PowerIn Public™ Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes how PowerIn Public™ ("PowerIn Public," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, discloses, and protects information in connection with the PowerIn Public website, platform, services, and related features (collectively, the "Platform").

This Privacy Policy supplements our Terms of Use and should be read together with it. By using the Platform, you agree to the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

1. Overview

PowerIn Public is a platform that connects public-sector professionals — currently focused on New Jersey state government, counties, municipalities, authorities, commissions, and agencies, along with authorized partner organizations and outside experts — to ask and answer questions, share knowledge, and access AI-generated synthesis of professional discussion.

Because the Platform is built around identity-verified professional participation rather than anonymous browsing, most of what we collect is tied to a specific member account. This policy explains what that includes, how it is used, and the choices available to you.

2. Information We Collect

Information you provide directly.

• Account and profile information: your name, work email address, and password (stored securely by our authentication provider, never in plain text); your organization, title, department, professional type (government, partner, or expert), credentials (e.g., CMFO, QPA, CPA), areas of expertise, and years of experience.

• Content you submit: questions, replies, votes, topic follows, content flags and the reasons you give for them, an optional short reason when you vote a reply "not helpful," and any other material you post to the Platform.

• Questions you choose to save for your own later reference.

• Feedback and support submissions: bug reports, suggestions, and issue descriptions submitted through the Platform's feedback feature, which may include reproduction steps, a screenshot you choose to attach, and the page you were on when you submitted it.

• Referral information: if you invite a colleague, we store that you invited them, and their resulting account is linked to yours as "invited by" once they sign up.

Information collected automatically.

• Which questions you view, so we can show aggregate interest signals on a question (for example, "41 viewed") and personalize your own dashboard toward what’s active in your areas of interest. This is a first-party Platform feature, not general-purpose web analytics or advertising tracking — see the note on that distinction below — and, as described in Section 5, it is never shown to other members as a list of who viewed what.

• When you submit feedback through the Platform's feedback feature, we automatically capture the page you were on and basic technical information about your browser (user agent), attached to that submission.

• Our authentication provider maintains a session token (via cookie or local storage, depending on your browser) so you can stay signed in; see Section 10 (Cookies and Similar Technologies).

• Standard server and security logs generated by our hosting and infrastructure providers in the ordinary course of operating the Platform.

We do not currently use general-purpose web analytics or advertising tracking tools on the Platform. The question-view tracking described above is a narrower, first-party feature used only to power the interest signals and personalization described in this Policy — it is not shared with any analytics or advertising vendor. If we adopt general-purpose analytics or advertising tracking in the future, we will update this Policy and Section 10 below before doing so.

3. How We Use Information

We use the information described above to:

• create and administer your account, verify your eligibility — including checking your email domain against an organization's approved domains, or routing you to admin review when there's no match — and maintain your profile;

• operate the Platform's core features, including publishing and displaying questions, replies, votes, topic follows, saved questions, and public profile information to other verified members;

• generate AI summaries and topic reports from the content members submit (see Section 4);

• surface aggregate, non-identifying interest signals — such as how many members viewed or saved a question, how many questions are open in a topic, and how often new questions get flagged as possibly duplicating an existing one — to help members and administrators see where knowledge is in demand;

• help moderators and administrators understand and improve answer quality, including reviewing the optional reasons members give for a "not helpful" vote; these reasons are never shown publicly or attributed to you outside the moderation team (see Section 5);

• review and respond to feedback, bug reports, and suggestions, and improve the Platform based on them;

• send account-related and transactional communications, such as verification confirmations and, where applicable, suspension notices;

• maintain the security, integrity, and trustworthiness of the Platform, including moderation of flagged content; and

• comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Use.

We do not use your information to make automated decisions about your employment, professional standing, or any governmental determination. See Section 4 for the specific boundaries on AI use.

4. AI Processing of Information

The Platform uses artificial intelligence to summarize discussions, generate topic-level reports, and cluster feedback into themes, based on content that members — including you — submit.

Consistent with the PowerIn Public Constitution’s governing principle that "AI informs, humans remain accountable," AI-generated output on the Platform:

• is produced from content already visible to eligible members, not from any additional personal information collected for this purpose;

• is clearly labeled as AI-generated and, where applicable, marked as reflecting professional discussion rather than legal or regulatory authority;

• does not determine your verification status, moderation outcomes, or any other consequential decision about your account — those remain human decisions;

• does not set or influence whether a reply is marked "verified" — that designation is always a deliberate action by a human moderator or administrator, and is never automated or based on vote counts or popularity; and

• is never used to expose information a member did not choose to make visible under the Platform's normal visibility rules.

AI-generated summaries and reports may be visible to other eligible members according to the same visibility rules that apply to the underlying content.

5. How We Share Information

We do not sell your personal information.

We share information in the following circumstances:

With other members. Your public profile (name, verified status, title, department, years of experience, credentials, and contribution activity) and the content you post (questions, replies, votes cast) are visible to other verified members of the Platform, consistent with its design as a shared professional knowledge space. Your email address is never shown to other members.

What we don’t share with other members. Your individual question-viewing history, your list of saved questions, and any reason you give for a "not helpful" vote are visible only to you and to Platform moderators/administrators. Other members only ever see aggregate counts on a question — for example, "41 viewed, 6 saved" — never who viewed it, who saved it, or who wrote what about a reply they found unhelpful.

With service providers. We use a limited set of vendors to operate the Platform, each acting on our behalf and under obligations to protect your information:

• Supabase, for database hosting, authentication, and secure storage;

• Google Workspace, for sending account-related and transactional email;

• GoHighLevel, our CRM platform, which receives your name, email, organization name and type, professional type, verification status, title, department, and (if applicable) who referred you — used solely to manage the PowerIn Public member relationship, such as verification and onboarding communications. Your record is tagged internally to keep it separate from GoHighLevel's other, unrelated client contacts, and is never used for unrelated marketing. Your platform activity — the questions, replies, votes, saves, views, vote reasons, badges, and topics you engage with — is not shared with GoHighLevel.

For legal and safety reasons. We may disclose information if required by law, subpoena, or other legal process, or where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of PowerIn Public, our members, or the public.

In a business transfer. If PowerIn Public is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, information may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to this Policy or a successor policy of which you will be notified.

With your direction. Where you take an action that inherently shares information — for example, submitting a question visible to other members — that sharing happens as part of using the Platform as intended.

6. Government and Public-Sector Users

If you are affiliated with a governmental entity, PowerIn Public is not a public agency, records custodian, or system of record for your organization, and using the Platform does not change your organization's own recordkeeping, public-records, or confidentiality obligations. Information you post to the Platform is governed by this Policy and our Terms of Use — it is not automatically subject to your employer's records-retention schedule, and conversely, using the Platform does not relieve you of any obligation your employer's policies impose on what you may share professionally. If you are uncertain whether specific information is appropriate to share on the Platform, consult your organization's own policies before posting it.

7. Data Retention

We retain your account and profile information for as long as your account is active, and content you submit for as long as necessary to operate the Platform, consistent with Section 2 of our Terms of Use (account closure) and the content-license terms in Section 5 of our Terms of Use. If you close your account, we retain or anonymize certain information as described there — generally, your personal identifying information is removed while previously submitted content may be retained in anonymized form so that discussions remain useful to other members. Feedback and support submissions, and records showing which version of our Terms of Use or this Policy you accepted and when, are retained as long as reasonably necessary for support history and legal recordkeeping.

8. Data Security

We use commercially reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect your information, including role-based access controls, database-level access policies restricting what each type of member can see, and secure authentication. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Your Choices and Rights

You can review and update most of your profile information directly on the Platform. Some fields — including your verification status and permission level — cannot be self-edited and require an administrator; contact us if one of those needs to change.

You may close your account at any time as described in Section 2 of our Terms of Use.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights over your personal information, such as the right to request a copy of it, request correction or deletion, or object to certain uses. To make a request, contact us using the information in Section 14, and we will respond consistent with applicable law. We do not currently charge a fee for verified requests.

10. Cookies and Similar Technologies

The Platform uses only the cookies and browser storage necessary to keep you signed in and to operate core functionality (authentication session management, handled by our authentication provider). We do not currently use cookies for advertising or cross-site tracking. If we adopt analytics or other tracking technologies in the future, we will update this section first.

11. Children's Privacy

The Platform is not directed to and is not intended for use by anyone under 18. Consistent with the eligibility requirement in Section 2 of our Terms of Use, we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have, we will take steps to delete it.

12. Where Your Information Is Processed

PowerIn Public is a Florida company, and the Platform is currently intended for use by public-sector professionals and organizations in the United States. Information is processed and stored in the United States through our hosting provider. If you access the Platform from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the Platform evolves. The current version and effective date will be posted on the Platform, in the same manner described in Section 15 of our Terms of Use. Material changes will be reflected here, and continued use of the Platform after an update constitutes acceptance to the extent permitted by applicable law.

14. Contact Us

Questions about this Privacy Policy, or requests regarding your information, can be sent to support@powerinpublic.org.