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What is this guide for?

Valley Forge Chorus is committed to protecting your personal data and will use any personal or sensitive data we collect from you.  In Europe, this is in line with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).
 

What data do you collect and what do you use it for?

Valley Forge Chorus collects data from individuals to help us plan, organise and run the day-to-day operations of the group (e.g. co-ordinating rehearsals or collecting subscription payments) and to promote and market the group’s activities (e.g. marketing mailing lists and photography/video capture).

Members: for administering membership
When you join Valley Forge Chorus as a member, or during your membership with us, we may need to collect some of the following information on you:

• Name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Address         
• Emergency contact details
• Age/gender
• Photos/video footage

This data will be used by our admin team to manage your membership with Valley Forge Chorus and to organise and run our activities.

Mailing list subscribers: for marketing and promotion
We offer everybody the opportunity to sign up (consent) to receive marketing and promotional information on the group’s activities (e.g. emails about forthcoming events).

When you sign-up to our marketing mailing list we will ask for your email address and will use this data to send you information about our events and activities (e.g. upcoming events, latest news, etc).  We will only send you information that is related to Valley Forge Chorus.  (i.e. we will not use your data to send you marketing messages from 3rd parties).

Anything we send you will include a clear option to unsubscribe and you can also do so at any time by replying to the email.

When you purchase an event tickets or merchandise, or donate
If you purchase an event ticket, or Valley Forge Chorus merchandise, or make a donation, we need to collect data on the person making the purchase.  This data will only be used for administering your booking/purchase/donation, and will not be used to send you marketing/promotional messages from the group.

Website visitors: for running and improving our website
When a person visits our website, we collect and analyse anonymised data on how many people have visited, what pages they have looked at and other statistical information. We also use cookies to allow members to log in and out in order to view our members-only section.  See the section below on cookies.
 

Do you share my data with anyone else?

We will never pass your details on to third parties for marketing purposes.

Our software provider, HarmonySite also has access to the data stored in our website.  HarmonySite has their own Data Protection Policy.
 

Are there special measures for children’s data?

We do not knowingly collect or store any personal data about children under the age of 13.
 

How I can I get you to update my data?

You can contact us at any time to update or correct the data we hold on you.
 

How long will you hold my data?

The Valley Forge Chorus data retention policy is to review all data held on individuals at least every two years and remove data where we no longer have a legitimate reason to keep it.

Where you have withdrawn your consent for us to use your data for a particular purpose (e.g. unsubscribed from a mailing list) we may retain some of your data for up to two years in order to preserve a record of your consent having been withdrawn.
 

What rights do I have?

Under the European GDPR, you have the following rights over your data and its use:

• The right to be informed about what data we are collecting on you and how we will use it
• The right of access - you can ask to see the data we hold on you
• The right to rectification - you can ask that we update or correct your data
• The right to object - you can ask that we stop using your data for a particular purpose
• The right to erasure - you can ask us to delete the data we hold on you
• The right to restrict processing - you can ask that we temporarily stop using your data while the reason for its use or its accuracy are investigated
• Though unlikely to apply to the data we hold and process on you, you also have rights related to portability and automated decision making (including profiling)

All requests related to your rights should be made through our Contact page. We will respond within one month.

You can find out more about your rights on the Information Commission’s Office website
 

What will you do if anything changes?

If we make changes to our privacy statements or processes we will post the changes here. Where the changes are significant, we may also choose to email individuals affected with the new details. Where required by law, will we ask for your consent to continue processing your data after these changes are made.
 

Use of Cookies

What are 'cookies'?

'Cookies' are small text files that are stored by the browser (for example, Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc) on your computer or electronic device. They allow websites to 'remember' you for a period of time so that they can store things like user preferences and make the website quicker and easier for you to use.

Without cookies, some things on websites would not be able to work: for example, without cookies it might not be possible to know whether or not you are logged in on a website, which would prevent you from being able to see content restricted to logged-in members.
 

How does the Valley Forge Chorus website use cookies?

The Valley Forge Chorus website uses cookies to track whether you are signed in or not, and whether you wish to remain logged in when you return to this website in your next browser session.
 

Anonymous analytics cookies

Further, every time someone visits our website, software provided by Google Analytics generates an 'anonymous analytics cookie'.  These cookies can tell us whether or not you have visited the site before and what pages you visit. Your browser will tell us if you have these cookies and, if you don't, we generate new ones. This allows us to track how many individual users we have, and how often they visit the site. We use them to gather statistics, for example, the number of visits to a page, to help us identify if visitors would benefit from more information on a particular area.
 

How do I turn cookies off?

It is usually possible to stop your browser accepting cookies, or to stop it accepting cookies from a particular website.

All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. You can usually find these settings in the 'options' or 'preferences' menu of your browser. To understand these settings, the following links may be helpful, or you can use the 'Help' option in your browser for more details.

• Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
• Cookie settings in Firefox
• Cookie settings in Chrome
• Cookie settings in Safari

Please note: switching off cookies may prevent some aspects of our website from working fully (e.g. you may not be able to access our members area).
 

Useful links

You can find out more about cookies and their use on the internet from www.allaboutcookies.org