Who we are

Democracy Week is a nonpartisan civic initiative operating under the fiscal sponsorship of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. This policy covers democracyweek.net and the events we organize. Please send questions about anything here to privacy@democracyweek.net.

Our work is focused on the United States, and most of the people we hear from are in California. We don’t market to people in the EU or the UK. If you’re there and you’d like your details removed, just ask and we’ll do it.

What we collect

What you give us. When you subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Luma, register for an event, sponsor one, or email us, we collect what you type in: your name, email address, and usually your organization, role, and answers to a few questions about what you want to work on.

Payments. Ticket and donation payments are processed by Givebutter on behalf of our fiscal sponsor. We see that you paid and how much. We never see or store your card number.

Basic site data. Like most websites, ours records standard technical information such as pages viewed and approximate location by country or region. We use it to understand what people find useful, not to build profiles of individuals.

How we use it

• To send you our newsletter and updates about Democracy Week, if you signed up for the newsletter, followed our Luma calendar, or registered for an event.
• To run the events themselves: confirmations, logistics, name badges, breakout group assignments, and follow-up afterward.
• To balance the room. We read what people tell us about their role and interests so that our convenings hold a real mix of perspectives, across the political spectrum and across sectors.
• To follow up after an event with what came out of it, what happens next, and how to stay involved.
• To keep our own records, including what we owe our fiscal sponsor for accounting and tax purposes.

What you tell us privately stays private. Registration answers, things said in a breakout group, and one-to-one conversations don’t get written into our published work, our frameworks and assessments included, unless we come back to you and you say yes to that specific use. Anything we publish from an event is either aggregated and unattributed or cleared with the person first.

Every email we send has an unsubscribe link. Use it any time and we will stop.

Who else sees it

Our fiscal sponsor. The California Doughnut Economics Coalition receives donation and ticket records as the nonprofit of record.

Co-organizing partners. Our events are put together with partner organizations who help run them. The organizations co-organizing an event get access to that event’s registration list, which means your name, organization, role, and email, so they can help run the day and follow up with you about it. We ask them to use it in alignment with our privacy policy, and to not share it beyond that. You can keep your details off that list: there’s an option in the registration form, or email privacy@democracyweek.net. Opting out doesn’t affect your ticket or event participation.

The tools we run on. Givebutter for tickets and donations, Luma for event listings and RSVPs, our email platform for the newsletter, and our website host. Each of them handles your data under their own privacy terms, linked above.

Legal requirements. We will disclose information if the law genuinely requires it. We would push back on a request we thought was improper.

What we don’t do

• We do not sell your personal information, and we never have.
• We do not rent, trade, or hand your contact details to data brokers, advertisers, political campaigns, or parties.
• We do not run advertising trackers on this site.
• We do not publicly publish attendee lists. Who attends an event stays between us, the partners co-organizing it, and the people who attended.

Conversations at our events

Several of our convenings run under the Chatham House Rule: you are free to use what you hear, but not to identify who said it.

Recording and photography. We record the sessions on stage and share edited video publicly afterward, and we take photos and video around the venue during the day. If you would rather not be filmed or photographed, pick up one of the marked lanyards at the registration desk. Our photographers and video team keep anyone wearing one out of shots, and if something slips through, tell us and we’ll remove it.

Your choices

Email privacy@democracyweek.net and you can ask us to tell you what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, keep it away from event partners, or stop contacting you. We will do it, and we won’t make it difficult. No account or special form required, and we don’t treat anyone differently for asking.

We keep contact details until you ask us to remove them or until they have been inactive for about three years. Financial records are kept as long as our fiscal sponsor’s accounting and tax obligations require.

Security

We keep personal data in a small number of accounts, limited to the people who need it, protected with strong passwords and two-factor authentication. No system is perfect, and we won’t pretend otherwise, but we treat your contact details as something worth protecting rather than an asset to be exploited.

Children

Our site and events are intended for adults. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we’ll delete it.

Changes

If we change this policy we’ll update the date at the top. If a change is significant, we’ll say so in the newsletter rather than quietly editing the page.

Questions, concerns, or suggestions? Please share them with us at privacy@democracyweek.net.