Privacy Policy

1. The short version

If you submit a form on this site, we share what you submit with Main Street South Carolina staff and with the local Project Hometown SC team in the community you're interested in — municipal staff and volunteer resident ambassadors in Cheraw, Hartsville and Walterboro — so they can contact you about relocating.

We do not sell your information. You can ask us to delete it at any time.

2. Who we are

Project Hometown SC is a community relocation and recruitment program of Main Street South Carolina, a program of the Municipal Association of South Carolina, operated in partnership with the Rural Growth Initiative and the South Carolina Office of Rural Health, and funded in part by a grant from the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission.

This policy covers projecthometownsc.org. The participating communities also run their own sites — projecthometowncheraw.com, projecthometownhartsville.com and projecthometownwalterboro.com — which are operated separately and have their own practices.

A form you submit there is governed by that site's policy as well as this one, because those forms deliver into the same program system described below.

3. What we collect

3.1. Information you give us

When you complete a form, we collect your first and last name, your email address, and — if you choose to provide them — the city and state you live in, what you do for work, and anything you write in the free-text box.

Only your name and email are required. If you later give a community team your phone number or other details directly, that correspondence is between you and them.

3.2. What we don't collect

We do not ask for and do not want Social Security numbers, government identification numbers, financial account or payment card numbers, or health information.

Please don't include anything of that kind in the free-text box.

4. How we use it

We use what you submit to:

• Contact you about relocating to Cheraw, Hartsville or Walterboro and answer your questions.
• Match you with a resident ambassador or local program contact in the community you're interested in.
• Help arrange a visit, introductions and connections if you want them.
• Operate, evaluate and improve the program.
• Report aggregate totals to our funders and partners as a condition of the grant that supports this work.

Grant reporting uses counts and trends — how many people inquired about a given community, for example. It does not identify you personally.

5. Who we share it with

This is the most important section of this policy, so we want to be plain about it.

When you submit a form, you are asking to be contacted, and we pass your information to the people who will contact you:

• Program administrators — Main Street South Carolina and Municipal Association of South Carolina staff.
• Municipal staff and officials of the participating cities — Cheraw, Hartsville and Walterboro — including their economic development, main street and administrative personnel.
• Volunteer resident ambassadors and local program leads in those communities, who are private residents, not government employees.
• Program partners — the Rural Growth Initiative and the South Carolina Office of Rural Health — where they are supporting your inquiry.
• Service providers that run the technology behind the program for us, including website and database hosting, email delivery, analytics and spam prevention. They may only use your information to provide those services to us.

If you tell us you're interested in a specific community, we generally share your inquiry with that community's team. A general inquiry goes to program administrators, who may route it to a community team on your behalf.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own advertising or marketing.

We may disclose information where we're legally required to — in response to a subpoena, court order, or a valid public records request.

Because the participating municipalities are public bodies, correspondence you have with them may be subject to the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act.

6. Your choices

For any of the requests below, use the contact form on our home page and start your message with “Privacy request.”

• Stop hearing from us. Reply to any message you receive from us asking to be removed, or send us a request, and we'll stop contacting you.
• Delete your information. We'll delete what we hold about you, except anything we're required to retain by law or grant record-keeping obligations, and we'll ask your community team to do the same.
• See what we hold. We'll tell you what information about you we have and who we shared it with.
• Opt out of analytics. Use Google's browser opt-out add-on or your browser's tracking-protection settings.

7. How long we keep it

We keep inquiry information for as long as the program is active and our grant record-keeping requirements apply, after which it is deleted.

8. How we protect it

Information you submit is transmitted over an encrypted connection and stored in an access-controlled system.

Access is limited to program staff and the local team for your community, each signing in with their own account.

No system is perfectly secure and we can't guarantee absolute security — but we limit who can see your information to the people who need it to help you.

9. Children

This site is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13.

If you believe a child has submitted information to us, tell us through the contact form and we'll delete it.

10. Third-party services and links

We use Google Analytics and Google reCAPTCHA. Your use of reCAPTCHA is subject to Google's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

This site links to the three community websites and to partner organizations. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of sites we link to.

11. Changes to this policy

If we make material changes, we'll update the effective date at the top of this page and, where the change is significant, note it on the home page.

Continued use of the site after a change means you accept the updated policy.

12. Contact us

Questions about this policy, or want your information removed?

Use the contact form on our home page and start your message with “Privacy request” so it reaches the right person quickly.

It goes straight to the program administrators at Main Street South Carolina.

13. Project Hometown SC

c/o Main Street South Carolina
Municipal Association of South Carolina