This privacy policy sets out how we look after people’s personal information. It was last updated in November 2025.

This site is run by the Democracy Network, on behalf of Democracy Club Community Interest Company. Democracy Club is a UK-registered not-for-profit dedicated to providing opportunities for greater democratic engagement. Their registered office address is Democracy Club, Spacehoppers, New Mills, Libbys Drive, Stroud, GL5 1RN.

The Democracy Network is committed to looking after your personal data. We will:

Comply with our legal obligations on data protection,

Carefully look after any personal data that we hold or use, and

Be open and transparent about how we do this.

What data do we collect?

When you use any of our services, we may store your IP address (a unique identifier for your device or internet connection) in order to understand how our websites are used and to help with some parts of our server administration.

If you sign up to any of our services, such as a mailing list or network membership, we collect the data you provide so that we can keep in touch and provide you with relevant information.

If you sign up to our e-newsletter, we will store your name and email address.

If you sign up as a member of the Democracy Network, we will store your name, email address, geographic location, phone number, networking and communication preferences, job title and organisation details. We will also store additional information on you based on your interactions with the Democracy Network, Democracy Network event attendance and information provided by you to our team.

We use Hubspot to store newsletter recipient and member information. Hubspot stores UK data on Amazon Web Services servers located in the European Union.

Do we share information with others?

The personal data we hold about you is not shared with third parties, except where you have provided explicit permission.

For how long do we keep personal data?

We keep personal data for as long as we have consent or as long as is necessary to pursue the goal of a stronger, better connected UK democracy sector.

If you sign up for one of our services, such as our mailing list, we will keep your data until you notify us that you no longer wish to use the service.

Tracking and third-party services

We track usage of our services so that we can see how people are using it, what pages people are looking at and so on in order to improve the service.

We use GoatCounter to do this. It does not identify you personally. You can read more about GoatCounter’s GDPR policy and their privacy policy.

Your rights

You can ask to see the personal data we hold for you. You can also ask us to delete it. In both cases we must respond within one month.

You can ask that we correct any erroneous personal data we hold about you. We will aim to do that as quickly as possible.

You have the right to object to the use of your personal data.

Contact us

To exercise your personal data rights or for any questions about how we process data, please email hello@democracynetwork.org.uk.

If you believe that we are not observing your personal data rights, you also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office and potentially to a judicial remedy.

Terms

This website is owned and managed by Democracy Club Community Interest Company (‘we’, ‘us’).

We are not responsible for the content of external links.

We will take all reasonable measures to ensure that data is corrected if you contact us regarding errors, but we cannot be held responsible for mistakes in the data or liability arising from your reliance on the data.

We reserve the right to alter these terms at any time.

These terms are governed by the UK GDPR law.

If you have any questions about these terms, please contact us.

Types of data we collect on this site

Goatcounter

This site uses Goatcounter analytics platform to track anonymised user interaction. We use this data to determine the number of people using our site, to better understand how they find and use our web pages. Goatcounter records geographic location, device, internet browser and operating system, though none of this is personally identifiable information.

Newsletter

As part of the registration process for our regular e-newsletter, we only collect your name and email address. We use Hubspot to send our newsletter, and your details will be held on Mailchimp’s servers in the USA. Our agreement with Mailchimp is based on one of the approved means of protecting the data of UK citizens (it uses what are called the Standard Contractual Clauses, and you can see them here). We only send you our newsletter with your consent.

The email address that you submit will not be stored within this website’s own database or in any of our internal computer systems. We don’t rent or trade email lists with other organisations and businesses.

We gather statistics around newsletter opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our newsletter.

We also produce a regular newsletter for the Democracy Network, and if you sign up for this you will be given details about how we look after your personal information and about your privacy rights

You can unsubscribe from our newsletters at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of our newsletters.

Membership

Donors

We keep very limited information about our individual donors (enough to enable us to thank them and to comply with money laundering obligations).

Types of data we collect elsewhere

Members of the public we work with on projects

If we are working with you on a project we will give you full details about how we will use and look after your personal information. We normally do this by giving you a consent form. That form will also clearly set out the lawful basis for processing your data, and it will explain your legal rights.

Professional networks and subcontractors

Like many organisations, we keep contact details of people in our professional networks, for example people from organisations that we collaborate with, people we subcontract to, people we meet at conferences, etc. Our professional networks are very important to us, as they enable us to build alliances. We have decided that we have a legitimate interest in holding this information, and that is the lawful basis we are using to process this data. We store this data either in Notion (which is a US-based company providing database management software), in Dropbox Business, or in Google Workspace. Just as with Mailchimp, our agreements with all of these databases and apps use the Standard Contractual Clauses to protect the data of UK citizens. 

You can ask us to delete any data we hold about you by emailing data@involve.org.uk, and we will action this request within 10 days. We also clean up our contacts database at least once a year by deleting out of date contact information or by updating records, for example where people have moved into different roles.

Open Government Network

Involve coordinates the UK’s Open Government Network, and we use the Discourse online forum to support the network. If you are part of this network and sign up to the forum, we will let you know separately what steps we are taking to ensure that your data is properly protected.

Job applicants

If you apply for a job at Involve, we look after the information that you send us and we store it securely. For unsuccessful candidates, we delete this information after 6 months, unless you’ve asked us to keep your CV on file.

Behind the scenes

We have a comprehensive data protection policy to ensure that we comply with the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. We’ve undertaken a data audit, so that we know what personal information we hold and process, and we’ve documented our lawful bases for processing personal data. We have also checked that our online systems and databases are GDPR-compliant, and we’ve reviewed the security of our different storage systems. We review these arrangements regularly.

If you need further information or if you have a complaint

If you have any questions about how we look after people’s personal information, or if you have a complaint about how we are handling your data, please get in touch with us at hello@democracynetwork.org.uk. We will try our best to answer your questions or resolve your complaint.

You can also make a complaint to the Information Commissioner, who is the official data protection regulator in the UK. Their contact information can be found on their website at www.ico.org.uk.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

This privacy policy may change from time to time in line with legislation or industry developments. We will not explicitly inform our clients or website users of these changes. Instead, we recommend that you check this page occasionally for any policy changes.