Alley Cat Allies, Inc. (“Alley Cat Allies” or “us” or “we” or “our”) (“Alley Cat Allies” or “us” or “we” or “our”) owns and operates the alleycat.org site (“Site”). Alley Cat Allies is committed to protecting your privacy when you visit and interact with the Site. As such, Alley Cat Allies’ privacy practices are explained in this Privacy Policy (“Policy”).
This Policy contains details about how Alley Cat Allies collects and uses information collected through the Site and through other communications between us.
Through our Site, you may access third-party websites not operated by us; this Policy does not apply to those sites, and we encourage you to review their respective privacy policies.
This Policy was last updated on and is effective as of January 14, 2026.
Policy Changes
Alley Cat Allies may update this Policy from time to time. Any changes to this Policy will be posted below for a period of thirty (30) days and will be effective when posted. The changes will also be immediately incorporated into this Policy.
Your continued use of the Site after any changes are made to this Policy constitutes your acceptance of the changes. If any of the changes are unacceptable to you, you should cease using the Site.
If any changes to this Policy affect how Alley Cat Allies treats or handles information already provided by you to Alley Cat Allies, Alley Cat Allies will notify you by email (if Alley Cat Allies has a valid email address to use) and give you thirty (30) days to opt-out of the changes as they pertain to your information.
Contents
Collection and Use of Information/Choices
You can generally visit the Site without revealing any personally identifiable information about yourself. Personal information (“Personal Information” ) is generally defined as any information that may be able to identify you including, but not limited to:
- Contact information, including name, address (such as home address, work address, or other address), email address, phone number, and other contact information you provide us;
- Payment information, including credit card or debit card information;
- Account information, including username, account history, and transactions;
- Demographic information, if provided to us, including your age, gender, income level, education, or family or marital status;
- Location information, including general geographic location such as country, state or province, or city;
- Device information, including your IP address, device identifiers, operating system and version, preferred language, hardware identifiers, browser type and settings, and other device information;
- Content and information you elect to provide as part of your profile or any information submitted to us through the Site, social media, emails, chats, calls, or other communications with us;
- Identity document information, such as driver’s license numbers, if you have provided such information to us;
- Statistics or aggregated information, which does not directly identify a specific person, but we may derive non-personal statistical or aggregated data from personal data. For example, we may aggregate personal data to calculate the percentage of users accessing the Site from a certain geographic area;
- Inferences drawn from any information collected to create a profile about you reflecting your preferences, characteristics, trends, behavior, predispositions, etc.
- Technical information, which includes information about your internet connection and usage details about your interactions with the Site, such as clickstream information to, through, and from our Site (including date and time), information that you view or search for; page response times, download errors, length of your visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), or methods used to browse away from a page.
There are areas on the Site where you may be asked to provide Alley Cat Allies with Personal Information. For example, Personal Information such as name, mailing address, email address, phone number, credit card number, birthday, office address and other business information, may be collected from you when you:
- make monetary donations to Alley Cat Allies;
- leave/plan future monetary gifts to the Alley Cat Allies (e.g., bequests, life insurance);
- seek to donate personal or real property/non-monetary items or gifts;
- shop via the Site;
- register for Alley Cat Allies events, workshops, podcasts, and/or webinars;
- contact Alley Cat Allies with questions or comments;
- create a user name and password (or answer to security question) in order to establish a Site account;
- sign petitions or pledges for/against certain laws or regulations;
- request neighborhood distribution materials for circulation (e.g., door hangers);
- apply for a job;
- sign up to be a “feral friend” or request assistance from a “feral friend” through the Feral Friends Network;
- send personalized eCards through the Site;
- participate in surveys, questionnaires, or contests; and/or
- sign up for various Alley Cat Allies’ newsletters or other information via
If you use a payment provider (e.g., PayPal) or other third party service that interacts with the Site, Alley Cat Allies may receive information about you from that service, site or app.
Alley Cat Allies may use your Personal Information to:
- maintain proper business and other relevant records;
- administer Site accounts;
- process donations or gifts made to Alley Cat Allies;
- process payments and ship items purchased through the Site;
- process reservations for, and administer, events, workshops, podcasts, and/or webinars;
- administer/process petitions and pledges in favor/against certain laws or regulations;
- process requests for, and ship, neighborhood distribution materials;
- review job applicant information, conduct interviews, and/or hire personnel;
- process requests to be a “feral friend” or requests for assistance from “feral friends” via the Feral Friends Network;
- administer the Feral Friends Network;
- process and send eCard requests;
- schedule/administer meetings and events;
- respond to questions or comments;
- deliver services through the Site;
- process and catalog responses to surveys or questionnaires;
- enter you in, and administer, contests and other promotions;
- send you Alley Cat Allies newsletters and other updates or information;
- improve the content and general administration of the Site;
- customize the Site to provide better user experience;
- enhance or maintain Site security;
- perform internal Site operations (e.g., fraud prevention);
- troubleshoot software issues and operational problems;
- conduct Site data analysis and testing;
- monitor Site usage;
- Carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from our Terms of Use, this Privacy Policy, or any other policy of Alley Cat Allies;
- Notify you about any changes to the Site or any updates of Alley Cat Allies;
- Provide you with information that we think may be useful or interesting to you;
- Marketing purposes;
- Carrying out our purpose and mission statement;
- Comply with all applicable laws and regulations;
- Investigate any potential violations of any applicable laws and regulations, or any policy of Alley Cat Allies; and/or
As you navigate through and interact with our Site, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect information that may include Personal Information. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, operating system, and browser type, and information collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies, including details of your interactions with our Site, such as traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data, and which resources and Site features that you access and use.
We may use these automatic collection technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party sites or other online services (behavioral tracking).
Using automatic collection technologies helps us to improve our Site and to deliver a better and more personalized experience.
The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:
- Cookies, which are files that are transmitted to your computer when you visit the Site for the purpose of: running the Site and storing your information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the Site (essential cookies); providing custom, personalized content and information (functionality cookies); monitoring aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors of Site and pages viewed (analytical cookies); and customizing your ad experience on the Site (marketing cookies).For additional general information regarding cookies, please see httP-s://en.wikiP-edia.orgLwiki/HlTP cookie. You may be able to delete cookies by consulting your browser and/or computer instructions. Please note that any deletion of cookies could affect how the Site appears and/or operates for you.
- Web Beacons. Some parts of the Site and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit us, for example, to count users who have visited those parts or opened an email and for other related statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain content and verifying system and server integrity.
Alley Cat Allies uses multiple services to track Site usage trends, measure Site performance, improve Site features. No Personal Information is collected by these services during this process. For further information, please see the privacy policies associated with these service providers:
Alley Cat Allies uses services to serve you customized Alley Cat Allies advertisements on third party sites based on your interaction with the Site. These services may place cookies on your browser for these targeted advertising purposes. Data is not collected from you during this process, rather data is deposited in the form of a cookie on your computer. Personal information such as your name, email address, postal address and/or telephone number are not collected. You may be able to delete cookies by consulting your browser and/or computer instructions. Please note that any deletion of cookies could affect how the Site appears and/or operates for you.
You can also generally opt-out of receiving targeted ads from third party advertisers and ad networks who are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) by clicking here: www.networkadvertising.org/choices. We also comply with the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising as managed by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA). You may opt out of receiving targeted advertisements from other companies that perform interest-based advertising services, including some that we may work with, via the DAA site found here: www.aboutads.info/choices. Please note that when using the ad industry opt-out tools described above, you may need to execute this opt-out on each browser or device that you use, and that other companies’ opt-outs may function differently than our opt-out.
Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent will not be shared with any third parties unless required by law.
By providing to Alley Cat Allies the Personal Information and other information referenced above, you agree that Alley Cat Allies may use the Personal Information and other information in accordance with the terms of this Policy.
Sharing of Personal Information and Other Information
Your Rights
Every user of the Site is entitled to the following: (i) the right to request copies of your Personal Information, (ii) the right to request that Alley Cat Allies correct any Personal Information that you believe is inaccurate or incomplete; (iii) the right to request that Alley Cat Allies erase your Personal Information; (iv) the right to request Alley Cat Allies to restrict its processing of your Personal Information; (v) the right to request that Alley Cat Allies transfer your Personal Information to another organization or directly to you. You acknowledge that any requests made pursuant to this section must be in writing and provided to Alley Cat Allies at [email protected].
Please note that we may not be able to delete your Personal Information except by also deleting your user account, if any. We may not accommodate a request to change Personal Information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the Personal Information to be incorrect. Notwithstanding anything contained to the contrary herein, we may retain certain Personal Information necessary to fulfill the purpose for which such Personal Information was obtained and for certain other necessary purposes. Further, please note that Alley Cat Allies reserves the right to maintain proper business records as required by law, or for other organizational reasons permitted by law even if such records contain your Personal Information.
If you would like to opt out of receiving further promotional emails from Alley Cat Allies, please follow the opt-out instructions at the bottom of the email or send Alley Cat Allies an email to [email protected] and provide us with the requested information to process your request.
Alley Cat Allies does not knowingly collect any information from minors, nor is the Site directed at or intended for minors. If a minor uploads/posts information to the Site that is publicly available, and the minor subsequently wants that same information deleted, the minor has a right to request that said information be removed from public viewing. To do so, please send an email
to [email protected] with the subject line “Request to Remove Information Regarding a Minor” and provide us with the requested information to process your request.
Please note that we do not sell data triggering certain states’ opt-out requirements.
Response to “Do Not Track” Requests/Signals
As noted previously in this Policy, several third parties may directly collect information through the Site. Since it is possible that some of these third parties may respond differently than Alley Cat Allies to “do not track” requests, you should consult the applicable privacy policies of those third parties for that information.
Data Security and Retention
While Alley Cat Allies takes the issue of protecting your Personal Information seriously, you should exercise discretion in what information you disclose and/or transmit to the Site. Alley Cat Allies cannot guarantee that information sent over the Internet is fully secure, and therefore the transmitted information may be intercepted by others before it reaches Alley Cat Allies. If you are concerned about sending information to Alley Cat Allies over the Internet, please send the information by mail or call us to make other arrangements. Alley Cat Allies is not responsible for the security of information sent over the Internet.
Alley Cat Allies retains collected information for a reasonable amount of time in order to fulfill the stated purpose for why the information was collected. Alley Cat Allies will also retain collected information connected to business records for periods of time required by law. If Alley Cat Allies determines that collected information is no longer needed, it will delete such information. Our collection times will be consistent with applicable law.
We may store your Personal Information on third-party servers. Alley Cat Allies reserves the right to retain Personal Information indefinitely unless prohibited by law. Retention periods may vary depending on the type of data and applicable legal obligations.
When you submit credit card or other payment information through the Site, that information is transmitted directly from your browser to our third-party payment processor and is not stored by Alley Cat Allies. You should review the processor’s own privacy and data practices for further details. When entering your credit card information, you may be redirected to the third-party service provider’s site. You should refer to such third-party service provider’s privacy policies, data practices, and terms of use for additional information. By providing your credit card information through a third-party service provider, you expressly agree to all such applicable terms and conditions.
Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a username and password for access to certain parts of our Site, you are responsible for keeping this username and password confidential. We ask you not to share your username or password with anyone and restrict access to your devices through which you access the Site.
You understand and agree that you assume all responsibility and risk for your use of the Site, the content therein, third-party materials, and the Internet generally, and for your conduct on the Site.
SMS
You may be able now or in the future to register to receive communications via short message service (“SMS Service”). Participation in the SMS Service is not necessary to use the Site. By registering to participate in the SMS Service, you certify that you are: (i) over the age of eighteen (18) or your parent or legal guardian having the full legal capacity is hereby providing consent to you registering to participate in the SMS Service, with the understanding that all terms set forth in this Policy or any other policy of Alley Cat Allies shall be binding upon you and your parent or legal guardian, (ii) authorized to enroll the designated mobile phone number in the SMS Service, and (iii) authorized to incur any mobile message or data charges that may be incurred by participating in the SMS Service.
By subscribing to the SMS Service, you expressly consent and agree to accept and receive communications via text message to your mobile device and to the cellular/mobile telephone number(s) that you provided to Alley Cat Allies. The information in any message may be subject to time lags and/or delays.
You can text STOP to stop receiving text messages from us and HELP to receive help. You consent that following such a request to unsubscribe, you may receive one final message confirming that you have unsubscribed.
By participating in the SMS Service, you approve any such charges from your mobile carrier. Check your carrier’s plan for details. You acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible and liable for obtaining, maintaining, and paying all charges related to your mobile device(s).
Alley Cat Allies is not responsible for incomplete, lost, late, or misdirected messages, including (but not limited to) undelivered messages resulting from any form of filtering by your mobile carrier or service provider or otherwise.
You acknowledge and agree that the SMS Service may be provided in some cases through automatic telephone dialing technology, an artificial voice, or a pre-recorded voice. By providing the Alley Cat Allies with your phone number, you expressly consent to receive the SMS Service through automatic dialing technology, artificial and pre-recorded voice. You agree to receive notifications from Alley Cat Allies, its representatives, employees, and agents, through any means authorized under this Policy and any other published policy of Alley Cat Allies, including phone calls and text messages that use automatic telephone dialing technology, artificial voice or pre-recorded voice or live person.
Alley Cat Allies reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel or suspend any or all of the SMS Service, in whole or in part, for any reason, with or without notice to you.
Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent will not be shared with any third parties unless required by law.
Donor Privacy
It is our policy to exchange the names of our donors and supporters with other charities that share our values. We do this in order to expand our donor base and spread our mission and to support those charities who we feel are working toward the good of animals and our community. Donors may opt-out of having their personal information shared and request that we remove their contact information from mailing lists we share or sell by contacting us as follows: email [email protected] or call 240-482-1980.
Children’s Privacy
Our Site is intended for a general audience, including individuals under the age of 18. We encourage all to use our Site as a resource. However, creating an account, making a donation, or signing up for newsletters, emails, or other communications from Alley Cat Allies requires you to be at least 18 years old or to have verifiable parental consent.
We do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose personal information from children under the age of 13 (or under 16 in the EU/EEA) without verifiable parental consent, as required by applicable law. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child without appropriate consent, we will promptly delete it. Parents or guardians who believe their child has provided us personal information without their consent may contact us at [email protected] to request deletion.
Non-U.S. Concerns
Certain jurisdictions may provide you with certain privacy rights under applicable data protection or privacy laws regarding the Personal Information you provide to Alley Cat Allies.
In particular: If you are a resident of Canada, the EU, EEA, UK, or Switzerland whose personal data is subject to the Canada Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”), EU data protection law (“GDPR”) or the UK Data Protection Act 2018, you may have certain privacy rights to: (i) be informed about how we collect and use your data, (ii) request access to your Personal Information, (iii) request correction of any Personal Information that is inaccurate, (iv) request erasure of your Personal Information, (v) restrict or suppress your Personal Information, (vi) object to the processing of your Personal Information, including for direct marketing, (vii) request data portability (the transfer of your Personal Information to you or to a third party), (viii) and object to how your Personal Information is used in automated decision making, if applicable. Where required, Alley Cat Allies will respond to such requests in accordance with the requirements of applicable data protection laws. If Alley Cat Allies becomes subject to Article 27 of the GDPR, it will designate an EU/UK representative who may be contacted regarding matters arising under those laws, and whose contact details will be posted in this Privacy Policy. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority if you believe your rights have been violated.
If you are a resident (natural person) of California whose Personal Information is subject to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”), you may have additional privacy rights relating to your Personal Information, such as to be informed about: certain categories of Personal Information collected by Alley Cat Allies, certain sources from which Personal Information is collected, the purpose for which the Personal Information is collected, the categories of third-party recipients of the Personal Information, and your rights and choices regarding your Personal Information, including how to exercise such rights, if any. If required, Alley Cat Allies will provide such information to you in accordance with the requirements of applicable data protection laws.
California’s “Shine the Light” law (Civil Code Section § 1798.83) allows Site users that are California residents, to request certain information pertaining to Alley Cat Allies’ disclosure of Personal Information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please contact Alley Cat Allies by emailing us at [email protected].
Alley Cat Allies processes personal data on the basis of (i) your consent; (ii) the performance of any agreement with you; (iii) compliance with legal obligations; or (iv) its legitimate interests in pursuing its charitable mission and purpose, provided such interests are not overridden by your rights under applicable law.
The Site is meant for individuals within the United States. Alley Cat Allies only knowingly collects information from individuals within the United States. If you provide information to Alley Cat Allies from outside of the United States, you do so at your own risk. If you are outside of the United States, you are responsible for complying with any local laws regarding use of the Site, and related data collection. You also agree and acknowledge that by providing any information, including Personal Information, through the Site, that such information will be transmitted to, and processed and stored in, the United States.
External Links
The Site may contain links to external sites, including those embedded in third party advertisements, that are not controlled by Alley Cat Allies. Alley Cat Allies is not responsible for the content, privacy practices and/or data collection policies for such third-party sites. You should consult the privacy policies of those sites for details.
Alley Cat Allies may also allow interaction between the Site and other sites or mobile applications such as Facebook or other social media providers. This may include the “Like” button or other plugins available through the Site that allow you to share information with persons outside of the Site. Please consult the privacy policies of those third-party providers before using them to make sure you are comfortable with the level of sharing.
Terms of Use
The Terms of Use for the Site is incorporated by reference into this Policy. The Terms of Use can be found at: https://www.alleycat.org//terms-and-conditions/.
Miscellaneous
There may be areas on the Site where you are asked to supply the Personal Information of another person (e.g., making a gift in the honor of someone else). Please be sure you have the proper permission from the person or other relevant party to submit such Personal Information through the Site. Alley Cat Allies is not responsible for any harm to any third parties as a result of you submitting a third party’s Personal Information through the Site.
If you have any questions regarding this Policy, please contact Alley Cat Allies at:
EMAIL: [email protected]
PHONE: 240-482-1980 MAIL:
Alley Cat Allies
7920 Norfolk Ave, Suite 600
Bethesda, Maryland 20814
It is the policy of Alley Cat Allies to strictly enforce this Policy. If you believe there has been some violation of this Policy, please contact Alley Cat Allies.
This Policy was last updated on January 14, 2026.
