Privacy policy

1. Who we are

Raipur Society UK ("we", "us", "the Society") is a UK charitable community organisation. We are the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. This platform is entirely self-hosted on infrastructure we operate — we do not sell, rent, or hand your data to advertising or analytics companies.

Questions or requests about your data can be sent to hello@raipursociety.uk.

2. What we collect, and why

When you join, we ask for your name, date of birth, phone number, email, and a profile photo. Date of birth lets us apply the right safeguarding rules for members under 18 (see §5); phone number and photo are used for member identification — for example, so your photo can appear if you stand as a candidate in a committee election, or so an admin can verify who they're speaking to. These are visible to committee admins and volunteers running the platform, not published or made browsable to other members unless you separately opt in on your profile page (see below on the public About Us page). All of this is required to create an account — without it, we can't verify who you are or run the Society safely.

Depending on how you use the platform, we may also hold: your membership status, tier and payment/dues history; event registrations and attendance; shop orders; documents you upload; messages you send in the Society's chat; your voting participation (see §4 — never your vote choice); and questions you ask our AI assistant (used only to answer from the Society's own documents, and never sent to an outside AI provider to train a model). If you choose to appear on the public "About Us" page, you separately opt in per field (name, photo, bio, contact details) — nothing about you is shown publicly unless you turn that on yourself.

3. Our legal basis

We process membership, event, and financial data under contract (running your membership) and legal obligation (UK charity accounting and audit requirements). Anything you opt into — a public profile, marketing-style communications — is processed under your consent, which you can withdraw at any time from your profile page.

4. Voting is deliberately anonymous

When you vote in an election or poll, we record two separate, unlinked things: a receipt that you voted (so we can prevent double-voting and check quorum) and an anonymous tally of the choice itself. There is no record anywhere — not even one only staff can see — connecting your identity to how you voted.

5. Members under 18

A member's account isn't activated as a minor's independent membership without a parent or legal guardian confirming consent through their own account first. We keep a record of who consented and when, for safeguarding accountability.

6. How long we keep it

Financial records (payments, dues, receipts) are kept for the period UK charities are required to retain accounts — currently at least 6 years — even if you erase your account in the meantime, but with your identifying details removed (see §7). Other personal data is kept for as long as your membership is active, plus a reasonable period afterwards in case of disputes, and is deleted or anonymised sooner on request.

7. Your rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct anything inaccurate — most of this you can edit yourself from your profile page.
• Erase your personal data. Ask a committee admin, and we permanently scrub your name, email, phone, date of birth, and photo, and disable the account. Where we're legally required to keep a financial or voting-integrity record, that record stays but is no longer linked to an identifiable you.
• Restrict or object to certain processing, e.g. opting your profile back out of the public About Us page at any time.
• Receive a copy of your data in a portable format on request.
• Complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) if you believe we've mishandled your data.

8. Where your data lives

Everything is stored on infrastructure we run ourselves: our database and our own object storage for uploaded photos and documents. We don't use third-party analytics or advertising trackers. A small number of messages — account emails, and for members who opt in, WhatsApp or browser push notifications — pass through the relevant delivery provider (email, WhatsApp Business, or your browser's push service) purely to deliver that one message to you.

9. Cookies

We use one essential, httpOnly session cookie to keep you signed in. It isn't used for tracking or advertising, and isn't shared with any third party.

10. Changes to this policy

If we make a material change to how we handle your data, we'll update the date at the top of this page and, for significant changes, notify members directly.