Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) explains how National Speakers League, Inc. (“NSL,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) collects, uses, discloses, and protects personal information in connection with the State of the American Address® contest (“SOTAA”) and the Social Compact USA platform at www.sotaa250.com (the “Site”), including when you create an account, submit an entry, vote, build a participant profile, subscribe to updates, or interact with our AI assistant (the “AI Assistant”) (collectively, the “Services”). Because the Contest includes a Junior Division for minors, Section 10 describes how we handle children’s information. Residents of California and certain other U.S. states should review the additional disclosures in Section 9.

1. Information We Collect and Sources

A. Information you provide to us

• Account information: name or display name, email address, password, and a public participant handle/profile.
• Submission content: the speech or video entry you upload, along with any title, description, region, or other details you provide, and the name, voice, image, and likeness it contains.
• Participation data: the votes you cast and contest activity associated with your account.
• Junior Division / parental information: where a participant is a minor, the minor’s participation information and the parent or legal guardian’s name, email, and consent record.
• Forms and messages: information you submit through Contact, sponsor/partner, or other forms, including your message and reason for contact.
• AI Assistant inputs: the text you type into the AI Assistant.

B. Information collected automatically

• Server-log data: IP address, browser/user-agent string, and request timestamps, recorded automatically when our infrastructure serves pages.
• Analytics data (consent-based): pageviews and feature-usage events collected through PostHog, but only after you click “Accept” on our cookie banner. Analytics are off by default; no analytics cookies are set and no events are captured until you consent.

C. Information we do not collect

We do not collect sensitive or special-category data (such as Social Security numbers, financial-account information, health, or biometric information). Please do not submit such information through the Services.

D. Sources

We collect personal information directly from you (and, for a minor, from the minor’s parent or legal guardian); automatically from our hosting infrastructure when you use the Site; and from the service providers that help us operate the Services.

2. How We Use Information

• Create and manage accounts and participant profiles;
• Operate the Contest, including intake, display, judging, moderation, and voting of Submissions;
• Determine eligibility and results, and administer any recognition or prizes;
• Respond to your inquiries and provide the information you request;
• Send account, verification, results, and other transactional or relationship messages;
• Send newsletters and updates to people who have opted in;
• Operate the AI Assistant and answer questions about the Contest;
• Understand site usage through privacy-respecting analytics (only after consent);
• Detect and prevent fraud, vote manipulation, and abuse, and maintain security; and
• Comply with our legal obligations and enforce our terms and contest rules.

We do not sell personal data and do not use it for third-party advertising.

3. Public Information

The Contest is public by design. Your participant handle/display name, profile, Submission, and associated vote tallies and standings may be publicly visible on the Site and may be indexed by search engines. Please choose a display name and Submission content with this in mind, and do not include private or sensitive information you do not want to be public. For minors, the parent or legal guardian is responsible for reviewing what is made public and may contact us to remove a minor’s content.

4. How We Disclose Information; Service Providers

We do not sell your personal information. We process it only as described herein.

Service providers (processors). We use the following providers, each of which processes data on our behalf under its own terms and data-processing agreement:

Legal and protective disclosures. We may disclose personal information to comply with applicable law, legal process, or lawful government requests; to enforce our agreements, policies, and contest rules; to protect the rights, property, or safety of NSL, our users, or others (including investigating fraud or vote manipulation); or in connection with a merger, financing, acquisition, or sale of all or part of our business or assets.

Social sharing. If you use a social share button, you will be directed to a third-party platform (such as X, Facebook, or LinkedIn) that handles your information under its own policies. Otherwise we do not disclose your personal information for third-party advertising.

5. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

A cookie-consent banner appears on your first visit with “Accept” and “Decline” options. It gates all analytics on your choice and remembers your choice for one year. Strictly necessary cookies (including your login session and your consent choice) are always present; analytics cookies are set only if you click “Accept.” Declining (or ignoring) the banner keeps analytics fully off. We do not use advertising or ad-targeting cookies or third-party ad pixels.

6. The AI Assistant

When you use the AI Assistant, your messages are sent to Anthropic to generate replies and to Voyage AI to embed your query for knowledge-base retrieval. You are interacting with artificial intelligence, not a human. AI Assistant conversations are session-only. They are not persisted by NSL after your session and are not used to build advertising profiles. Inputs are processed only to generate a response for your current session and are not used by NSL or its AI service providers (Anthropic or Voyage AI) to train, fine-tune, or improve any AI models. Please do not enter sensitive or confidential information into the AI Assistant.

7. Data Retention

We retain personal information for as long as needed to operate the Contest and Services, pursue a legitimate business need, or comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. Account, profile, Submission, and voting data are retained for the duration of the Contest and for a reasonable period afterward for recordkeeping, integrity, and promotional purposes consistent with the license in our Terms; newsletter opt-ins are retained until you unsubscribe; and server logs are retained according to our host’s standard retention period. You may request deletion as described in Sections 9 and 10.

8. Data Security

We take reasonable and appropriate administrative, physical, and technical measures to protect personal information, consistent with industry norms. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, however, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data breach, we will provide notice as required by applicable law.

9. Your Privacy Rights and Choices

A. Choices available to everyone

• Access and update: view and edit your account/profile information, or contact us to correct information you have submitted.
• Delete: request deletion of your account and associated personal information, subject to the exceptions in this Policy and applicable law.
• Unsubscribe: use the unsubscribe link in any newsletter email or contact us to stop receiving marketing messages.
• Cookie controls: use the cookie banner and your browser settings to manage analytics and other cookies.

B. State privacy rights

Depending on your state of residence, you may have some or all of the following rights, subject to the conditions and exceptions in the applicable law: to confirm whether we process your personal information and to access it; to correct inaccuracies; to request deletion; to obtain a portable copy; and to opt out of the sale of personal information, targeted advertising, or certain profiling, although we do not sell personal information, engage in targeted advertising, or conduct such profiling.

How to exercise your rights. You or your authorized agent may submit a request by contacting us at privacy@sotaa250.com. We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights. If we decline your request, you may appeal by replying to our response.

10. Children’s Privacy and the Junior Division

The Contest includes a Junior Division and other youth participation, so we knowingly collect information from minors, but only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian, and only as needed to operate the Contest.

• Verifiable parental consent (under 13). Consistent with the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), where we collect personal information from a child under 13, we do so only after obtaining verifiable parental consent, and we collect only the information reasonably necessary to participate.
• Minors 13–17. Minors in this range may participate with parent or guardian consent as described in our Terms.
• Parental rights. A parent or legal guardian may review the personal information we have collected from their child, request that we correct or delete it, and refuse to permit further collection or use by withdrawing consent (which may end the child’s participation). To do so, contact us at privacy@sotaa250.com.
• Public content. Because Submissions and standings are public, the parent or legal guardian is responsible for what a minor makes public and may ask us to remove a minor’s content.

We do not condition a child’s participation on disclosing more information than is reasonably necessary, and we do not use children’s information for targeted advertising or to build advertising profiles.

11. No Sale; No Targeted Advertising; Do Not Track / GPC

We do not sell personal information for monetary consideration and do not engage in “targeted advertising” or “sharing” for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are defined under applicable U.S. state privacy laws. Because we do not engage in cross-site tracking for advertising, the Services operate consistently regardless of any “Do Not Track” signal; where required by law, we will treat a recognized opt-out preference signal (such as Global Privacy Control) as a valid opt-out of any processing to which the opt-out right applies.

12. International Users and Data Location

Our service providers are based in the United States, and information you submit is processed and stored in the United States. If you access the Services from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, which may have different data-protection laws than your jurisdiction.

13. Third-Party Links

The Services may link to third-party websites or platforms whose privacy practices differ from ours. We are not responsible for their practices and encourage you to review their privacy policies.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Effective Date” above and, for material changes, provide additional notice where required by law. We encourage you to review this Policy periodically.

15. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at:
National Speakers League, Inc.
Email: privacy@sotaa250.com