Impact VC which is part of Big Society Capital Limited respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal information. The General Data Protection Regulation (as it forms part of UK law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (together, the DP Legislation) enhance an individual’s rights in relation to personal information about them. This privacy notice will inform you how we collect and look after your personal information in accordance with the DP Legislation and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you. 

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Important information and who we are:

This privacy notice tells you what to expect when Big Society Capital through it’s operation of Impact VC collects and processes your personal information. 

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It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them. 

 

Controller 

Big Society Capital is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ in this privacy notice). 

 

Contact details 

If you want to request information about our privacy policy, you can email us at privacy@bigsocietycapital.com or write to: 

Head of Legal 
Big Society Capital 
New Fetter Place 
8-10 New Fetter Lane 

EC4A 1AZ 

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Changes to this privacy notice 

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated on 12th September 2023 and historic versions can be obtained by contacting us. 

 

Duty to inform us of changes 

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us. 

 

Third party links 

This website includes links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit. 

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If you contact us via social media, the personal information you provide will remain on that platform and that platform will be the data controller. We encourage you to read the privacy notice of the relevant platform. 

 

Legal basis for processing personal information 

Under the DP Legislation, we must have a legal basis for processing your personal information. In the situations described in the next section, we process your personal information for one of the legal bases set out below. 

Legitimate interest*. We may process your information where it is in our legitimate interests to do so as an organisation and without prejudicing your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. It is in our interests to ensure that our processes and systems operate effectively and to process information to help us achieve our mission  to unlock the impact potential of venture capital, and help solve the world’s most pressing challenges.  

Legitimate interest *

We may process your information where it is in our legitimate interests to do so as an organisation and without prejudicing your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. It is in our interests to ensure that our processes and systems operate effectively and to process information to help us achieve our mission to improve the lives of people in the UK by connecting investment to charities and social enterprises that are creating social change. 

 

Consent **

We may process your information where you give us your consent to do so. You have the right to withdraw this consent at any time by contacting us at privacy@bigsocietycapital.com. 

 

Contract ***

We may process your information to comply with terms of agreement(s) between us. 

 

The situations where we collect data about you, what data we collect and why we collect it 

 

Visitors to the Impact VC Website *

We use Google Analytics and Wix to collect anonymised, aggregated data about visitors’ use of the website such as where the visitor came from, the browser types and versions, time zone setting and location and operating system used. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site and to enable us to make the content useful. Further information about how Google uses this information and how you can control the information sent to Google can be found here. We do not collect any data on individuals via Google Analytics unless users have explicitly opted in to the collection of cookies. We do not make any attempt to find out the identities of the individuals visiting our website. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be up front about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will explain what we intend to do with it. 

 

Use of cookies by the Impact VC website **

When Big Society Capital provides services via ImpactVC, our aim is to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered through the internet, this sometimes involves placing cookies on your device. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that is downloaded onto your computer, mobile phone or other internet enabled device when you visit a website. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, remember your preferences, and to provide information to the owners of the site. Cookies cannot be used to identify you personally. Read more about the individual cookies we use by clicking here. 

 

Web forms ** 

We collect personal information (name, email, organisation) when you submit a web form on our website, such as the ‘contact us’ form or a form that you complete to access one of our reports. We use this data to respond to you if you have sent an enquiry, requested access to a report or provided consent to be contacted by one of our team. This data is stored to help us gain insight and feedback on our work and helps us fulfil our role of unlocking the impact potential of venture capital, and helping to solve world’s most pressing challenges. 

 

 

VC Impact Playbook 

Big Society Capital  is using GitBook, Inc. (“GitBook”) to host the VC Impact Playbook. When you access the VC Impact Playbook GitBook may collect information about how you use its services and your actions on the services, including your IP address. GitBook may also use tools, including third-party tools, to collect analytics data, which could include tracking cookies as well as other technologies. Further information about how GitBook uses this information and how you can control the information sent to GitBook can be found on its privacy policy. You can find further information on GitBook’s use of cookies and tracking technologies here 

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Mailing lists ** 

You can subscribe to our mailing lists to keep informed of the latest news from Impact VC. Once you have subscribed, we will send you newsletters and information on relevant Impact VC initiatives such as campaigns and events. We may also use information you provide us with on your areas of interest to help us send you material which is most relevant to you. You can change you email preferences at any time or opt-out of email communications. We use a third-party service provider, Campaign Monitor, to deliver our email updates. For more information, please see Campaign Monitor's privacy notice and cookie notice. 

 

Journalists, media professionals, service providers, clients and partners * 

If you are one of our partners, service providers, community members clients or another professional we have worked with, such as our media contacts, we will retain your personal details for future contact unless you advise us otherwise. 

 

Interactions with Impact VC members,Big Society Capital employees and registering for Impact VC/Big Society Capital events **,*

If you meet an representative of Impact VC/or an employee of Big Society Capital, for example, at an event, and give them your contact details, they will keep this information and may store this information  in order to contact you in the future about topics which might be of interest to you. They will also share this information with other staff members at Big Society Capital and representatives of ImpactVC and occasionally, they will pass it on to third parties who they think you would be interested to hear from. Similarly, we will sometimes receive your contact details from a third party who thinks you would be interested in hearing from us. 

When you register to attend seminars, training or other events that we organise or which relate to campaigns or other initiatives which we co-ordinate, both in person and online, we may ask you to provide contact information (such as name, email address and telephone number), biographical information (such as job title, employer and short credentials) and other relevant information (including communication preferences, meal preferences, guests’ names and feedback). When you register for an event or training session we may collect information on accessibility and dietary requirements. This is in order for us to make reasonable accessibility adjustments and take account of dietary requirements when arrangement refreshments. Where we organise events in partnership with other organisations, we may share the contact, biographical and other relevant information you provide to us with such partnership organisations for purposes of event management. We will use such information only where it is appropriate and relevant to our business relationship with you and where we have a lawful reason to do so. 

When you visit our office, we may share your personal data with the office reception and security staff in order to allow you access to our office. The reception and security staff will not share your personal details with any third parties. 

 

Attending Impact VC/Big Society Capital events online ** 

When you attend a recorded online event hosted by us and agree to your personal data being disclosed, the recording of the event will be stored on the Zoom (or other software provider) database and will be accessible to Big Society Capital employees. The recording will not be shared with any external parties, except as may be otherwise notified to you prior to the event. 

 

Using the ImpactVC platform and resources **

If you submit a membership form, respond to a survey or details for your profile to our Impact VC platform or access any ImpactVC resources we will process your personal data in order to manage your membership of ImpactVC and/or use of ImpactVC resources. If you consent we will share your details with other members of the ImpactVC community. ImpactVC uses third party service providers to manage the platform, resources and community. Through engaging with the ImpactVC platform your personal data will be used by those third party service providers in line with their own privacy policies. 

 

Sharing your data with third parties 

We use third party service providers for parts of our website, IT systems and when we communicate digitally with you. Sometimes they will process the personal information which you provide us with. 

As part of our market building role, we also periodically commission research to be carried out by third parties on our behalf. We may, therefore, occasionally be sharing your personal data with the companies we engage to conduct the research being commissioned. 

 

Transferring data to other countries 

We, or our third-party providers, may transfer the personal information we collect about you to countries outside the UK, on the basis that anyone to whom we pass it protects it in accordance with applicable laws and sufficient safeguards are put in place for these transfers. We are in the process of ensuring that, in the event that we transfer information to countries outside the UK, your personal information receives an adequate level of protection in a way that is consistent with and which respects the UK laws. Please contact us at privacy@bigsocietycapital.com if you require further information on this. 

 

Data Retention 

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. 

 

Change of purpose 

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us at privacy@bigsocietycapital.com. 

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so. 

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law. 

 

Data Security 

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. 

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so. 

 

Your rights 

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to: 

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it. 

• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected. 

• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below). 

• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes. 

• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it. 

• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party. 

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No fee usually required 

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances. 

What we may need from you 

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response. 

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Time limit to respond 

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated. 

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Complaints or queries 

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or want to submit a written complaint about how we handle your personal information, please contact us via privacy@bigsocietycapital.com. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please contact us in the first instance.