquiry, and reach people whose interests resemble those of our visitors. To do that, the platform receives an identifier for your browser or device together with the pages you viewed, and it may use that information for its own advertising purposes. That is the sharing described above. These tags are placed in the marketing category of our consent tool and do not run unless you consent to them, and you may withdraw that consent at any time through the preferences link in the banner.

Online Forms, Applications, and Chat

Some forms and applications on the Site are hosted by a third-party provider. When you complete one of those forms, or follow a link or redirect to a page on the provider’s own domain, the information you enter is collected and stored by that provider under its own privacy policy and terms, in addition to this Policy. We encourage you to read the provider’s privacy policy before you submit information.

If a chat feature is available on the Site, your conversation may be recorded, transcribed, stored, and reviewed by us and by the third-party provider that operates the feature, for service quality, training, recordkeeping, and security purposes. Notice of that recording appears in the chat window before the conversation begins. Please do not enter account numbers, Social Security numbers, or other sensitive personal information into a chat window. The chat feature is operated by an automated assistant rather than a person, and its responses are generated automatically. A notice to that effect appears in the chat window before the conversation begins. The provider that operates the chat feature states that it does not use conversations to train its own artificial-intelligence systems. That provider relies on outside artificial-intelligence services to deliver the feature, and it does not represent that those outside services refrain from using the information they receive to train their own models. Please do not enter anything in the chat that you would not want handled on those terms.

Your consent. By using the Site you expressly consent, in advance, to the recording, monitoring, and analysis of your communications and interactions with the Site by us, by the service providers that operate its features on our behalf, and by the measurement and advertising tools described in this Policy, as described here and in Section 5.1 of our Terms of Use. Service providers that operate features on our behalf act as our agents and at our direction; Microsoft Clarity and the advertising platforms named in this Policy also use information as described where they are named. You may withdraw that consent at any time by discontinuing use of the Site and, where applicable, through the consent banner, and withdrawal operates prospectively only.

Cookies and Similar Technologies

Cookies are small data files placed on your device by a website. We use cookies that are strictly necessary to operate the Site, and, with your consent, cookies and similar technologies that measure how the Site is used, that support our communications and outreach, and that deliver and measure our advertising.

The Site uses a consent management tool configured in prior-blocking mode. Cookies and tags that are not strictly necessary do not fire until you consent to them through the banner. You may change or withdraw your consent at any time using the preferences link the banner provides. You can also remove or reject cookies through your browser settings, though parts of the Site may not work as intended if you do.

The consent banner governs only the pages of this Site. It does not control cookies set on a third-party page you are sent to from the Site.

The Site recognizes and honors the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal. When that signal is enabled in your browser, our consent management tool treats it as a decline of the advertising and measurement tags described in this Policy, and we honor it whether or not a law where you live requires us to. Do Not Track is a separate and older browser setting with no common standard, and the Site does not change its behavior in response to it; the Global Privacy Control signal is the one we act on.

Links

This website contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of any other site that collects personally identifiable information. This includes hosted application and form pages, scheduling tools, video and audio players, and social media features made available through the Site.

Surveys and Contests

From time to time our site requests information via surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and you may choose whether or not to participate and therefore disclose this information. Information requested may include contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code, age level). Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site and our marketing efforts in general.

Your Access to and Control Over Information

You may opt out of any future contacts from us at any time. You can do the following at any time by contacting us via our contact form or phone number given below:

See what data we have about you, if any.
Change/correct any data we have about you.
Have us delete any data we have about you.
Express any concern you have about our use of your data.

We will respond to your request within forty-five (45) days, and we will tell you if we need more time. We may need to verify your identity before we act on a request, and we will only use the information you give us for verification for that purpose. We will not deny you goods or services, charge you a different price, or provide you a different level of service because you exercised any of these rights.

If we decline your request, we will tell you why. You may appeal that decision by writing to us at the address below with the words “Privacy Appeal” in the subject line or on the envelope. We will respond to an appeal within forty-five (45) days and will explain the reasons for our decision.

Some requests we cannot honor in full. We may need to keep information to complete a transaction you asked for, to service a loan, to comply with our legal and regulatory recordkeeping obligations, to detect or prevent fraud, or to establish or defend legal claims. Communications required under a loan agreement, note, or other written contract with us are governed by those documents and are not marketing communications that you can opt out of under this Policy.

Where You Live: State, Federal, and International Laws

This website is operated from Connecticut and is directed to visitors in the United States. Privacy laws differ from place to place. This section explains which laws may apply to you and what we do about them. Where a law where you live gives you more protection than this notice does, that law controls for you.

United States federal law. The Federal Trade Commission Act prohibits deceptive privacy statements, and this notice is written to be accurate. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act governs information from children under 13, which we do not knowingly collect. The CAN-SPAM Act governs our marketing email, and every marketing email we send includes a way to unsubscribe. If you give us a mobile number and agree to receive text messages, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act governs those messages, and you may stop them at any time by replying STOP. Information you give us in connection with a loan application is also governed by the federal financial privacy laws that apply to lenders and by any privacy notice you receive with your application; this notice does not replace that notice.

Connecticut. The Connecticut Data Privacy Act exempts nonprofit organizations such as the Foundation. We nevertheless give every visitor the rights to see, correct, and delete personal information described in this notice, and the right to appeal if we decline a request.

California. The California Consumer Privacy Act applies only to for-profit businesses that meet certain thresholds, and it does not apply to the Foundation. The California Online Privacy Protection Act requires this notice to be posted conspicuously and to describe the categories of information we collect, the categories of third parties we share it with, how you can review and change it, how we respond to Do Not Track signals, and its effective date, and this notice does each of those things. Under California’s “Shine the Light” law, we do not provide your name, contact details, or application information to third parties for their own direct marketing, so there is nothing to disclose in response to a request under that law; the advertising tags described in this Policy are handled through the consent tool and the opt-out described above. California residents may exercise every choice in this notice by contacting us.

Other states. Virginia, Colorado, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Iowa, Indiana, Tennessee, Delaware, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Minnesota, Maryland, Kentucky, and Rhode Island have consumer privacy laws of their own. Most of them exempt nonprofit organizations, and all of them apply only to organizations that handle the personal information of a large number of that state’s residents. Whether or not one of those laws applies to you, you may exercise the rights described in this notice, we will respond within forty-five (45) days, and we will tell you how to appeal if we decline. Nevada residents may direct us not to sell their personal information; we do not sell personal information.

Biometric and health information. We do not collect biometric identifiers such as facial scans or fingerprints, and we do not collect consumer health information, through this website. Laws such as the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, the Texas biometric identifier statute, and the Washington My Health My Data Act therefore do not apply to information collected here.

Visitors outside the United States. This website is directed to people in the United States. We do not target people in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, or elsewhere outside the United States. If you visit from outside the United States, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States, where privacy laws may differ from those where you live, and by using the website you consent to that transfer. If you believe a law where you live gives you rights over your information, contact us and we will respond in good faith; you may also complain to your local data protection authority.

Automated assistants and automated decisions. If a feature on this website is operated by an automated or artificial-intelligence assistant, we tell you so before you begin using it. We do not use this website to make automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects about you. No lending decision is made through this website; any credit decision follows a separate application and is communicated separately.

Accessibility. If you need this notice in a different format because of a disability, please contact us using the information below and we will provide it.

How Long We Keep Information

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes described in this Policy, and then for as long as required by our legal, regulatory, funder, audit, and recordkeeping obligations or by an applicable limitations period. When information is no longer needed for any of those purposes, we delete it or de-identify it.

Children’s Privacy

The Site is intended for adults and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at the address below and we will delete it.

Security

We take precautions to protect your information. When you submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and offline. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so while we work to protect your information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

While we use encryption to protect sensitive information transmitted online, we also protect your information offline. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, billing or customer service) are granted access to personally identifiable information. The computers/servers in which we store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment.

Cookies and similar technologies placed on the Site by third parties are described in the Cookies and Similar Technologies section above and are governed by the consent banner.

Disputes

Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to this Privacy Policy or to our information practices is subject to the notice, mediation, arbitration, class action waiver, fee, opt-out, and venue provisions in Section 12 and Section 13 of our Terms of Use, which are incorporated into this Policy by reference. Please read them, because they affect your legal rights.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time. When we do, we will post the revised Policy on the Site and update the effective date at the top. Changes apply prospectively from the date they are posted. We keep a copy of each published version of this Policy and the dates it was in effect.

Contact Us

If you feel that we are not abiding by this privacy policy, you should contact us immediately via telephone at 203.235.2333 or via our online contact form. You may also write to us at the address below, or email the address listed there, with any question, request, or appeal under this Policy.

The Community Economic Development Fund Foundation, Inc.
Attention: Privacy
965 East Main Street, Meriden, CT 06450

Telephone: 203.235.2333
Email: kmaciorowski@cedf.com

Effective Date: September 24, 2026