Privacy Policy | Common Ground

Common Ground Grief Support

A dba of Forward Endeavors, a 501(c)(3) organization (EIN 93-4248727)

437 W. Willow St., Long Beach, CA 90806

Last updated: July 16, 2026

Summary of Key Points

We collect personal information in three places: our interest forms, our group and event registration forms, and our donation form.

We never sell your information. Not to anyone, for any reason.
We never rent, trade, or license it, and we don’t allow anyone else to use it for their own marketing.
We share it only in the narrow situations described below - and for support participants, only with your explicit permission first.

If you have questions about anything here, email info@commongroundgrief.org or call (562) 548-8078.

Detailed information

1. If you fill out an interest form

What we collect

Your name, email, phone number, date of birth, and city, state, and ZIP code
Which program or group you’re interested in
Information about your loss: your loved one’s name, their age and date of death, the cause of death, and their relationship to you
How you heard about us
Anything else you choose to tell us in the open comment field
Optional: your race/ethnicity and gender

If you’re filling out the form for someone else, we collect this information about that person as well as your own contact information. By submitting information about someone else — a loved one, a co-bereaved family member, or anyone else — you're confirming that you have their permission to share it with us, or that you're doing so on behalf of a minor child as their parent or legal guardian.

Why we collect it

To contact you for an intake conversation or follow-up
To match you with the program that fits your situation
To run our programs - attendance, scheduling, and communicating with you about the programs you join
To report aggregate, de-identified numbers to funders and grantmakers (see below)

Who sees it

Access is limited to trained Common Ground staff and facilitators who need it to support you. Not everyone at Common Ground can see your information. Some volunteers may have access when needed to support you - all are background-checked and trained in the importance of confidentiality before they do.

The demographic questions

Race/ethnicity and gender are optional - you can select “Prefer not to answer” or skip them entirely, and it will not affect the support you receive. We ask because grantmakers and funders require us to report who we serve. We report these answers only as aggregate totals (for example, “37% of participants identified as Hispanic or Latino”). We never report them alongside your name, and we never share individual demographic responses with anyone outside Common Ground.

Referrals to partners

Sometimes the best support for you is somewhere other than Common Ground such as a therapist, a counselor, another grief organization, or a community partner.

Most of the time, we will give you the information for the additional supportive resource so you may contact them directly. We will not send your information to any partner without asking you first. We’ll ask during your intake call or a later conversation, we’ll tell you exactly who we want to connect you with and what we’d share, and you can say no. Saying no does not affect the support you get from us. Permission is per-referral. This means that saying yes once does not authorize any future sharing.

When we may share without asking

There are three narrow situations where we may share information even without your permission:

Immediate safety. If we reasonably believe someone is at risk of serious harm to themselves or another person, we may contact emergency services or another person who can help.
Mandated reporting. Some of our staff and facilitators are legally required to report suspected abuse or neglect of a child, elder, or dependent adult.
Legal obligation. If we receive a valid subpoena, court order, or other legally binding demand, we may be required to comply.

These are the only exceptions. We take them seriously and use them rarely.

What we don’t do with it

We don’t sell it. We don’t share it with advertisers. We don’t publish your name, your story, or your loved one’s name anywhere without asking you specifically and getting a clear yes.

2. If you register for a group or event

What we collect

Your name, email address, phone number, and payment information for any programs with a fee.

Why we collect it

To confirm your registration and send you program details
To process payment where applicable
To manage attendance and communicate with you about the program

Who sees it

Common Ground staff who handle registrations and program logistics.

Payment by phone

If you provide a credit card number by phone to register for a group or event, we enter it directly into our payment system and do not record it anywhere else. We never see or store your full card number after that transaction is complete.

3. If you donate

What we collect

In order to make a donation (one-time or recurring), you will be required to provide certain additional information which may include a credit card number, expiration date, billing zip code, activation code, bank information, and similar information (“Billing Information”). Such Billing Information will be collected and processed by our Third Party Payment Processor, GiveButter pursuant to the terms and conditions of their privacy policies and terms of use. Common Ground Grief does not directly obtain full card details.

Why we collect it

To process your gift and send you a receipt and tax acknowledgment
To keep the financial records the IRS requires of us
To thank you and, if you want, keep you updated on our work

Who sees it

Common Ground staff who handle finances and donor communication. Our payment platform and our accountant/bookkeeper see what they need to do their jobs and nothing more.

We never share, sell, rent, or trade donor information. Donor lists do not go to other organizations under any circumstances.

Public recognition

We may list donor names in our annual report or on our website. If you’d rather give anonymously, please contact us at: info@commongroundgrief.org or note it when you donate.

Emails

Emails sent through our mailing platform include an unsubscribe link. If you receive a personal email from a staff member or facilitator, there is no automated unsubscribe. You can reply and ask to be removed and we will do our best to honor that. We may not be able to remove you from every list immediately, and if you reach out to us directly we may need to respond to your message.

4. If You Complete A Volunteer Interest Form

When you sign up to become a volunteer, you will be asked to provide certain information, including but not limited to, your name, email address, phone number and any other information you would like to provide (collectively, the “Volunteer Information”). We will use Volunteer Information to determine whether you are a good fit for our organization and to contact you about the applicable volunteer opportunities.

5. If You Complete A Contact Form

When you contact us using the “Contact Us” feature of the Website, when you call us or when you sign up to receive our newsletter, you will be asked to provide certain information, such as your name, e-mail address, and phone number and any other information you are contacting us about (collectively, “Contact Information”). The Contact Information is used to provide the requested service or information and to contact you for purposes of direct marketing of our current and future services.

6. Text messages

If you give us your phone number, we may text you about your intake call, group scheduling, and program logistics. Reply STOP to any message to opt out.

Your phone number and your consent to be texted are never shared with any third party for any purpose, including our other partners.

7. Our website

Our website is built and hosted on Wix. Wix places cookies and collects basic technical information (IP address, browser type, pages visited) to make the site work and to give us general traffic statistics. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings; some parts of the site may not work as well if you do.

We do not run advertising pixels or trackers on our site. Some browsers offer a "Do Not Track" signal. There's no common industry standard for how websites should respond to it yet, so we do not currently respond to Do Not Track signals.

Our site links to other organizations, including crisis resources. Once you leave our site, their privacy practices apply, not ours.

8. Children

Our Family Camp and family programming serve children, and an adult may fill out the interest form on a child’s behalf.

We don’t knowingly collect information directly from anyone under 13 through our website. If you are under the age of 13, please do not provide any personal information through the Website and the Services. A parent or legal guardian must submit the interest form for a minor and give permission for us to use that information as described in this policy. If you believe a child under 13 submitted information to us directly please contact us at info@commongroundgrief.org, and we will delete it.

9. How long we keep information

Interest form and program records: 5 years after your last contact with us, unless you ask us to delete them sooner.

Donation records: seven years, as required for tax and audit purposes.

Email list: until you unsubscribe.

10. How We Protect Your Information

Information is stored in password-protected systems with access limited to the staff and facilitators who need it. We use two-factor authentication where it’s available and we review who has access annually. If a breach ever compromises your personal information in a way that requires notice under California law, we will notify you as required.

Common Ground Grief takes commercially reasonable security measures to protect your Information from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction, taking into account the risks involved in processing and the nature of such data, and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. Please keep in mind, however, that no Internet transmission is 100% secure or error-free. In particular, e-mail sent to or from the Website may not be secure, and you should therefore take special care in deciding what information you send to us via e-mail or other electronic means.

11. Your choices

You can, at any time:

Ask what we have about you
Correct anything that’s wrong
Ask us to delete your information (we may need to keep donation records for tax purposes)
Withdraw permission for a referral or partner sharing
Unsubscribe from emails or texts

Email info@commongroundgrief.org or call (562) 548-8078. We’ll respond within 10 business days. There’s no charge and no hard feelings.

12. A note on what’s said in groups

This policy covers information you give us through our forms. What is shared inside a support group is covered separately by our group participation agreement, which every participant and facilitator agrees to. Ask us for a copy anytime.

13. Notice to All Non-U.S. Residents

Our Website, Services and servers are located in the United States. If you are located outside of the United States, please be aware that any information you provide to us maybe transferred to, processed, maintained, and used on computers, servers, and systems located outside of your state, province, country, or other governmental jurisdiction where the privacy laws may not be as protective as those in your jurisdiction. If you are located outside the United States and choose to use our Website and/ot Services, you consent to any transfer and processing of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy and you do so at your own risk.

14. Changes to this policy

This Privacy Policy is effective as of the date stated at the top of this Privacy Policy. We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time, and will post any changes on the Website as soon as they go into effect. By visiting the Website and/or accessing and/or using the Services after we make any such changes to this Privacy Policy, you are deemed to have accepted such changes. Please refer back to this Privacy Policy on a regular basis. For anything significant we will notify current participants and donors directly.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or to report a privacy issues, please contact us in one of the following ways:

Email: info@commongroundgrief.org

Phone: (562) 548 - 8078

Or by mail at:

Common Ground Grief

437 W. Willow St.

Long Beach, CA 90806