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Privacy Policy

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PRIVACY POLICY FOR TWIN CITIES PUBLIC TELEVISION (“TPT”) DONORS AND USERS OF TPT'S WEBSITES AND ONLINE SERVICES

Twin Cities Public Television, Inc., on behalf of itself and its affiliates (“TPT,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) have created this Privacy Policy to demonstrate our commitment to ensuring the privacy of any information you may provide to us. This Privacy Policy discloses how we collect, use, share, and protect information gathered or provided to us by donors and/or users through your use of TPT's websites and online services, email newsletters or applications that TPT operates and that link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Services”). The Services include tpt.org, tptoriginals.org, and nextavenue.org and other applications, digital platforms, and content (downloadable and non-downloadable) through the aforementioned websites.

Some of our Services are designed for children and pre-teens. Specific privacy information pertaining to children’s privacy can be found in Section 8 below.

We are committed to ensuring the privacy of any identifiable information (such as name, address, email address, and telephone number) you may provide to us. By using the Services, you signify your agreement to the terms and conditions of TPT's Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, please do not use the Services. TPT reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this Privacy Policy at any time. We may not notify users individually if we change this Privacy Policy, unless there are material changes, in which case, we may notify you electronically. Any changes will be effective when posted. Please check this page periodically for any changes. Your continued use of the Services after the posting of any changes to these terms means that you accept those changes.

1. Information We May Gather

Use of cookies and third-party tools

TPT uses cookies and third-party tracking pixels as part of the Services. Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer or device to collect information about your visit, personalize your experience, and “remember” you when you return. Tracking pixels are used to trigger cookies, or the saving of information, in your web browser. TPT solely uses this information to aid the technical administration of the Services and better understand how the Services are functioning.

If you register for the tpt.org User Portal, TPT will keep track of your actions taken on tpt.org and associate that information with the Personal Information (defined below) you supply in your User Portal profile to personalize your tpt.org and User Portal experience.

With the exception of essential cookies, you may turn off cookies that have been placed on your computer by following the instructions on your browser (often found in your browser’s “Tools” or “Preferences” menu), but if you block our cookies, it may be more difficult (and may be even impossible) to use some of the Services.

TPT uses services such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixels, Roku Pixel and our web server logs to gather information about the users of our Services. Our web servers and analytics tools will create log files which contain some or all of the following information:

The Internet Protocol Address (IP Address) of the computer accessing our Services [NOTE, we are aware that some data protection laws consider an IP address to be Personal Information and we will protect it as such to comply with applicable data protection laws]
The date, time, general location, and length of each visit from each IP Address
Certain technical information such as browser being used
The path taken through our website and actions taken throughout a session
Clicks to links on our Services that lead to other sites
A record of files downloaded and/or the amount of time spent viewing any video or audio files
Any errors encountered
Other third-party metrics

Currently, our systems do not recognize browser “do-not-track” requests. You may, however, disable certain tracking as discussed in this section (e.g., by disabling cookies), and opt out of certain ad networks.

By using the Services, you consent to our use of cookies and similar technologies.

Third Party Advertising:

TPT uses third-party advertising companies to serve ads when users use our Services, such as Google and Meta. These companies may use information (not including name, address, email address or telephone number) about visitors to the Services to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to such visitors.

TPT utilizes Google Analytics for managing, displaying, and reporting performance of advertisements on the Services. A cookie may be dropped on your browser when an ad is viewed or clicked. Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior website visits.

These advertisers will collect and report some or all of the following per advertising unit:

Impressions
Clicks
Geo-location of impressions and clicks
Certain technical information such as the browser being used
Other third-party metrics

If you want to opt-out of Google Analytics, please view this site for more information: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

2. Information You Give Us

For purposes of this Privacy Policy, “Personal Information” will include all personal information that is specific to you which meets the definition of applicable data protection laws as “personal information,” “personal data,” or “personally identifiable information” (e.g., name, address, phone number, email address, etc.). When you visit or use a TPT Service, we collect Personal Information that you supply to us on a voluntary basis. Further, to participate in some activities, you might be asked to provide Personal Information. For example, this could be in connection with:

Requests from you which require our direct response
Information you provide to register for and use TPT Passport (information for members’ use of TPT Passport is handled through MVault, PBS’s station membership registry software)
Information you provide to register for the tpt.org User Portal
Subscription registration for Services which require subscription
Contest registration
Making pledges or donations
Purchases of merchandise
Gathering your comments and feedback
Content submissions and suggestions
Participation in community postings, bulletin boards or "chat rooms"
Participation in surveys
Event registration

The specific categories of Personal Information we may collect include the following:

Contact Information and Identifiers: We collect certain information when you contact us and/or when you use our Services, including your first and last name, email address, and phone number.
Registration Information: Certain areas or feature of our Services may require registration. To register, you may need to provide your email address, and other contact information. We may also have you specify a username and password for your account.
Other Demographic Information such as city, state, and zip code.
Payment Information: We also collect certain financial information when you purchase our Services, including your name, billing address, debit card or credit card number, and any other financial information to process payments through our Services. We do not store payment card information on our systems.
Internet or other Electronic Network Activity Information: See Section 1.
Geolocation Information: We may collect your general location, including your IP address.
We may collect information about you from third-party sources. For example, we may receive information about you from third-party social media services, such as Meta, when you choose to interact or connect with them through the Services or from our third-party providers and affiliates.

We collect the categories of Personal Information identified above from the following sources: (1) directly from you; (2) through your use of the Services; (3) through use of internet or other electronic network activity information; (4) through our authorized third-party service providers; and (5) through our affiliates and member stations (e.g., PBS).

3. How We Use Personal Information

We use your Personal Information as necessary to operate our Services and to provide your user account. In addition, we may use the information we collect about you, including Personal Information, to:

Maintain your user account.
Provide the Services.
Provide the services and products requested and/or purchased by you.
Enable you to participate in interactive features, such as comment boxes and forums.
Display content, and information about other TPT products and services that may be of interest to you.
Customize the content displayed when you use the Services.
Analyze use of the Services to understand and improve our service offerings, such as determining which pages are most popular, which browsers are most used, how long users spend on the Services, and which websites they come from.
Respond to any questions you ask or to respond to the reason you contacted us.
Allow us to respond quickly and efficiently to your questions and your requests for information.
To communicate with members and visitors, to respond to requests and inquiries, and for other customer service purposes.
Tailor the content and information that we send or display, to offer location customization, and personalized help and instructions, and to otherwise personalize experiences using the Services.
Better understand how users’ access and use our Services, both on an aggregated and individualized basis, to improve our Services and respond to user desires and preferences, and for other research and analytical purposes.
Enhance, improve, and develop new services and products.
Track use of the Services, investigate suspicious activity, and enforce our terms and policies, to measure and improve the operation and security of the Services.
Perform data analytics for our internal business purposes.
For any other purpose disclosed to you at the time we collect the information or pursuant to your consent.
Disclose your information to the extent permitted or required by law.

4. Who We Share Personal Information With

Except as discussed above, Personal Information collected by TPT is not provided to third-parties except (i) TPT affiliates (such as PBS, our program co-producers, and other member public broadcasting stations), (ii) TPT’s authorized third party service providers, and (iii) Member List Exchange, as further detailed in Section 7 below. Except as specified below for (iii), the information is provided for the sole purpose of — and only to the extent necessary for — delivering the requested goods or services to the user, delivering communications from TPT and TPT affiliates to users who have “opted in” to the receipt of these communications, providing services for and on behalf of TPT, or serving other internal TPT purposes.

Affiliates. In some circumstances, our Services are designed to support our affiliates and member stations, and we may share information we collect from you with our affiliates and member stations.

Third-Party Service Providers. In certain cases, TPT contracts with other companies to provide services on our behalf. Some service providers maintain customer databases with email addresses of website visitors who have provided them to us by registering with our Services, signing up for a newsletter or email, emailing us questions about TPT's services, submitting online contributions, or making a purchase. Other service providers maintain Personal Information provided in connection with a donation in order to process the donation. Our service providers have access to your Personal Information only as necessary to provide certain services on TPT's behalf. They are required to maintain the privacy of all such information in their possession or control and only use the information on our or your behalf for the purpose that we have contracted them. They are not authorized to use your Personal Information for any other purpose. While we strive to work with reputable third-party vendors, we do not have direct control over third parties.

TPT also may disclose Personal Information if it believes that such action is necessary to (a) comply with the law or with legal process, (b) enforce this Privacy Policy and protect against misuse or unauthorized use of TPT Services, (c) protect the personal safety or property of users of TPT Services, the public, or TPT and its employees, (d) detect or prevent criminal activity or fraud; or (e) in the event that TPT or substantially all of our assets are acquired by one or more third parties as a results of an acquisition, merger, sale, reorganization, consolidation, or liquidation, in which case such information may be one of the transferred assets.

We may have shared certain categories of Personal Information with the above-identified third parties for business purposes. The information shared may include the following categories of Personal Information: (1) contact information and identifiers; (2) geolocation and user information; (3) payment information; (4) internet or other electronic network activity information; and (5) other information that can be associated with you, which are all described in this Privacy Policy.

5. Your Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have certain legal rights under applicable law. For example, you may have the following rights:

Your right to Access – means that you can confirm whether TPT is processing Personal Information concerning you and access the categories of Personal Information TPT is processing about you.
Your right to Correct – if you believe any of the Personal Information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date, you have the right to correct such Personal Information by providing us with the correct, up-to-date Personal Information.
Right to Delete – you can ask us to delete your Personal Information, and we will be happy to do so unless we are prevented from doing so by law or regulation. Please note that even if a request is made to delete your Personal Information, we may be permitted or required to retain a copy for our business and legal obligations as permitted or required under applicable law.
Right to Portability – you have the right to request a copy of your Personal Information in a commonly used and machine readable format to be provided to you or to such other third party as you specify.
Right to List of Third Parties – you have the right to obtain a list of the third parties to which we have disclosed your Personal Information.

Please contact us (as specified below) to request any of the above rights. You will be required to verify your identity before we are able to fulfill your request. Upon confirmation that you are making a lawful request, we will confirm our obligations under applicable law. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. To do so, you must provide us with written authorization or a power of attorney, signed by you, for the agent to act on your behalf. You will still need to verify your identity directly with us. We will acknowledge your request and respond to your request (upon verification) in accordance with the response time required by applicable law. You also have the right not to be discriminated against (as provided for in applicable law) for exercising certain of your rights referenced herein. In some jurisdictions, you may have the right to appeal TPT’s action with regard to your request for any of the above rights by contacting us at the email specified below.

In addition to the rights listed above, some jurisdictions may provide a right to consumers that are subject to profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects. Please note, we do not use your Personal Information for profiling purposes.

Finally, some states provide a right to opt-out of the sale of Personal Information, using Personal Information for targeted advertising, and profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects. We do not engage in any of these activities, which is why we do not have an opt-out link.

6. Security and Confidentiality of Personal Information

TPT makes every effort to ensure that EFT and credit card transactions that occur on its Services are secure. TPT has in place appropriate physical, technical, and administrative procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. Personal Information provided on the Services is protected against unauthorized use by Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) security features. The TLS protocol is the industry standard method for creating an encrypted, secure connection between your web browser and a web server, such as the website's server. You should, however, keep in mind that no Internet or email transmission is ever fully secure or error free. Because most email is not encrypted, you should take special care in deciding what information you send to us via email.

TPT may publish a list of donors (for example, as part of our Annual Report.) This listing may indicate a monetary range into which each donor's gift falls. If you wish to be excluded from any such listing, contact us as indicated below. In addition, TPT is required to disclose the identity of all donors who provide direct funding for any content produced by TPT.

7. Member List Exchange Policy

TPT will not sell or rent our members’ names with any organization. TPT will, on occasion, exchange membership lists with other well-established charitable, cultural non-profit organizations. We believe that the opportunities for increased financial support and the cost reductions resulting from list exchanges conducted within the guidelines of this policy will help us deliver more mission-aligned services to the public.

In exchanging lists, the following principles will always apply:

We will not sell, rent, give or exchange members’ names to, with, or from any candidate for public office, committees or organizations supporting a candidate, political parties, or organizations that solicit funds for use in political campaigns for any purpose.
We will respect the privacy of all members by offering a means by which their names may be suppressed upon their request, and we will honor their requests. We will provide notice of this option in our magazine and in other mailings to members. Also, we will endeavor to provide additional notices of this option throughout the year in other ways including on our Services. Members are encouraged to contact our Customer Service department at 651-229-1330 if they wish to be removed from any list.
We will maintain active control of our membership lists by informing others, including any list brokers we may hire, of this policy and by taking steps to enforce this Privacy Policy. We will have a written agreement, which contains provisions consistent with this Privacy Policy, with all list brokers we hire.
When we use a list broker to facilitate a list exchange, we will ensure that the list is only for specifically approved uses and the only information provided will be the member's name, address and/or telephone number.
We may enter into agreements with outside companies in fulfillment of member premiums or an "affinity" program which would use our member or donor lists for marketing such a program. We will only enter into an "affinity" program which would offer our members a quality product at or below market price and which would provide revenue to TPT.
We will maintain complete and accurate records of all uses of membership and donor lists for at least such time as required by law or regulation.
We will not exchange information of members who have opted-out from marketing communication from TPT.

We will comply with all applicable state and federal laws and regulations.

8. Children's Services

The Services are primarily geared towards a general audience and not children. In compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. § 6501.06 and 16 C.F.R. §§ 312.1 – 312.12, we do not knowingly collect information from children under the age of 13. To create a user account and/or to become a member, users must be over the age of 18.

Though our Services are not expressly directed towards children, there are some components of the Services that may be of interest to a child, including content and videos. Such content and videos link to other TPT or affiliate websites or services that do target children, in which case the privacy policy linked on those websites governs the collection, use, and disclosure of data related to children.

Please contact us if you know or suspect that we have collected information from children under the age of 13, and we will take prompt measures to remove such information.

We do not have actual knowledge that we sell or share Personal Information of minors between the ages of 13 and 16. We do not have actual knowledge that we use Personal Information of minors between the ages of 13 and 16 for targeted advertising purposes or profiling.

9. Data Retention

We keep your Personal Information as long as needed to process your requests, to operate our business, and provide our Services, and as long as we are legally obligated to keep it. You have the right to ask us to delete your Personal Information at any time. Please note that deleting your Personal Information may affect your right to use our Services. While we will use reasonable efforts to delete your Personal Information, we may be required to retain such Personal Information as required by our systems or our legal requirements. Until we have deleted all of your Personal Information, we will continue to honor our privacy and security obligations related to your Personal Information.

Please note, if we elect to de-identify your Personal Information, such de-identified information is no longer your Personal Information, and we may use such de-identified information, alone or in an aggregated basis to analyze our Services, or as we deem appropriate.

10. Other Terms

TPT Passport is operated by PBS and is subject to PBS's privacy policy.

Services operated by TPT may contain links to other third-party sites. TPT is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such other websites.

Services operated by TPT may include comment sections, ratings, chat rooms, forums, message boards and/or other interactive elements and public areas where users can post information. Please remember that any information or content that is disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your Personal Information, including credit card or other payment information, in these areas. TPT is not responsible or liable for any personally identifiable or any other information or content presented in such areas by users or for other user's actions with respect to that information.

TPT complies with all laws and regulations applicable to the Services. TPT supports the Consumer Reports WebWatch guidelines to promote credible information practices on the Web. (Click here for more information on Consumer Reports WebWatch.)

Marketing

If you register for marketing emails, we may send you emails relating to your membership or other online accounts. You may opt out of marketing emails at any time by sending an email to [email protected]. We offer email newsletters. If you no longer wish to receive a specific newsletter, you may opt out by following the "unsubscribe" instructions located near the bottom of each newsletter.
In addition, you may receive transactional emails from us, such as order confirmations, renewal/expiration notices, notices of credit card processing problems, and notifications about major changes to our Services. If you have registered for online discussions or other services, you may receive emails specific to your participation in those activities.

SMS/MMS Communications

When providing your mobile phone number and opting in, TPT may occasionally contact you via SMS/MMS text messaging for informational communication purposes only, including service updates, membership updates, alerts, and relevant informational notifications. To opt out of future messages, text STOP at any time. TPT will not send you telemarketing text messages without your prior express written consent.

Mobile information will never be shared with third parties/affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. This excludes text messaging originator opt-in data and consent, which will not be shared with any third parties.

Terms of Use Agreement

Please also review our Terms of Use Agreement.

Effective Date

This Policy was last updated on April 13, 2026.

Contact Us

If you have questions regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact Customer Service at 651-229-1330 or send an email to [email protected] or send mail to Member Services, Twin Cities Public Television, 172 E. 4th St., St. Paul, MN 55101.

Specific Laws

GDPR. If you are an individual resident in EEA or the UK, you have the data protection rights regarding personal data as specified in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as enacted in the EU, UK, or Switzerland.

US Data Protection Laws. The US states which have enacted data protection laws, similar to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) as amended by the Consumer Privacy Act Regulations (CPRA) include: California (as of January 1, 2023), Colorado (as of July 1, 2023), Connecticut (as of July 1, 2023), Delaware (as of January 1, 2025), Florida (as of July 1, 2024), Indiana (as of January 1, 2026), Iowa (as of January 1, 2025), Kentucky (as of January 1, 2026), Maryland (as of October 1, 2025), Minnesota (as of July 31, 2025), Montana (as of October 1, 2024), New Hampshire (as of January 1, 2025), Nebraska (as of January 1, 2025), New Jersey (as of January 15, 2025), Oregon (as of July 1, 2024), Rhode Island (as of January 1, 2026), Tennessee (as of July 1, 2025), Texas (as of July 1, 2024), Utah (as of December 31, 2023), and Virginia (as of January 1, 2023).

Notice to Illinois Residents. Residents of Illinois may have certain rights under the Biometric Information Privacy Act. Please note that we do not digitally analyze any data for any biometric identification purposes.

Notice to California Residents. You may have the right to receive information about the financial incentives that we offer to you, if any.

Metrics

California law may require us to compile the following metrics for the previous calendar year: the number of rights requests received, complied with, and denied, as well as the median number of days within which we responded to those requests. To the extent this obligation applies to our organization, we will comply.

California Shine the Light

Under California Civil Code sections 1798.83-1798.84, California residents who have an established business relationship with us are entitled to ask us once a year for information regarding the Personal Information we have shared, if any, with third parties for their direct marketing purposes. If you are a California resident and would like to submit such a request, please submit your request in writing to the email address listed in the Contact Us section and include the words “Shine the Light” in your correspondence. The request must include your name, street address, city, state, and ZIP code and an attestation that you are a California resident. We are not responsible for requests that are not labeled or sent improperly, or that do not have complete information.