Legal
Last updated: 13 March 2025
The Venture Society Ltd, T/A Venture.Community, ("we," "our," or "us") is committed to protecting the privacy of our members and ensuring transparency in how we collect, process, and use personal data. This policy outlines how we handle personal information in compliance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR).
If you have any questions regarding this policy or how we handle your data, you can contact us at:
Thomas Goldthorpe — thomas.goldthorpe@venture.community
We collect the following personal data from our members:
Names
Email addresses
Phone numbers
We do not collect:
IP addresses or device information
Special category data (e.g., health, biometric, political opinions)
We use Stripe for payment processing and do not store payment details ourselves.
We collect personal data directly from users when they:
Register as a member of our society
Provide information through our membership platform
Contact us for support or inquiries
We process personal data for the following purposes:
Providing services to members
Customer support and communication
Marketing (sending updates and relevant communications)
Regulatory compliance (as required by the FCA)
The legal basis for processing data is:
Consent — For marketing communications where users have opted in.
Contractual necessity — To provide membership services.
Legitimate interest — To facilitate member networking and compliance with our organisational objectives.
We share limited personal data with:
Other members through our membership platform (names, emails, and phone numbers).
Third-party service providers, including:
Stripe (payment processing)
Cloud storage providers (for secure document and data storage)
CRM systems (for member management and communications)
We do not transfer data outside the UK or EU.
We retain personal data indefinitely, unless a member requests deletion.
If a deletion request is received, we will apply soft deletion, meaning the data is removed from active use but may be retained in secure archives for compliance purposes.
Members have the following rights regarding their personal data:
Right to access — Request a copy of personal data we hold.
Right to rectification — Request corrections to inaccurate or incomplete data.
Right to erasure ("Right to be forgotten") — Request deletion of data.
Right to restrict processing — Request limitations on how we process your data.
Right to object — Opt out of marketing communications.
Right to data portability — Request transfer of data in a structured format.
We do not use automated decision-making or profiling.
To exercise these rights, members can contact us at thomas.goldthorpe@venture.community. Requests will be processed within 5 working days.
We use a small number of cookies to run the site securely and to remember your preferences. Other than the cookie(s) marked Strictly Necessary below, we only set these once you accept via the cookie banner shown on your first visit — you can change your choice at any time using Cookie Settings in the footer of any page.
__session (Strictly Necessary, first-party) — keeps you logged in. Your session data is stored on our servers, not in the cookie itself.
__cf_bm (Strictly Necessary, third-party — set by Cloudflare on our database provider’s domain) — protects the site against automated abuse. Expires after roughly 30 minutes.
vc-geo-region and vc-geo-coords (Functional, first-party) — remember your regional chapter and approximate location so we can show relevant content and sort nearby events. Expire after 30 days.
vc-ref (Functional, first-party) — remembers a referral code when you follow a member’s invite link, so we can credit the right person. Expires after 30 days.
Google Analytics (Analytics, third-party — Google, via Google Tag Manager) — helps us understand how the site is used. Blocked by default; only set if you accept cookies.
We do not use cookies for advertising or cross-site tracking.
We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data, including:
Firewall protection
Access controls to restrict data access
If you have concerns about how we handle your data, please contact us first at thomas.goldthorpe@venture.community.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can lodge a complaint with the relevant Data Protection Authority:
UK: Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) — ico.org.uk
EU: Your local Data Protection Authority
We are also subject to FCA regulations, which may require additional data processing obligations.
We will update this policy as needed, and any significant changes will be communicated via email. The latest version will always be available on our website.
For any data protection inquiries, please contact:
Thomas Goldthorpe — thomas.goldthorpe@venture.community
