The International Women’s Club Stuttgart e.V. (IWCS) Privacy Policy
Protecting your privacy is important to us at the IWCS. When you become a member or visit this website as a guest, you provide us with personal information, making us a “controller” of personal information as defined by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).
This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal information (this means any information that identifies or could identify you), and explains your rights to make individual decisions about what information about you we use.
Kinds of Personal Information We Collect
And How We Use It
When you submit a registration form to become a member of our club (Verein), you will be asked to provide us with the following information that are necessary to operate the IWCS under our current By Laws (Satzung): name, postal address, phone number, and email address. This information will be used to send you invoices for yearly membership dues and contact you about club business, including invitations to our Annual General Meeting and Charity Events.
We also ask for voluntary demographic and other information that helps us describe our club membership to prospective members and possible donors for our charity events (via an anonymized statistical summary), or to enroll you in our Mother’s Corner program.
You will also be asked for permission to put your name and email address on our mailing list for our monthly newsletter.
Storage and Use of Personal information / External Service Providers
We do not sell your personal data to third parties. We also never share your personal information to any third party for any purpose not directly related to our organization’s mission.
However, we do use third party suppliers to provide some services necessary to serve our membership and the general public. These third parties may process personal data on our behalf as “processors” and are subject to contractual conditions to only process that personal information under our instructions and protect it.
Here is a summary of how various kinds of data are processed and stored and what they are used for:
MEMBERSHIP REGISTRATION DATA
Upon submission of your registration form, your complete membership data is entered in our WISO Mein Verein software and stored using encryption and firewalls on their cloud servers (located in Germany). Only our Membership Coordinator, Chairperson, and Treasurer have access to this software from their personal computers and their accounts are password protected. Your original paper membership form is kept securely in a club binder.
CLUB LEADERSHIP
Club business is conducted by the IWCS club leadership (Erweiterte Vorstand) using private Facebook groups, which includes approving new members and planning and executing club events. Only member names are used in these operational discussions.
The club leaders retain annual records both on paper and in digital form. Digital records are kept by our Chairperson on a private server protected by passwords and a firewall. Paper records are also kept in storage at the home of the chairperson. These yearbooks may include the following personal information:
- a list of members in attendance at the Annual General Meeting as required by the Amtsgericht (digital and paper)
- a list of guests in attendance from our Annual Charity Events (digital only)
- banking information from reimbursements in our accounting books (see next section)
- a list of volunteers (leadership positions or planning committees) in meeting minutes (digital and paper)
Any club documents containing personal information will be password protected, shared with only the relevant persons in the club leadership, and properly maintained to protect each individual’s right to privacy.
MONTHLY NEWSLETTER
We use a service called Mailchimp (a US-based service) to design, host, and distribute our monthly digital newsletters. If you have given us permission, we will add your name and email address to our mailing list. Each member always has the right to control their subscription to these newsletters. See the section “Accessing and Updating Your Personal Information” for more information.
Once your membership period has ended, we will delete your name and email address from the online mailing list.
Members of the public can also sign up for our Prospective Member Newsletter on our homepage. Names and email addresses from the prospective member mailing list are deleted after one year.
TAKING PART IN CLUB LIFE
Members are not required to join our private Facebook groups in order to take part in club life. You can choose to restrict all contact to email only, including receiving our monthly newsletter and RSVPing to club events via email.
If you RSVP to a club event using a WordPress blog contact form, you will be asked to include a contact email address and your name so that we can confirm your reservation. Emails are deleted after processing.
If you are a member (or a prospective member) of the Mother’s Corner group, you may choose to take part in their shared Whatsapp group. By using this service, you agree that your phone number can be shared with the Whatsapp service and the other members of that group. To join the shared Whatsapp group, fill in the disclosure and permission form on the Mother’s Corner page on this website and you will be sent a link to join the group. You do not have to join the Whatsapp group to be a member of the Mother’s Corner group. Once you are no longer a member of the club, you will be removed from the Whatsapp group by the Mother’s Corner Coordinator or you can remove yourself at any time. If you are a prospective member who does not join the IWCS, you will be removed by the Mother’s Corner Coordinator after your trial period ends.
If you have asked to include your contact information in our shared club directory, please note that as of the date of this policy, we have temporarily suspended this exchange pending approval of a secure cloud service with servers based inside the EU. We hope to find an acceptable service soon and resume sharing this information with our members.
HOSTING A CLUB EVENT
If you volunteer to host a club event, your name and contact information may be included in several places:
- Your name will be included in our event planning discussions in our closed Facebook planning group (leaders only).
- We will note your name and email address for RSVPs in the private calendar entry for the event on our shared Google calendar for planning purposes (password protected, leaders access only).
- Your name and email address for RSVPs will be included in our members-only newsletter, hosted by Mailchimp.
- We will mention you as the event host in our public WordPress blog entry using only your first name and initial of your last name. Your email address for RSVPs will be embedded in a contact form in the blog post and not visible to the public.
- If you host a club event using our private members-only Facebook group, you may also choose to include your phone number in the description for the convenience of your guests.
Your personal contact information will never be included in any newsletters or calendars available to the general public or prospective members. Your home address is never included in blog posts or in the newsletter for safety reasons and we will ask you to give that to guests directly.
If you have hosted a club event and paid for something that needs reimbursement, we will ask you to submit your bank account information along with the physical receipt. Your reimbursement will be processed via online banking with our club bank, which is currently BW Bank. This information is kept in paper form for 10 years as required for tax purposes.
PUBLIC EVENTS
If you RSVP to a public event via email, we will use your email address to confirm your reservation and send any other necessary information about the event. Emails are deleted after processing.
If you RSVP to a public event via a contact form on a WordPress blog post, we will receive your name and email address, which will be used to confirm your reservation and send any other necessary information about the event. Emails are deleted after processing.
If you RSVP to a public event using a Facebook event on our fan page, please be aware that this information may be public (check to see if you can view the guest list) and you will also be subject to the data protection policy of Facebook. See the section below called “Cookies and Tracking” covering other interactions with our Facebook fan page.
OTHER KINDS OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
Please see the sections below for information regarding email message retention, photos, and cookies and tracking on our websites.
Email Message Retention
Email messages sent to any of our club addresses are hosted on the servers of our provider, Bitpalast (with servers based in Germany). Your messages are processed using either Bitpalast’s webmail service or a mobile phone mail app. We regularly delete email conversations after the reason for the message is resolved and do not keep your messages longer than a year. We also do not save your email address to any online address books.
Copies of email messages informing us of changes to your membership status or contact details will be printed out and attached to your paper registration form and kept in our membership binder.
Photographs and Use of Your Image
Sometimes photos taken at club events will be used in IWCS marketing materials, which can include our website, Facebook fan page, monthly newsletter, printed materials, or in our private Facebook groups. We must have written permission to use photographs of you in this manner. If your photo is included, your name will not be used and you will not be tagged on social media. If you have given us permission to use your image, photos of you at events may be stored on our password-protected Google Photos account or on the camera/phone/computer of the person taking the photos.
You must give us explicit permission to use your image and we will ask for it in the following ways:
- When you complete your membership registration form, we will ask you to give us written permission to use your image.
- If you are a member of the Mother’s Corner group, you will also be asked for additional permission to use your child(ren)’s image.
- When the host of an event would like to take a photo, she will ask those who do not wish to have their photos taken to remove themselves from the shot.
- If you attend a larger public event (such as the Annual Charity Event), we will have a written permissions form available especially for that event.
Your rights regarding photos include:
- the right to refuse to grant permission for us to use your image
- the right to request that a photo that includes you be removed from public viewing at any time
- the right to revoke your written permission at any time (see section below on “How to Access and Update Your Personal Information”)
Cookies and Tracking
Our website uses “cookies” to automatically help provide better services. These small bits of data are used to identify your device to the website when you visit again so the site can load your preferences, automatically accept your credentials, or otherwise personalize the experience. You can reject cookies or cancel them by instructing your Web browser accordingly.
Our website also uses contact forms for your questions and RSVPs to club events. If you fill in a contact form on one our WordPress blog posts, we will receive your name and email address, which will be used to answer your question or confirm your reservation. Emails are deleted after processing.
Visitors to our Facebook Business Page are governed by Facebook’s privacy policy. Please be advised that Facebook collects data from all visitors to our Business Page. As the administrator of a Facebook Business Page, the IWCS does not collect personal data from visitors except for your name if you RSVP to one of our public events.
Please refer to Facebook’s privacy policy for more information on the purpose and scope of data collection and data analysis undertaken by Facebook, your rights, how to modify settings, and how to protect your privacy.
How Long Do We Retain Your Personal Information?
For members: The IWCS will retain information from the registration form for the duration of the member’s membership period. At the end of your membership, your membership data shall be removed from our online data storage and only the original paper registration form will be kept in our alumni binder.
If you inform us that you are cancelling your membership, your information will be deleted at the end of that calendar year (per our By Laws). If your membership lapses due to non-payment of renewal fees, your information will be deleted at the end of the renewal payment period (April 1st of each year).
Please refer to other sections for retention procedures for other specific kinds of personal information.
Accessing and Updating Your Personal Information
You always have the right to:
- Request a copy of your original membership registration form.
- Request that we correct your personal data if you believe it is inaccurate or incomplete.
- Restrict the processing of your personal data for a specific purpose or revoke prior permissions granted.
- Request that we delete your personal information.
Corrections to your name, postal address, email address or other contact information should be sent directly to the IWCS Membership Coordinator at
membership (at) iwcstuttgart (dot) org.
You can request the following at any time by sending an email to our chairperson at
info (at) iwcstuttgart (dot) org:
- A copy of the information on your registration form.
- Deletion of personal information you have given to us on your registration form (of non-required or demographic information) from our database.
- Withdrawal of consent to use your photographic image in club materials.
- Withdrawal of consent to share your contact information with other club members in our shared directory.
If you have previously signed up to receive a newsletter and no longer wish to receive it, every newsletter includes an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom. Click that link to unsubscribe and have your name and email address deleted from the Mailchimp servers.
Updated 24 January 2021