Calendar

Venture Café Global Institute – Venture Café Event Privacy Notice

Last updated: April 7th, 2022

Venture Café Global Institute (“VCGI“) respects your right to privacy. This Privacy Notice explains who we are, how we collect, share and use personal information about you, and how you can exercise your privacy rights. If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, then please contact us using the contact details provided at the bottom of this Privacy Notice. Note that this Privacy Notice only governs our collection and use of personal information that you provide when you attend a Venture Café Network event. Our collection and use of personal information through our website is separately governed by our website Privacy Notice.

What is VCGI? VCGI is a public benefit corporation that operates as a non profit organization that supports and operates a global network of Venture Cafés. Headquartered in the United States, our global mission is connecting innovators to make things happen. VCGI provides support in key areas including staff training, knowledge sharing, fundraising, shared systems and services, intellectual property, and guides expansion to new sites.

What is the Venture Café Network? Venture Café’s mission is to connect innovators to make things happen. Founded in 2009, the Venture Café Network is a global movement of organizations that offer high-touch programming, spaces, storytelling, and broad innovation engagement. Each Venture Café offers three core programs, coupled with localized programming and support to serve the unique needs of their community.

For more information about VCGI and the Venture Café Network, please see the “About Us” section of our Website at https://venturecafeglobal.org/about/.

What personal information does VCGI collect and why? We ask you to provide certain information voluntarily. The types of information we ask you to provide, and the reasons why we ask you to provide it, include:

  • Type of personal information: Name and email address
      • Why do we collect it? To register you as an attendee at one of our local Venture Café events, print out a name tag for your use at our events, send you a welcome email, and provide ongoing communications about Venture Café, relevant upcoming events, reminders, and invitations, (if you so choose).
  • Type of personal information: Demographic information such as age, gender, background, geography, interest areas, attendance, company name, and stage of your business. We may also collect dietary requirements if required for catering purposes. This information may include sensitive personal data such as your racial or ethnic background, if you choose to provide us with such information (sharing this data is optional).
      • Why do we collect it? To understand who attends our events in order to tailor our events to our community’s needs
  • Type of personal information: Photographs, quotes and testimonials
      • Why do we collect it? To promote, showcase, and publicize the work of the Venture Cafés and our attendees. Photos, quotes and testimonials may be used on our websites or in event promotional materials or proposals.
  • Types of personal information: Occasional collection of feedback data about programs and services
      • Why do we collect it? To improve our offerings and ensure we’re providing the best quality content through our programs and services.

If we ask you to provide any other personal information not described above, then the personal information we will ask you to provide, and the reasons why we ask you to provide it, will be made clear to you at the point we collect your personal information.

In general, we will use the personal information we collect from you only for the purposes described in this Privacy Notice or for purposes that we explain to you at the time we collect your personal information. However, we may also use your personal information for other purposes that are not incompatible with the purposes we have disclosed to you (such as archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes, or statistical purposes) if and where this is permitted by applicable data protection laws.

  • Who does VCGI share my personal information with? We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients:
  • to your local Venture Café where you have signed up and attend events; if you attend Venture Café events at additional locations (beyond your local site), your information will also be shared with these locations.
  • to other Venture Cafés within the Venture Café Network and Venture Café License Holders so they can communicate with you about events they organize and tell you about opportunities they think may interest you. A list of our current Venture Café network is available here and license holders are listed on the local café sites if applicable.
  • to our third party services providers and partners who provide data processing services to us, or who otherwise process personal information for purposes that are described in this Privacy Notice or notified to you when we collect your personal information. These third party service providers and partners include:
  • to any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights, or (iii) to protect your vital interests or those of any other person;
  • to any other person with your consent to the disclosure.

 

Legal basis for processing personal information (EEA visitors only)

If you are a visitor from the European Economic Area, our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described above will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it.

However, we will normally collect personal information from you only where we have your consent to do so, where we need the personal information to perform a contract with you, or where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms.  In some cases, we may also have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you or may otherwise need the personal information to protect your vital interests or those of another person (for example, if an attendee needs medical assistance at an event, we may need to provide their details to a medic).

If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contract with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information).

Similarly, if we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or those of any third party), we will make clear to you at the relevant time what those legitimate interests are.

If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

 

How does VCGI keep my personal information secure?

We use appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect the personal information that we collect and process about you.  The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information.

 

International data transfers

Your personal information may be transferred to, and processed in, countries other than the country in which you are resident.  These countries may have data protection laws that are different to the laws of your country (and, in some cases, may not be as protective).

Specifically, our servers are located in the United States, and our Venture Café network and third party service providers and partners operate around the world.  This means that when we collect your personal information we may process it in any of these countries.

However, we have taken appropriate safeguards to require that your personal information will remain protected in accordance with this Privacy Notice. These include, where appropriate, implementing the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers of personal information between our Venture Café network.

Our Standard Contractual Clauses can be provided on request. We have implemented similar appropriate safeguards with our third party service providers and partners and further details can be provided upon request.

 

Data retention

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

 

Your data protection rights

You have the following data protection rights:

  • If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
  • In addition, if you are a resident of the European Union, you can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information. Again, you can exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
  • You have the right to opt-out of marketing communications we send you at any time.  You can exercise this right by clicking on the “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” link in the marketing e-mails we send you.  To opt-out of other forms of marketing (such as postal marketing or telemarketing), then please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
  • Similarly, if we have collected and processed your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time.  Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
  • You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information.  For more information, please contact your local data protection authority. (Contact details for data protection authorities in the European Economic Area are available here.)

We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

 

Updates to this Privacy Notice

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time in response to changing legal, technical or business developments. When we update our Privacy Notice, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make.  We will obtain your consent to any material Privacy Notice changes if and where this is required by applicable data protection laws.

You can see when this Privacy Notice was last updated by checking the “last updated” date displayed at the top of this Privacy Notice.

 

How to contact us

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact:

The data controller of your personal information is Venture Café Global Institute, whose address is at 1 Broadway – 14th Floor, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02142 – hello@venturecafeglobal.org.

For EEA visitors our EU representative details are:

Venture Café Global Institute, whose address is at 1 Broadway – 14th Floor, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02142 – hello@venturecafeglobal.org.