Privacy Policy

Updated May 23, 2018

The American International Women’s Club of Cologne e.V. (AIWCC) takes your privacy seriously. Because you provide us personal information as a member of our organization, we are a “controller” of personal information as defined by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).

In compliance with the GDPR, this privacy notice describes what personal data we collect as part of your membership; how, why, for how long we will use it, and how we keep it secure.

What type of information is collected from you?

When you sign up as a member of the AIWCC, we ask you to provide or confirm the following personal information:

Contact details: name, address, email address and phone number, etc.

Personal information:

• Gender
  
• Month/day of birth
  
• Age range
  
• Citizenship
  
• Your photo
  
• A short description of yourself
  

Interests with the Club:

• Why you joined
  
• What interests you have with the club
  
• How you found out about us
  
• When can you do activities with the club
  
• What skills you’d be interested in donating to the club
  

Optional personal information:

• Year of birth
  
• Languages you speak
  
• If you have a blog or website
  
• Employer
  
• Partner’s name
  
• Children’s names and birth month/year
  
• Length of residency in the Cologne - Bonn region
  

When you register for a public event that is organized and hosted by the AIWCC, or when you are added as a guest by an AIWCC Member, we ask you to provide or confirm the following information:

• Contact details: name, address, email address and phone number
  
• Event information: details that are relevant and necessary to the organization of the event
  

Why do we collect this information?

We process our members’ personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests:

• To verify that applicants fulfill membership requirements
  
• To allow other members to learn more about you
  
• To communicate with you about your membership account and notify you of any changes to our services
  
• To provide you with news and updates about the activities of the organization, opportunities to get involved, training, meetings or other events
  
• To respond to and investigate your questions, comments, support needs, complaints, or concerns
  

How do you access and update your personal information?

You always have the right to:

• Access the personal data that we hold about you
  
• Restrict the processing of your personal data for specific purposes
  
• Request that we correct your personal data if you believe it is inaccurate or incomplete
  
• Request that we delete your personal information
  

How can you accomplish these things?

Accessing or Updating Your Data

On the website: You can view and modify the personal data we hold about you at any time via your website login. Log in to the website at http://www.aiwccologne.org, then click on “View profile”. This displays all the data we hold about you in our membership database. You may click “Edit profile” and change any information at any time. Additionally, under the link “Privacy” you may choose to show or hide any of your information to your fellow members.

Via email: You can contact the Membership Chair at membership@aiwccologne.org to request your information be sent to you or to update your data.

Offline: You can contact the Membership Chair or any Executive Board member to request your information to be sent to you.

Deleting Your Data

The AIWCC retains your data for the duration of your membership. You have the right to request deletion of data at any time; however, please note that the AIWCC may not be able to continue your membership benefits or allow event registration without it. To request deletion of your data, send a written request by email to the Vice President (vicepresident@aiwccologne.org) or Web Manager (web@aiwccologne.org). To request deletion by post, send a written request to the club address listed at the bottom of this policy.

At the completion of your membership through cancellation or non-renewal, we will ask if we may keep some of your personal data for historical reasons (we sometimes try to contact former members for anniversaries, galas, historical information regarding their experiences with the club). If you do not consent, we will review and delete your personal data within 30 days after you have cancelled/not renewed. If you would like to re-join as a member, you’ll need to fill out the registration form again.

We may also keep anonymized demographic data for historical reporting purposes. This demographic data will not contain any individually identifiable personal information.

When does the AIWCC contact you, and how can you manage your communication preferences?

The AIWCC communicates with its members via email in several ways as part of its mission:

• A monthly member newsletter
  
• Occasional system emails (membership renewal reminders, to reset a password, etc.)
  
• Occasional event emails (invites, confirmations, reminders, etc.)

Guests or event attendees will receive relevant system emails, event emails, and marketing emails.

Each member or contact always has the right to control whether they receive these emails through:

On the website: after logging into the website, under “View profile” you can click the link “Email subscriptions” to manage your subscriptions to event and Club emails. Please note that if you turn these off you may miss important information about the AIWCC, your membership status, or upcoming events.

An additional option for the member newsletter only: every email newsletter includes an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom. You can always click that link to unsubscribe from the member newsletter.

Via email: A request to be removed from any or all newsletters may also be made in writing by sending an email to Vice President at vicepresident@aiwccologne.org.

Offline: A written request via post may be made to the club address listed at the bottom of this policy.

Note: the AIWCC may contact members individually at any time regarding membership issues. This is required to maintain the membership.

How do we protect your personal information?

Internal Processes

Your personal data is accessible by members of the AIWCC Executive Board and certain Committee Chairs, in addition to other AIWCC Members through the Member Directory. Those allowed access to this data must also accept this Privacy Policy and the strict GDPR-compliant guidelines about how the information may be accessed and used.

Your data is stored by the AIWCC in a password-protected database on our web server hosted by Wild Apricot. You can learn more about Wild Apricot’s Security, Data and Privacy Protection and their GDPR compliance status. When filling out the membership application form, or updating your membership data online, your personal data is sent directly via encrypted HTTPS connection to our password-protected database.

External Service Providers

The AIWCC never shares or sells your personal information to any third party for any purpose not directly related to our club’s mission.

However, the AIWCC does use third party suppliers to provide some services necessary to serve our membership. These suppliers 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.

In the event that we share personal information with external third parties, we only share such information strictly required for the specific purposes and take reasonable steps to ensure recipients shall only process the disclosed personal information in accordance with those purposes.

These third parties currently provide services for the AIWCC and we have documented that they are GDPR compliant:

• Wild Apricot: hosts our website, membership database, and emailing system
  
• Google Analytics: tracks anonymous website visits and interactions
  

Whom can you contact with questions, comments, or complaints?

American International Women’s Club of Cologne e.V.
Postfach 501417, 50974 Cologne, Germany

ask@aiwccologne.org

Looking for more information?

The EU GDPR Information Portal