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Privacy Policy

General: This “Privacy Policy” describes the privacy practices of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Whenever we process your personal data, we always endeavour to do so responsibly and in compliance with the law. This Policy explains how we process your personal information and the choices you can make about what information you provide, how your data is collected, and how it is used when using the MJFF Grant Portal (Grant Portal).  

MJFF has partnered with the Coalition for Aligning Science LLC (CAS) on the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) funding initiative. This partnership enables ASAP to leverage MJFF’s grant administration and grantmaking infrastructure to receive applications, administer the review process and make grant awards to projects selected for ASAP funding. This Policy, therefore, is applicable to grants, applications, and information provided through the Grant Portal for ASAP purposes as well as MJFF purposes, and MJFF may share any information about you or your research project with CAS in the joint administration of MJFF and ASAP's funding programs.

Where information is processed for grants unrelated to ASAP, MJFF is the sole data controller of your personal information. Where information is processed for grants related to ASAP funding, MJFF and CAS will be joint controllers of your personal information.

Data Collection: We may collect your personal information in a number of ways, including:

•    Directly from you when you enter your details directly into the Grant Portal;
•    Indirectly where a colleague at your institution provides us with your details in the Grant Portal as part of an application;
•    From cookies and similar technologies when you are using the Grant Portal; and
•    When we interact with you in other ways such as by phone or email

During the course of our dealing with you, we may collect the following personal data:

•    Name;
•    Contact details (email, phone number etc.);
•    Professional information (role, institution, researcher ID etc.);
•    Marketing preferences; and
•    Bank details (only where payment is made directly to you and not your affiliated institution).


Purposes and Uses: We only collect personal information about you where we have a legitimate reason for doing so and to further our mission to serve Parkinson’s disease patients and work with the Parkinson’s disease scientific research community. For each purpose for processing, in accordance with EU and UK law, we have identified a lawful basis for processing. 

Contract – We need to collect certain information for the purposes of performing a contract that we have entered into with you. For example:
•    To administer our grant funding contracts.

Legitimate Interests – We process individuals’ personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests to:
•    Respond to any queries or concerns sent to us;
•    To manage the grant application process and make decisions around whether to award funding;
•    Help maintain the security and performance of our Grant Portal.

Legal Obligation – We are under a legal obligation to process certain personal information for purposes including:
•    To comply with financial record keeping obligations in relation to recipients of grant funding.

Consent – In some circumstances, we may ask you for your consent to process your personal information. This is usually to:
•    Send you relevant information about our programs and services that you have signed up to receive; 
•    Use marketing and analytics cookies on our Grant Portal; and
Submission of the information listed above is voluntary; however, in order to be able to fully consider any application you make, most fields are required.  

Sensitive Data: Alongside the personal information listed above, we also ask in the Grant Portal that you provide us with demographic information (race, gender identity, disability status etc.) about yourself. These types of personal information are considered particularly sensitive under some laws, and so we make providing us this data completely voluntary, based on your consent. The purpose of collecting this data is to monitor the existence of any bias in the selection process by collecting, aggregating and analysing this information to try to ensure equality of opportunity and treatment.

Data Sharing: We may share your personal data with the following categories of third party organisations:

•    CAS, for the purposes of the joint administration of the ASAP funding initiative; 
•    External reviewers, for the purposes of reviewing research proposals and providing feedback; and
•    Law enforcement authorities, courts, and other governmental authorities where required by law or to assert or defend our rights.

We will also share your personal information with carefully selected third party data processors/service providers who perform services on our behalf. For example, MJFF uses a third party, SmartSimple, to administer the information that is obtained through your use of the Grant Portal. In addition, we use third party website analytics providers, and DocuSign as our eSignature platform. These organisations will not use your personal information except to provide the agreed services on our behalf. We ensure that we have the required agreements in place to safeguard your personal information and all third parties are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information.

Where we share the personal information of individuals located in the EU or UK with other third parties located in the US or otherwise outside the EU or UK, we ensure that we implement appropriate transfer mechanisms to ensure that your personal information is adequately protected. This includes implementing standard contractual clauses.

Aside from the above, we do not sell, rent or otherwise give your personal information to third parties.

Retaining Data: We only retain information for as long as is necessary to achieve our purposes, after which time it is securely destroyed. Your personal information will be retained in accordance with our Retention Schedule which outlines for how long we keep different types of personal information. Our retention periods are based upon the purpose for with the information is collected and used, taking into account legal and regulatory requirements to retain the information for a minimum period, good practice, and our legitimate interests.

Security: Following login by an account holder, the associated grant-related information submitted by the user is collected, maintained, and disseminated through secure interfaces. Smart Simple and its hosting partners are SOC 2 complaint (SOC 2 is the most recognized compliance criteria for cloud vendors around the world). Furthermore, Smart Simple is compliant with the standards for PCI DSS Level 3, FIPS 140-2 encryption, and data in motion is encrypted using HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) protocols combined with TLS (Transport Layer Security) ciphers to ensure security when transferring data. Information is also provided securely to the account holder, including the results of peer review, and the deliberations of the Grant Review Committee established by MJFF to review the grant application. Except for internal administrative purposes, the grant application is treated as confidential until an award is made. Upon award, the title, principal investigator name(s), abstract of the project, award amount are disclosed publicly.

Your rights: Depending upon where you are located, you may have some or all of the following rights in relation to your personal information: 
•    ask for access to your personal information via a 'subject access request';
•    ask for personal information we hold about you to be corrected;
•    ask for your personal information to be deleted. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it;
•    object to the processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest, and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing it;
•    ask for the processing of your personal information to be restricted. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you; and
•    ask for your personal information to be transferred to another company.
To protect your privacy and security, we will take certain steps to verify your identity before granting access to your information or complying with other requests. You will be asked specific questions, including full name, address, phone number, and, if applicable, credit card numbers and/or expiration date. 

If you would like to exercise any of the above rights, you can do so by emailing privacy@michaeljfox.org or calling +1 212 509 0995. 

Where we rely on consent to process your personal data, you have a right to withdraw your consent at any time. To withdraw your consent to receive marketing emails from us, you can visit your Profile Center via a "Manage My Preferences" link at the bottom of all Foundation emails.

Contacting Us: MJFF values your comments and opinions. If you have comments, questions or concerns about our privacy policy or if you would like access to the personal information you have provided, contact us via grants@michaeljfox.org.  Please allow 2-3 business days for a reply. When inquiries are emailed to us, the question/comment/opinions and the e-mail address information are stored so that an electronic response can be composed and sent.

You can also contact our Privacy Team using the details below:

privacy@michaeljfox.org

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research
Grand Central Station
P.O. Box 4777
New York, NY 10163-4777 

To help facilitate the exercising of data protection rights by data subjects located in the UK and EU, we have appointed The DPO Centre Ltd and The DPO Centre (Europe) Ltd to act as our UK and EU Representatives, respectively. 

Our UK Representative can be contacted using the following details:
The DPO Centre Ltd
50 Liverpool Street, London, EC2M 7PY
Phone: +44 203 797 1289
Email: eurep@michaeljfox.org 

Our EU Representative can be contacted using the following details:

The DPO Centre (Europe) Ltd
Alexandra House
Ballsbridge Park, Dublin, D04C 7H2, Ireland
Phone: +353 1 631 9460
Email: ukrep@michaeljfox.org 

Where you are located in either the UK or the EU, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority if you are unhappy with how we have processed your personal information. For example, in the UK this is the Information Commissioner’s Office who can be contacted via this link.

Conditions of Use, Notices, and Revisions: From time to time, MJFF conduct internal audits of its information practices and reserve the right to make changes to this policy. Changes to this Policy are also made to comply with evolving legal and regulatory requirements. MJFF reserves the right to make changes to this Policy at any given time. We advise you to visit this page frequently to make sure that you are up to date with the latest changes. If at any point in time MJFF decides to make use of any personal information on file in a manner vastly different from that which was stated when this information was initially collected, the user or users shall be notified by email.

Last updated May 2024.