Privacy Policy

Common Ground Carolina is a civic organization based in Pickens County, South Carolina. This policy explains what information we collect through this website, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the choices you have.

This policy covers this website and the email and text message programs you can join through it. It applies to everyone who visits the site or joins one of our lists.

Information you give us

When you sign up through the form on this site, we ask for the following. Only your name, your email address, and your agreement to receive email are required. Everything else is optional.

• Your full name.
• Your email address.
• Your mobile phone number, only if you choose to give it and only used if you also check the text message consent box.
• Your street address, city, and ZIP code, if you choose to give them. We use these to understand which parts of the county we are reaching and to tell you about things happening near you.
• Whether you agreed to receive email from us, and whether you agreed to receive text messages.

If you give us a phone number but do not check the text message box, we discard the phone number rather than storing it. You will still be added to the email list.

Information we record about your consent

Because federal telemarketing and email rules require us to be able to prove that you asked to hear from us, every submission creates a consent record containing:

• The date and time you submitted the form.
• The IP address the submission came from.
• Your browser's user agent string, which identifies the browser and operating system.
• The exact consent wording that appeared on the page, and which boxes you checked.

We keep these records for one reason only: to demonstrate that consent was given, if we are ever asked. We do not use them for marketing or profiling.

Information collected automatically

Like most websites, we use analytics to understand how the site is used, for example which pages people read and roughly where visitors are located. This is described in Cookies and analytics. We do not use this information to identify you personally, and we do not combine it with your signup record.

We use what we collect to:

• Send you updates about local issues, county and school board decisions, community events, and our work, so you can stay informed on topics relevant to where you live.
• Let you know when showing up matters, for example a public hearing, a vote, or a community meeting.
• Send text message alerts, only if you specifically agreed to receive them.
• Understand which parts of the county we are reaching, so our outreach is not concentrated in one place.
• Answer you when you contact us.
• Keep proof that you consented to hear from us, as the law requires.
• Improve this website, using aggregate analytics.
• Comply with the law, and protect the safety and rights of our organization and others.

We do not use your information to make automated decisions about you, and we do not build advertising profiles.

Our text message program is optional and completely separate from email. You are only enrolled if you check the text message consent box and provide a mobile number. Checking the email box alone will never result in a text message.

Program details

• Program name. Common Ground Carolina community alerts.
• What we send. Civic updates, notices about local meetings and votes, and community event reminders. We do not send advertising for third parties.
• Message frequency. Varies. We text when something is worth your attention, not on a fixed schedule.
• Cost. We do not charge for messages. Message and data rates from your carrier may apply.
• To stop. Reply STOP to any message and you will be removed. You will receive one confirmation that you have been unsubscribed, and nothing after that.
• For help. Reply HELP to any message, or use our contact form.
• Age. You must be at least 18 years old to join the text message program.
• Consent is never a condition. You do not have to agree to text messages to join our email list, to attend anything, or to take part in our work.
• Carriers. Mobile carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

Carrier registration and A2P 10DLC

To send business text messages to United States mobile numbers, an organization has to register its brand and its messaging campaign with the mobile carriers. This is the framework known as A2P 10DLC, for application-to-person messaging over ten digit long codes. We register through our messaging provider, which submits our organization details, a description of the program, and sample messages to The Campaign Registry, which shares them with the carriers.

As part of that framework, carriers and their vetting partners receive information about our organization and our messaging program. Your individual consent record stays with us and our messaging provider; it is not published, but we must be able to produce it on request.

Text message consent is never shared with, sold to, or transferred to any third party for their own marketing. It exists only to run our own program.

When you check the email consent box, we add you to our list and send periodic updates. Email is sent through LeadConnector, the HighLevel platform described below.

• Every email includes a one click unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing takes effect immediately and we do not ask you to log in or explain yourself.
• Every email includes our valid physical postal address, as federal law requires.
• We never use misleading subject lines or forged sender information.
• You can also ask us to remove you through the contact form, and we will do it by hand.

Our email platform records ordinary delivery information such as whether a message was delivered, opened, or clicked. We use that only to tell whether our updates are useful and whether our messages are reaching inboxes at all.

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how people use this site. It sets cookies in your browser so it can tell a returning visitor from a new one and group page views into a single visit.

Nothing is set until you agree. Analytics runs in consent mode with storage denied by default, so on a first visit no analytics cookie is written at all. The notice at the bottom of the screen asks once, both answers are one tap, and the site works identically either way. If you decline later, we delete the analytics cookies already in your browser.

These are analytics cookies. We do not use advertising or retargeting cookies, we do not run ad network pixels, and we do not use analytics data to follow you around the internet.

Google Analytics uses your IP address to estimate the general area you are visiting from, then discards it. It does not store your IP address, and we never see it in our analytics reports. Analytics data is retained for fourteen months and then deleted.

How to turn analytics off

• Decline in the cookie notice, or use the button above, and analytics stays off on this device.
• Your browser settings let you block or delete cookies, including ours. The site works perfectly well without them.
• Google publishes a browser add-on that opts you out of Google Analytics on every site, available at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
• You can also email us and ask us to exclude you, and we will confirm when it is done.

To be straightforward with you: this site does not currently detect Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control browser signals. If you want analytics off, use one of the options above.

We share information only with the service providers who make our lists work, and only so they can do that job for us. They are not allowed to use your information for their own purposes.

• HighLevel, Inc., which operates GoHighLevel and LeadConnector. This is the platform that stores our contact list and delivers our email and text messages. Your name, email address, phone number if you gave one, street address, city, ZIP code, and your consent record are stored there.
• Google. Google Analytics receives website usage information as described above. It does not receive your name, email address, or phone number.
• Mobile carriers and the A2P 10DLC registry. As explained in the text message section, carriers receive information about our organization and our messaging program so that our messages are allowed through.
• Website hosting. Our hosting provider processes the ordinary technical information needed to serve this site to you.
• Legal and safety situations. We may disclose information if the law requires it, or if it is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of our organization, our supporters, or the public.
• If our organization changes form. If we merge with or transfer our work to another organization, our contact list may transfer with it. If that happens, we will say so on this page first, and the new organization will be bound by this policy until you are told otherwise.

• We never sell your information. Not to campaigns, not to vendors, not to data brokers, not to anyone.
• We never rent, trade, or lend our list.
• We never share your phone number or your text message consent with another organization for their marketing. Under the carrier rules we operate within, that is prohibited, and we agree with the rule.
• We never sign you up for text messages because you gave us a phone number. That takes a separate, explicit checkbox.
• We never make you accept text messages in order to receive email, attend an event, or take part in our work.

You are in control of this relationship. Whatever state you live in, and whether or not a law requires it, we will honor these requests:

• Stop the emails. Click unsubscribe in any email, or write to us.
• Stop the text messages. Reply STOP to any message, or write to us.
• See what we hold about you. Ask, and we will send you a copy.
• Fix it. If anything we hold is wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
• Delete it. Ask us to erase your information and we will, except for the minimum record we must keep to show that you once asked to be removed, which prevents us from accidentally contacting you again.
• Opt out of analytics. See the three options in the cookies section above.

Send your request through our contact form and we will respond within thirty days, usually much sooner. We will not charge you, and we will not treat you differently for asking.

• Your contact record. Kept while you are on our list. If you unsubscribe, we remove the record and keep only enough information to make sure we do not contact you again by mistake.
• Consent records. Kept for four years after you join, because that is how long we could be asked to prove that consent was given.
• Analytics data. Retained by Google Analytics for fourteen months, then deleted automatically.
• Messages you send us. Kept as long as needed to deal with what you wrote about, and for our own records afterward.

This site is served only over an encrypted connection, so everything you type into the form is encrypted in transit. Your information is held in our contact platform behind password-protected accounts, and access is limited to the people who need it to send you updates.

We will be honest with you: no organization can promise perfect security, and anyone who does is overstating it. What we can promise is that we collect as little as we can get away with, that we do not keep what we do not need, and that if a breach ever affects your information we will tell you promptly.

This site is meant for adults taking part in local civic life. We do not knowingly collect information from children under thirteen, and you must be at least 18 years old to join the text message program.

If you believe a child has given us information, tell us through our contact form and we will delete it.

A number of states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Texas, Oregon, and Montana, give residents rights over their personal information, such as the right to know what is held, to correct it, to delete it, and to opt out of its sale or of targeted advertising.

We have taken the simple route: we extend those rights to everyone, regardless of where you live, and the way to use them is in Your choices and rights. For the avoidance of doubt, we do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, so there is nothing for you to opt out of on that front.

This site links to other places, such as county government pages, local news, and the sources behind the figures we cite. Those sites have their own privacy practices and we are not responsible for them. It is worth reading their policies before giving them your information.

If we change how we handle your information, we will update this page and change the date at the top. If a change is significant, for example a new category of information or a new provider that receives it, we will say so directly rather than quietly editing the text.

Questions about this policy, or about anything we hold about you, go to a person, not a form:

If you want off either list, the fastest routes are the unsubscribe link in any email and replying STOP to any text, but writing to us works just as well and we will handle it by hand.