Privacy policy

Who we are

Stage Management Association,

We are a not for profit Company Limited by Guarantee (England and Wales), no. 03819176.

Our website address is: https://stagemanagementassociation.co.uk.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments and contact forms

When visitors leave comments on the site or use our contact forms or membership application forms, we collect the data shown in those forms, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture may be visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms and membership applications

When you send us information and files, which may include personally identifying information, via any contact forms or application forms on our website, you acknowledge that we may store that information and files for an indefinite period, either online or offline. This is to help us provide the best service to our members and other website visitors, to prevent fraud and to enable us to accurately identify our members.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to monitor how many people visit our website and which areas of our site are most popular, in order to improve our website for visitors and our members. We don’t link this information into any advertising and we don’t personally identify you as a visitor because reports are anonymised. If you would like to opt out of Google Analytics for all your internet browsing, you can use this browser extension created by Google: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Member information

We hold the minimum necessary amount of personally identifying member information on the website. More detailed personal information for all members is stored securely offline.

Member accounts

We permanently store some of our users’ personal information in their website user profile. We store this information so we can accurately identify the same member in our offline records and to enable the member to pay for their subscription. All website users can ask to see their personal information at any time. Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Who we share your data with

We do not share your contact details with other organisations or individuals, except when necessary to carry out an activity related to our services such as Freelist

We may need to share information, including personally identifying information, in order to prevent or report crime.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

Website user profile information may be retained as long as that user remains a part of our membership records. 

Personally identifying information sent to us through contact forms or application forms may be retained indefinitely, even if the applicant is not successful. This is to monitor and improve our membership services and to help prevent fraud.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

If you would like a copy of the information held on you, please contact us raise a subject access request. In some cases non members may be asked to pay a small charge as specified in the relevant statutory regulations. If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please contact us as soon as possible. We will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments and application forms may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Membership and events payments are processed through Stripe. Stripe’s privacy policy can be read here: https://stripe.com/gb/privacy

We use MailChimp to email our members and other people who are interested in our activities. You can unsubscribe from our MailChimp list at any time. MailChimp’s privacy policy is here: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/

Additional information

How we protect your data

We use encrypted logins and additional security software to protect our website.

SMA members choose their own passwords to log in to this website, and are strongly encouraged to choose secure passwords.

Members do not have access to any other members’ information within the website.

We do not hold bank card or other financial information on our site. Our banking partners will use and may hold some information in accordance with their UK banking license and regulations in force. AT present the banking concern Stripe are our banking contractor who may hold some information in relation to the efficient provision of their services provided to SMA and our members

What data breach procedures we have in place

If we discover a data breach, we will take appropriate action, which may include resetting all user passwords, restoring a previous version of the website and alerting all our members to the breach.

Your contact information

If you have a specific concern or questions about your privacy, please contact us at admin@stagemanagementassociation.co.uk.