Privacy Policy

Last Updated: September 12th, 2024

GrantMe Education Consulting Inc. (“GrantMe”, “we”, or “us”) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting the personal information you may provide to us while using or accessing our services, using our website, or by voluntarily interacting with us. This website is operated by GrantMe. Throughout the site, the terms “we”, “us” and “our” refer to all subsidiaries of GrantMe Education, including AdmissionPrep.com.

The purpose of this privacy policy is to inform you about our privacy practices, including how we collect, use and disclose your personal information. This privacy policy relates to all of our activities, unless we have provided you with a separate privacy policy for a particular product, service or activity (the “Policy”).

Please review the Policy carefully. By submitting your personal information to us, by using our website, or by voluntarily interacting with us, you consent to our collecting, using and disclosing your personal information as set out in this Policy, as revised from time to time.

Your continued use of our website and/or services following the posting of any amendment to this Policy shall constitute your acceptance of such amendment.

WHAT IS IN THIS PRIVACY POLICY?

Meaning of Personal Information
Your Consent to Collection, Use and Disclosure
Personal Information We Collect
Non-Personal Information We Collect
How We Use Your Personal Information
How We Share Your Personal Information
Opting Out of Communications
Retention of Personal Information
Information Security
Accessing and Updating Your Personal Information
International Transfer and Storage of Information
Third Party Websites and Services
Children’s Information
Newsletters
Privacy Policy Updates
Contact Us
MEANING OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

“Personal information” means recorded information that is reasonably capable of identifying an individual. This information may include, but is not limited to, your name, date of birth, mailing address, e-mail address and telephone number.

Subject to applicable laws, personal information does not include any business contact information that is solely used to communicate with you in relation to your employment, business or profession, such as your name, position name or title, work address, work telephone number, work fax number or work electronic address.

Personal information also does not include information that has been anonymized or aggregated in such a way that there is no serious possibility it can be used to identify an individual, whether on its own or in combination with other information.

YOUR CONSENT TO COLLECTION, USE, AND DISCLOSURE

We collect, use and disclose your personal information with your consent or as permitted or required by law. How we obtain your consent (i.e. the form we use) will depend on the circumstances, as well as the sensitivity of the information collected. Subject to applicable laws, your consent may be express or implied, depending on the circumstances and the sensitivity of the personal information in question. If you choose to provide personal information to us, we assume that you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as outlined in this Policy.

Typically, we will seek your consent at the time your personal information is collected. Where we want to use your personal information for a purpose not previously identified to you at the time of collection, we will seek your consent prior to our use of such information for this new purpose.

You may withdraw your consent to our collection, use or disclosure of your personal information at any time by contacting us using the contact information in the “Contact Us” section below. However, before we implement the withdrawal of consent, we may require proof of your identity. In some cases, withdrawal of your consent may mean that we will no longer be able to provide certain products or services.

If you provide personal information about another individual to us, it is your responsibility to obtain the consent of that individual to enable us to collect, use and disclose their information as described in this Policy. By providing personal information about another individual to us, you represent that you have obtained their prior consent to do so, and made them aware of this Policy.

PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We do not collect any personal information from you unless you provide it to us in one of the ways discussed in this Policy. The personal information we collect is generally in one or more of the following ways.

Information we collect directly:

For individuals who visit our website located at https://grantme.ca/ and its related subpages (collectively, “our website”), we may collect information from you or from your activities on the website:

When you register, create, and populate your account, we may collect your full name, email address, telephone number, password, residency/citizenship status, age, contact information, family information, financial information, academic information including GPA and transcripts, information about extracurricular activities, personal circumstances, disability status (if applicable), and any other personal information you choose to share, including the content of any essays or messages you prepare and submit to us.
When you complete our online quizzes or assessment, we may collect your name, email address, residency/citizenship status, academic history, financial information, and information about your academic goals and history.
When you use online functions through your account, including Tasks, we may collect whatever information you choose to share through those functions.
Information we collect automatically:

Like most websites and other Internet services, we may collect certain technical and device information about your use of our website. Such information may include your Internet protocol address (“IP address”), information about your device (e.g., model or operating system), internet service provider, browser and operating system, and the date and time of your visit. We may also collect or infer your geographic location based on your IP address.
We may also use “cookies” or enlist third party services which use cookies to track your preferences and activities on our website. Cookies are small data files transferred to your computer’s hard-drive by a website, if your browser is enabled to accept cookies. They keep a record of your preferences, making your subsequent visits to the site more efficient. Cookies may store a variety of information, including the number of times that you access a site, your registration information and the number of times that you view a particular page or other item on the site. The use of cookies is a common practice adopted by most major sites to better serve their users. Most internet browsers will allow you to erase cookies from your computer hard drive, block acceptance of cookies, or receive a warning before a cookie is stored. You should refer to your browser instructions or “Help” screen to learn more about how to manage cookies. Please note, however, that if you block cookies, some portions of the website may not function properly.
We may also use third-party analytics tools, advertising trackers, and targeted advertising services to better understand and serve our user base. These tools may use cookies (see above.). We use this information to improve the website, to understand our consumer base, and as otherwise set out in this Policy.
Other interactions:

For individuals who otherwise interact with us, whether in person, by phone or email or video conferencing, through social media or otherwise, including individuals who might be interested in acquiring our products or services, who sign-up to receive newsletters or other communications, who leave online reviews or submit feedback, who request refunds, or who respond to surveys and questionnaires, we may collect information that you provide to us during these interactions. This information may include your name, profile photo, or other information included in your profile, e-mail address and other contact information. We may also make video or audio recordings of customer calls to our representatives for records and/or training purposes.

By providing personal information to us, you voluntarily consent to the collection, use and disclosure of such personal information as specified in this Policy. Without limiting the foregoing, we may on occasion ask you to consent when we collect, use, or disclose your personal information in specific circumstances. Sometimes your consent will be implied through your conduct with us if the purpose of the collection, use or disclosure is obvious and you voluntarily provide the information.

NON-PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT

General, aggregated, demographic, and non-personal information may be collected by us through our website, but any such information will not be linked to any of your personal information. This type of anonymous, aggregated profiling and session data may include information that you have provided to us through surveys, polls, etc., and may also include aggregated anonymous information about website usage and the customer base. In many cases, we will automatically collect certain non-personal information about your use of the website(s), including but not limited to information concerning the type of internet browser or computer operating system you are using, your IP address, the domain name of your internet service provider, your “click path” through our website, and the website or advertisement that was linked to or from the website when you visited. To do this, we may use cookies and other technology.

We may disclose aggregated information about you, and information that does not identify any individual, without restriction.

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Personal information which we collect from you will only be used as described in this Policy. Except as described in this Policy, we will not give any of your personal information to any third party without your express approval.

We may use your personal information for the following purposes:

to provide you with our products and services and to support your use of our products and services;
to create and maintain your account;
to assess your eligibility for scholarships, grants, bursaries, or relevant academic programs and to facilitate and assist you with respect to the application processes;
to contact you regarding our products and services, and to respond to your requests for customer service;
to monitor and improve our products and services, and to develop new products and services;
to process refunds;
to analyze the needs and activities of our users and customers to help us better serve them;
to conduct research and analysis related to our business, products, and our website’s user base and usage patterns;
to respond to inquiries and other requests;
to collect feedback, opinion, and comments about our products, services and website;
to provide you with information that we think may interest you, including in regards to our products and services;
to display relevant advertising;
to display and publish reviews posted by our users and customers;
to protect the rights, property or personal safety of you, us, our users and the public;
to protect the security and integrity of our website;
to enforce this Policy or our Terms of Service;
to prevent fraud or potentially illegal activities;
to investigate legal claims; and
as required to comply with applicable laws or as authorized by applicable laws.
We may occasionally communicate with you regarding our products and offerings we believe might be of interest to you. You have the option to not receive this information. For more information, please see the “Opting Out of Communications” section of the Policy.

Whatever the purpose may be, we will collect and process your personal information to the extent you have provided us with your consent, or alternatively as reasonably necessary to fulfill our contracts with you, perform our legitimate business objectives, or as may be required by applicable law. We may use your personal information and other information for purposes for which we have obtained your consent, and for such other purposes as may be permitted or required by applicable law.

As explained elsewhere in this Policy, personal information we collect may be processed by our partners in providing services related to our website (such as administration services, technical services relating to the maintenance, servicing, and upgrading of software, hosting services, customer service, data migration services, and analytical services, among others).

HOW WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Although we try to avoid sharing your personal information with third parties where possible, we have set out below the instances in which such sharing may occur.

We may use and disclose your information when we believe such use or disclosure is permitted, necessary or appropriate:

(a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence;

(b) to comply with legal process, including outside of your country of residence;

(c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities, or to cooperate with law enforcement, including public and government authorities outside your country of residence;

(d) to enforce the terms of the agreements for our products and services;

(e) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates or subsidiaries;

(f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or those of our affiliates, you or others;

(g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain; and

(h) in connection with a sale or business transaction, we may transfer your personal information and other information to a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, brands, affiliates, subsidiaries or other assets.

We rely on third party service providers to perform a variety of services on our behalf, such as e-commerce, payment card processing, customer support, telephone and technical support, hosting, data storage and processing, customer surveys, marketing, advertising, customer rewards, and research and analytics. We may share your information with service providers to facilitate the services they provide to us. If we provide your information to service providers, then we require that the service providers maintain the confidentiality of your personal information and keep your personal information secure. We also require that they only use your personal information for the limited purposes for which it is provided.

When our service providers no longer need your personal information for those limited purposes, we require that they dispose of the personal information. In some circumstances, we may permit our service providers to retain aggregated, anonymized or statistical information that does not identify you. We do not authorize the service providers to disclose your personal information to unauthorized parties or to use your personal information for their direct marketing purposes. A more detailed list of third party service providers is outlined below under “Third Party Websites and Services”.

If we otherwise intend to disclose your personal information to a third party, in a manner not identified in this Policy, we will identify that third party and the purpose for the disclosure, and obtain your consent.

OPTING OUT OF COMMUNICATIONS

If you no longer want to receive marketing-related emails from us, you may opt-out of receiving marketing-related emails by clicking the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of any email you receive from us. You may also opt-out by contacting us directly using the contact information in the “Contact Us” section below.

We will endeavour to respond to your opt-out request promptly, but we ask that you please allow us a reasonable time to process your request. Please note that if you opt-out from receiving marketing-related emails, we may still need to send you communications about your use of our products or other matters.

RETENTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will use, disclose or retain your personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which that personal information was collected and as permitted or required by law. If you would like further information regarding the periods for which your personal information will be retained, please contact us as set forth in the “Contact Us” section below

INFORMATION SECURITY

We have implemented physical, organizational, contractual and technological security measures with a view to protecting your personal information and other information from loss or theft, unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification. We have taken steps to ensure that the only personnel who are granted access to your personal information are those with a business ‘need-to-know’ or whose duties reasonably require such information.

While we take precautions against possible breaches in our web sites and customer databases, no web site or Internet transmission is completely secure, so unfortunately we cannot guarantee that unauthorized access, hacking, data loss, or other breaches will never occur. Your use of our website is at your own risk. We assume no liability for disclosure of your personal information due to transmission errors, unauthorized access, or causes beyond our control, including security failures on the part of our partners and third party service providers and processors.

If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure (for example, if you feel that the security of any information that you provided to us has been compromised), please contact us immediately using the contact information in the “Contact Us” section below.

ACCESSING AND UPDATING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We make reasonable efforts to ensure that your personal information is kept as accurate, complete and up-to-date as reasonably necessary. We will not routinely update your personal information, unless such a process is necessary. We expect you, from time to time, to supply us with updates to your personal information, when required.

You may make a written request to review any personal information about you that we have collected, used or disclosed, and we will provide you with any such personal information to the extent required and/or permitted by law. You may also challenge the accuracy or completeness of your personal information in our records and request corrections. If you successfully demonstrate that your personal information in our records is inaccurate or incomplete, we will amend the personal information as required. To exercise these rights, please contact us by using the contact information in the “Contact Us” section below.

We may require that you provide sufficient identification to fulfill your request to access or correct your personal information. Any such identifying information will be used only for this purpose.

INTERNATIONAL TRANSFER AND STORAGE

Your personal information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage third party service providers, including Canada, the United States, the Philippines, India, and the Netherlands. As a result, your personal information may be transferred to countries outside your country of residence, which may have different data protection rules than in your country. While such information is outside of your country, it is subject to the laws of the country in which it is located, and may be subject to disclosure to the governments, courts or law enforcement or regulatory agencies of such other country, pursuant to the laws of such country.

THIRD PARTY WEBSITES AND SERVICES

This Policy applies only to our website, products, and services. It does not extend to any websites, products, social media platforms or services provided by third parties.

As outlined above, we rely on third party service providers to perform a variety of services on our behalf in connection with our website, products and services such as e-commerce providers, payment card processing, customer support, telephone and technical support, hosting, data storage and processing, customer surveys, marketing, advertising, and rewards, and customers, and research and analytics. There may be times where a third party may ask to collect your personal information themselves. These third parties can include advertisers and third party service providers and payment processors. When you provide your personal information to such third parties, they will use your personal information in accordance with their own privacy policies and not this Policy. Therefore, you should read their privacy policies carefully before providing them with your personal information. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of such third parties, and we encourage you to review all third party privacy policies prior to using third party websites or products or services.

The third party service providers we use, include but are not limited to, the following:

Active Campaign. We use Active Campaign as part of our email management and marketing. See more about Active Campaign’s privacy policies: https://www.activecampaign.com/legal/privacy-policy
Acuity. We use to schedule and document appointments with our users. See more about their data/privacy policies at
Appcues. We use Appcues to provide customized workflows for our users.See more about their data/privacy policies at https://www.appcues.com/privacy .
AWS. We use AWS for hosting services. See more about their data/privacy policies: https://aws.amazon.com/privacy/
CM. We use CM for SMS messaging functionality. See more about their privacy policies: https://www.cm.com/app/legal/cm-com/privacy-policy/
Dialpad. We use Dialpad in connection with telephone communications with users and prospective users. See more about their data/privacy policies at https://www.dialpad.com/legal/#privacy
Facebook. We use Facebook for marketing purposes and to facilitate communication with prospective customers. See more about their data/privacy policies at
Google Analytics and Google Drive. We use Google Analytics to personalize advertisements and track and report traffic to maximize adequate search results. We use Google Drive to facilitate the sharing of application material, including essays. See more about their data/privacy policies: https://policies.google.com/privacy.
HelpScout. We use HelpScout to facilitate customer support. See more about their privacy policies: https://www.helpscout.com/company/legal/privacy/
Holistics. We use Holistics to help us understand how our users interact with certain features on our website. For more information, please visit https://docs.holistics.io/docs/privacy-policy
Hotjar. We use Hotjar to provide customized workflows for our users. See more about their data/privacy policies at https://www.hotjar.com/legal/policies/privacy/
HubSpot. We use HubSpot for customer relationship management. See more about their privacy policies: https://legal.hubspot.com/privacy-policy
Microsoft. We use Microsoft in connection with marketing services. See more about their data/privacy policies at https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-ca/privacystatement
Pantheon. We use Pantheon as a database for storing our user data. See more about their privacy policies: https://pantheon.pactsafe.io/legal.html#contract-r1gwog2ui
Phoneburner. We use Phoneburner to facilitate voice calls with current and prospective users and educational representatives. See more about their data/privacy policies at https://www.phoneburner.com/homepage/privacy
Siteground. We use Siteground in connection with website hosting services. See more about their data/privacy policies athttps://www.siteground.com/privacy.htm
Slack. We use Slack for internal communication with our team members. See more about their data/privacy policies at https://slack.com/trust/privacy/privacy-policy
Snowflake. We use Snowflake in connection with data storage services. See more about their data/privacy policies at https://www.snowflake.com/privacy-policy/
Stripe. We use Stripe as a payment processor. See more about their privacy policies: https://stripe.com/en-ca/privacy
VWO. We use VWO to deliver experience optimization for our users and to better understand our users’ digital experience. See more about their data/privacy policies at https://vwo.com/privacy-policy/
If you would like more information about our service providers, please contact us using the contact information in the “Contact Us” section below.

CHILDREN’S INFORMATION

Our website is not intended for children under the age of 16. Children under the age of 16 should not use our website and should not supply us with any personal information. If you provide us with personal information about a child under the age of consent in connection with your use of the services, you warrant that you have obtained consent from their parent or legal guardian to do so.

If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 16 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 16 without the consent of their parent or legal guardian, please contact us using the information in the “Contact Us” section below.

NEWSLETTERS

As part of your purchase of our products or other interactions with us, we may send you emails to operate or promote our services, or other products and information we believe may be of interest to you. In addition, we may contact you using other personal information that you have provided to us (such as a physical mailing address) or contact information that you have made publicly available (such as through a social networking service). We provide an opt-out function within all email communications of this nature, or alternatively we will cease to communicate with you for this purpose if you contact us and tell us not to communicate this information to you.

This Policy is current as of the “updated” date which appears at the top of this page. We may modify this privacy statement from time to time. When changes are made to this privacy statement, they will become immediately effective when published in a revised privacy statement posted on our website unless otherwise noted. We may also communicate the changes through our services or by other means. By submitting your personal information to us, by accessing or using any of the products or services we offer, by using our website, or by voluntarily interacting with us after we publish or communicate a notice about the changes to this privacy statement, you consent to our collecting, using and disclosing your personal information as set out in the revised privacy statement.

All comments, questions, concerns or complaints regarding your personal information or our privacy practices should be sent to our Privacy Officer as follows:

Address:
Attention: Privacy Officer
GrantMe
1788 West Broadway,
Vancouver, BC V6J 1Y1
By e-mail: privacy@grantme.ca

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