Privacy Policy

Version 1.1 | Last updated: 02/12/2025

Introduction

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary exists to prepare women and men for ministry at home and abroad. We cannot accomplish this mission alone, and we are incredibly grateful to our alumni, faculty staff, students, and friends who serve in various ways to support this good work. To accomplish our mission effectively, we often need to collect and retain information, including personal data and personally identifiable information (PII) about our constituents. The security and confidentiality of your data is important to us, and the following privacy policy exists to inform you about the types of information we collect and how those data are used at Gordon-Conwell.
 

Information We May Collect

Gordon-Conwell collects both non-personally identifiable information such as aggregate information about website visits, and personally identifiable information such as names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses. This information is collected and retained to provide necessary services to fulfill our mission. The information we collect may include:

• Information you provide directly to us through various channels, including: online and paper forms and applications, social media interaction, event registrations, and donation forms.
• Information collected through student or alumni records, such as name, course and degree details, date of birth, and contact information.
• Information gathered when you visit our website or our other online and social media platforms, such as page views, time spent on a site, referral data (how you got to the site), date and time of visit, browser and platform, and IP Address. We may gather your online use information using “cookies” and third-party software such as Google Analytics.
• Information provided by third-party data services that we contract with, such as address, phone, or email updates, death notifications, demographic and wealth data, and digital advertisements. We also obtain various data from third-party service providers such as Google and Facebook when you link or connect your accounts, as authorized by you via your privacy settings at that service provider.

 
Phone numbers collected for SMS consent will not be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing purposes under any circumstances, and opt-out is available at any time. Read the Gordon-Conwell SMS Terms and Conditions for more information.

Gordon-Conwell does not knowingly collect Personally Identifiable Information about minors (under age 18) without parental consent.
 

How We Use Your Information

Your personal information is used by Gordon-Conwell to provide services directly related to our mission as a non-profit seminary. These services include:

• Managing our Relationship with You. You are an important part of the Gordon-Conwell community, and we want to make sure to maintain accurate and up-to-date information about you, your relationship to Gordon-Conwell, and your communication preferences.
• Data Processing. When you fill out an application, engage in a financial transaction, or update information with us, we will use the data you provide to process your request.
• Contracted Services. At various times, Gordon-Conwell will contract with outside services to provide for our technology or consulting needs. When necessary and legitimate, we will provide your information to carry out these services.
• Data Analysis and Archiving. We analyze your information to perform general administrative functions and to understand how best to improve our services. We may also store your data for future analysis or use in historical research.
• Legal Obligation. We may share your information when required by international, federal, state, or local law.
• Emergency Circumstances. We may use your information when necessary to assist in an emergency.

• Communications and Marketing. We use your information to reach out to you and keep you informed about the latest news, events, and services provided by the Seminary that may be of interest to you. You may opt in or out of these communications at any time on our website. Constituents in the European Union under the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), require explicit consent (opt-in) before we will contact you with mass communications.

  We use Google Ads and Facebook Ads (including Facebook Pixel and Google Remarketing) to serve personalized ads based on your interactions with our website. These services use cookies and tracking technologies to collect data on your browsing behavior, such as pages visited and products viewed, to display relevant ads on Google’s and Facebook’s platforms. Additionally, we may use Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences to target ads to people who share similar characteristics to you. For this, we upload email lists to Facebook, which are hashed for privacy before being used. You can opt out of personalized ads through Google’s Ad Settings and Facebook’s Ad Preferences. For more information, please see Google’s Privacy Policy and Facebook’s Privacy Policy.

  By consenting to this privacy notice, you are permitting us to process your personal data specifically for the purposes identified.

Security and Storage of Your Information

Gordon-Conwell is committed to keeping your data secure by controlling access to your data and keeping up-to-date with industry standards for data storage and security. Access to your personally identifiable information is only available to approved Gordon-Conwell affiliates and contractors and only as necessary to accomplish the mission of the school.

Certain public services used with Gordon-Conwell, such as social media and online forums, will by their nature have different data access and storage policies. By using such services with Gordon-Conwell, you are consenting to the security, storage, and access rights to your data as required or specified by those services.

Though we will do our best to ensure that your data is secure, we also recognize that no security system is impenetrable. Gordon-Conwell cannot guarantee the security of the databases or the transmission of data over the internet.
 

Your Rights

Where authorized and subject to all applicable laws, you may have the right to request access to, edits to or erasure of your information from our databases. You may, at any time, withdraw your consent (opt-out) from Gordon-Conwell communications.
 

Updates to this Policy

This privacy policy may be updated or changed at any time. Your use of any Gordon-Conwell resources covered by this policy indicates your acceptance of the current privacy policy at the time of use.