Privacy Policy

• Your account. Name, spouse name, email address and phone number. Passwords are stored only as a one-way hash, never as text we can read.
• Membership records. Your member ID, plan, start and expiry dates, and a record of dues received.
• Tickets and donations. When you buy a ticket or donate, we record the purchaser name, email, phone, amount and date so it can appear in your account.
• Forms you submit. Volunteer sign-ups, senior programme RSVPs, business directory listings and contact-form messages.
• Email preferences. Whether you have opted in to newsletters, and when and how that was set.
• Event photographs. See the section below.

At some events, a board member or volunteer may take your photograph on a device SGCS has approved for that purpose.

You can give permission at three levels:

• Keep this photo in my SGCS account only. Nobody outside SGCS can see it, and it will not appear on the website or anywhere else. This is what happens if you do nothing.
• SGCS may show this photo in the photo gallery on seattlegujaratis.org. The gallery is a public page, so anyone on the internet would be able to see the photo. Your name is not shown with it.
• SGCS may also use this photo in newsletters, printed flyers, social media posts and sponsor materials. This includes material we use to promote events and to thank or attract sponsors. Your name is not shown with it.

Because a family photo may include children, we ask the account holder to confirm: “I confirm I am authorised to give this consent for everyone shown in this photo, including as the parent or guardian of any children pictured.”

Changing your mind. You can change your mind at any time. Sign in to your SGCS account, open Photo Gallery, and choose Make private or Delete. We will take it off the website within a few business days. Please note that a printed flyer, or an email that has already been sent, cannot be recalled.

If you appear in a photograph on this site and did not agree to it — for example, you were in the background of someone else’s photo — please contact us and we will remove it.

• To run your membership and issue your member ID.
• To show your tickets, donations and photos in your account.
• To send messages you need — membership confirmations, password resets and sign-in codes. These are sent whatever your newsletter preference is, because they are about your own account.
• To send newsletters and event announcements, but only if you have opted in.
• To keep the site secure and to prevent spam and abuse.

We do not sell or rent your information, and we do not use advertising or analytics trackers on this site.

We use a small number of established service providers. Each handles data under its own privacy policy:

• Microsoft Azure — hosts this website, its database and uploaded images, in the United States.
• Microsoft 365 — delivers our account emails.
• Azure Communication Services — delivers our newsletters.
• PayPal, Zeffy and TicketSpice — process payments and ticket sales. SGCS never sees or stores your card details.
• Google reCAPTCHA — protects our forms from automated abuse.

We use only the cookies needed to sign you in. There are no advertising or analytics cookies.

• sgs_session — keeps you signed in, for up to 7 days.
• sgs_mfa_pending — holds a sign-in in progress while you enter your verification code, for 5 minutes.
• sgs_device — remembers a device you chose to trust, so you are not asked for a code every time, for 30 days.

Membership, payment and ticket records are kept as part of the organization’s financial and historical records. We keep your photos in your SGCS account until you delete them. If you ask us to close your account, we remove your personal details but may keep a minimal record of payments received, which we are expected to retain as a non-profit.

• Update your name, phone or spouse name at any time on your profile page.
• Stop newsletters using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any one of them.
• Make a photo private, or delete it, from your account.
• Ask us what we hold about you, or ask us to correct or remove it, by contacting us below.

Accounts on this site are for adults. Children take part in our events as part of a family, and where a photograph includes a child we rely on the parent or guardian who holds the family account to give or refuse permission for it to be shown.

Passwords are hashed, two-step verification is available to every member and required for board and administrator accounts, and uploaded images are stored in private storage that is not publicly listable. No system is perfect, but we take care with what you entrust to us.

For any privacy question, or to ask us to remove something, email board@seattlegujaratis.org or use our contact form. We aim to respond within a few business days.

Seattle Gujarati Cultural Society, P.O. Box 1259, Bothell, WA 98041

If we change how we handle your information we will update this page and the date at the top. Permissions you have already given for a photograph are recorded against the wording you were shown at the time, and are not changed by a later update to this page.