Effective 2026.
Tennesseans for Quality Early Education (TQEE) works to improve early education and child care in Tennessee. This policy explains what information we collect through tqee.org, why we collect it, who we share it with, and what you can ask us to do with it.
If you have a question about anything here, write to info@tqee.org.
Who “we” are
TQEE is a combined effort of two related nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations.
Tennesseans for Quality Early Education is organized under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. It engages in grassroots and direct advocacy with policymakers. It funds and owns this website and holds the contact database behind it. Donations made through this site go to this organization.
TQEE-Policy & Research is organized under section 501(c)(3). It conducts research and policy analysis, raises public awareness, builds coalitions, and educates Tennesseans about early childhood policy.
Throughout this policy, “TQEE,” “we,” “our,” and “us” mean both organizations. They operate as one program, share staff and systems, and work from a single contact database. Information you give us may be used by either organization for the purposes described below. Neither is a third party to the other, and movement of information between them is not a disclosure outside TQEE.
“You” means anyone who visits tqee.org, signs up for our communications, takes action through our site, registers for an event, or donates.
What we collect
Information you give us. When you join our email list, take an advocacy action, register for an event, apply for a job, submit a nomination, or donate, we collect what you enter on the form. Depending on the form, that can include your name, email address, mailing address, ZIP code, phone number, employer or organization, job title, and any message you write.
Donation information. Donations are processed by a third-party payment processor. We receive your name, contact information, and the amount and date of your gift. We do not receive or store your full credit card number.
Information collected automatically. When you visit tqee.org, our website and the analytics services we use collect your IP address, browser and device type, operating system, the pages you view, how long you stay, the site you came from, and the approximate geographic region your IP address indicates. We use cookies and similar technologies to do this. Cookies are small text files a site stores in your browser.
Email interaction data. Our email platform records whether a message was delivered, opened, and which links were clicked.
We do not collect Social Security numbers, financial account numbers, health information, or biometric data through this website.
How we use it
We use the information we collect to:
- send you newsletters, legislative updates, event invitations, and action alerts you have asked to receive
- deliver the message you write to your legislators when you use an advocacy form
- process and acknowledge donations, and meet our recordkeeping and tax obligations
- register you for events and follow up afterward
- respond when you contact us
- understand which pages, campaigns, and messages people find useful, so we can improve them
- produce aggregate counts for board reports, funders, and public materials
We do not use your information to make automated decisions about you.
Advocacy actions
Some forms on this site let you contact your state legislators. You write or review the message, you confirm that you want it sent, and it goes to the office in your name with your name and address attached. We transmit it on your behalf through EveryAction, the system we use to manage contacts and send messages.
The form asks for your address because a legislative office will generally not count a message without one. Legislative offices keep their own records of the mail they receive, and we do not control what they do with them.
We do not send a message to an official in your name unless you have confirmed it.
Who we share it with
We do not sell, rent, trade, or lease your personal information. We never have.
We share information in four situations:
Service providers. We use outside vendors to run our website, send email and text messages, manage our contact database, process donations, and analyze site traffic. Our contact database and email platform is EveryAction. Our website runs on WordPress and uses Google Analytics. These vendors may only use the information to do the work we hired them for.
Coalition partners, when you ask us to. We sometimes co-host events or campaigns with other organizations. If a form tells you your information will be shared with a named partner, it will be, and the form will say so before you submit. Otherwise it will not be.
Aggregate and de-identified information. We report figures like the number of supporters in a legislative district, or the share of survey respondents who answered a question a certain way. These figures do not identify you.
When the law requires it. We will disclose information if we are legally required to, or if we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to protect someone’s safety or to respond to valid legal process.
Text messages
If you give us your mobile number and opt in, you agree to receive recurring automated informational and advocacy text messages from TQEE, including messages that may be sent using an automatic telephone dialing system, at the number you provided. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Consent to receive these messages is not a condition of any purchase or donation.
Text Messaging Opt-In Data: We will not share or sell your text messaging opt-in data, consent, or related personal information with any third parties, unless required by law. Your mobile number and your SMS consent will not be sold or shared with any third party or affiliate, and will not be used for lead generation or affiliate marketing.
We use different messaging vendors for different campaigns. We share mobile numbers with the vendor delivering a given campaign, with the phone companies that carry the message, and with providers that help us produce message content, only so that the message can reach you, and under contracts that bar any other use.
To stop receiving texts, reply STOP, END, CANCEL, UNSUBSCRIBE, or QUIT to any message. You may receive one final message confirming that you have opted out. If you are subscribed to more than one of our messaging programs, reply to each number you want to stop.
For help, reply HELP to any message, or write to info@tqee.org.
Opting out of texts does not remove you from our email list, and opting out of email does not stop texts. Tell us if you want both.
The full terms for our messaging programs are at tqee.org/sms-terms.
Every email we send identifies TQEE as the sender, carries a subject line that describes what is inside, includes our physical mailing address, and includes an unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing removes you from our mailing lists. We may still send you messages about a specific transaction, such as a donation receipt or an event confirmation you requested.
Cookies and analytics
We use Google Analytics to understand how people use tqee.org. Google Analytics sets cookies and collects information about your visit, including your IP address and the pages you view, and processes that information on Google’s servers. Google describes its handling of this data at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
You can opt out of Google Analytics across every site you visit by installing Google’s browser add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Most browsers let you block or delete cookies in your settings. Blocking cookies may keep parts of this site from working as intended.
We do not serve advertising on this site and we do not use your browsing behavior to target ads to you.
Children
This website is for adults. The people we ask to sign up, take action, donate, and attend our events are adults, and our work on behalf of young children is directed at the adults who make decisions for them.
We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If we learn that we have, we will delete it. A parent or guardian who believes their child has given us information can write to info@tqee.org and we will remove it.
If we ever run a program that collects information directly from children, such as an art contest or a student submission, we will obtain verifiable parental consent first, as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act requires.
How long we keep it
We keep supporter and subscriber information for as long as you stay on our lists, and for a reasonable period afterward so that we do not re-add you to something you left. We keep donation records as long as our tax, audit, and grant reporting obligations require. We keep website analytics data according to the retention setting in our analytics account.
You can ask us to delete your information at any time. See below.
Security
We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect the information we hold, including encrypted transmission of data submitted through this site and access limits on our contact database. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee that information sent over the internet will never be intercepted.
If a breach of our systems compromises personal information about Tennessee residents, we will notify affected individuals as the Tennessee Identity Theft Deterrence Act requires.
What you can ask us to do
Most comprehensive state privacy laws exempt nonprofit organizations like ours. We extend the following to everyone anyway, regardless of where you live:
- See what we have. Ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
- Correct it. Tell us what is wrong and we will fix it.
- Delete it. Ask us to remove you from our records. We may keep what we are legally required to keep, such as donation records.
- Stop hearing from us. Unsubscribe from any email, reply STOP to any text, or write to us and we will remove you from every list.
Write to info@tqee.org with “Privacy request” in the subject line. We will respond within 45 days. We may ask you to confirm your identity before we act on a request, so that we do not release or delete someone else’s information.
We will not treat you differently for making any of these requests.
Links to other sites
This site links to legislative sites, partner organizations, news coverage, and social media. We do not control those sites and this policy does not cover them.
Changes to this policy
We will post any revised version on this page and update the effective date at the top. If we make a change that materially affects how we handle information we already hold, we will tell subscribers by email before it takes effect.
Contact
Tennesseans for Quality Early Education 40 South Main Street, Suite 1530 Memphis, TN 38103 615-560-1324 info@tqee.org satisfies any questions or concerns you may have regarding the email practices of TQEE. If you have additional questions or wish to discuss this matter further, please contact us at: info@tqee.org
