RIHub’s Privacy Policy

Updated October 2024

This privacy policy describes how RIHub., a 501-(c)(3) organization ( “RIHub”) collects, uses, discloses, transfers, stores, retains or otherwise processes your information on http://www.rihub.org (the “Site”) through the services, features, content or applications we offer such as our periodic email newsletter (collectively, the “Services”). When you register for Services, we may receive personal information about you from various sources, and you will be included in the RIHub Customer Relationship Database hosted on our CRM platform (the “RIHub DB”).  Information included in the RIHub DB may, at RIHub’s reasonable discretion, include information relating to your: (i) Registration for the RIHub  Innovation Portal (the “Portal”) through your user account; (ii) Registration to receive the RIHub newsletter; (iii) Registration to receive mentoring/advisory services through RIHub’s Venture Mentoring Services (“VMS”); and/or (iv) Registration for other RIHub programs. When you use the Services, you are consenting to the collection, transfer, manipulation, storage, disclosure and other uses of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. 

The RIHub Innovation Portal is licensed from ECOMAP, whose privacy policies also apply to the storage and use of your information, and can be accessed here: https://ecomap.tech/

RIHub respects your privacy. We want to ensure that you get the opportunities, information, content, news, and experiences that are of most interest to you. RIHub is committed to protecting the privacy of its members, VMS Entrepreneurs and Mentors, community members, employees, contractors, volunteers, and other contacts.

This Privacy Policy is available here:  https://rihub.org/rihub-privacy-policy/

What does this privacy policy cover?

This Privacy Policy covers the treatment of personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”) gathered when you are using or accessing the Services.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of third parties that we do not own or control, including but not limited to any third party websites, services and applications (“Third Party Services”) that you elect to access through the Service, or to individuals that we do not manage or employ. While we attempt to facilitate access only to those Third-Party Services that share our respect for your privacy, we cannot take responsibility for the content or privacy policies of those Third-Party Services. We encourage you to carefully review the privacy policies of any Third-Party Services you access.

What Personal Information do we collect?

We collect Personal Information from you when you register on our site for use of the RIHub Portal, newsletter, signup for Venture Mentoring Services or other events and services offered by RIHub. 

Information We Collect

We need to collect information about you to provide you with information, Services or the specific support that your request. Additionally, you can choose to voluntarily provide information to us. RIHub may collect the following personal data in line with the use purposes explained below:

  • Your full name, email address, phone number, job title, and company affiliation, when you contact RIHub and/or subscribe to one of the services on our website.
  • If you decide to register and/or purchase a ticket for one of our events, we or our third-party payment service processors may collect your purchase and payment information.
  • Your social media profile information
  • Information about your business
  • Information about service usage
  • Cookies
  • Authentication data
  • Location information
  • Other information you voluntarily provide to us

Account Information:

When you create a user account through our portal (an “Account”), you will provide information that could be Personal Information, such as your username, password and email address. You acknowledge that this information may be personal to you, and by creating an Account and providing such Personal Information to us, you acknowledge and agree that you are providing us (potentially including our third-party partners) to identify you and that you therefore may not be anonymous. We may use your contact information to send you information about our Services, but as a general policy, we only rarely do so, typically when we feel such information is reasonably important.

Company User Content:

Some features of the Services allow you to provide content to the Services, such as narrative and quantitative information about your company, its goal, and strategies, contact information, images and video.  

Except as otherwise noted in any specific instance, all content submitted by you to the Services for your profile may be retained by us indefinitely, even after you terminate your account.

What do we use your Personal Information for?

Any of the Personal Information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:

  • To provide the Services to you. This includes processing your transactions on our Portal, contacting you about upgrades or changes to the Portal, and contacting you about upcoming events.
  • To provide support to you regarding the Portal or our Services, to generally help you to use our programs services, or to respond to your related requests.
  • To communicate with you from time to time. We will enroll you to receive our periodic email newsletter. You may opt out of receiving this newsletter at any time. From time to time there may be an email sent to your account email address from our Portal generally limited to instances where there is an important business or transactional need to do so.
  • To update you on relevant RIHub Services, programs and opportunities. We may communicate with you regarding new or additional programs and opportunities available to you as part of RIHub community.
  • To get feedback or input from you. In order to deliver services of most interest to our community, we may ask you via email, and/or our website to provide us with input and feedback (for example through surveys, usability studies, focus groups).
  • We may also use Personal Information and other information collected through the Services to the extent required by law or legal process, to resolve disputes, to enforce our agreements with you (including without limitation this Privacy Policy), or if in our reasonable discretion such use is reasonably necessary to protect our legal rights or to protect third parties.

How do we protect your Personal Information?

RIHub takes reasonable steps, consistent with industry standards, to help protect your personal information in an effort to prevent loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. Nonetheless, we cannot guarantee that transmissions of your personal information will always be secure or that unauthorized third parties will never be able to defeat the security measures taken by us or our third-party service providers. We assume no liability or responsibility for disclosure of your information due to errors in transmission, unauthorized third-party access, or other causes beyond our control. You play an important role in keeping your personal information secure. You should not share your user name, password, or other security information for your account with anyone. If we receive instructions using your user name and password, we will consider that you have authorized the instructions, and we do not accept any responsibility or duty to confirm such instructions as originating from you or from your authorized representative.

Do we use cookies?

We use cookies from Google Analytics on our website and Portal. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow this via your browser). Cookies enable the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and recall certain information.  We use them to understand and save your preferences for future visits.

Do we disclose or share any Personal Information to outside parties?

Personally Identifiable Information: RIHub will not rent or sell your personally identifiable information to others. We may store information in locations outside the direct control of RIHub (for instance, on servers or databases with hosting providers such as StartupTree). Any personally identifiable information you elect to make publicly available on our sites or social media channels, such as posting comments on our blog page, will be available to others. If you remove information that you have made public on our sites, copies may remain viewable in cached and archived pages of our sites or 3rd party services (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn), or if other users have copied or saved that information. You will need to contact or log into the third-party applications if you want the personal information that was posted to such third-party sites removed. To learn how a third party uses your information, please review their specific privacy policies.

We may release your Personal Information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property, or safety. In addition, we will disclose your Personal Information to any successor to our business as a result of any merger, acquisition, asset sale or similar transaction., subject to their agreement to continuing material compliance with the terms of this policy.

What Information of Mine Can I Access?

If you are a registered user, you can access Personal Information associated with your RIHub Innovation Portal Account by logging into the Services. Registered and unregistered users can access and delete cookies through their web browser settings.

Personal Information

We respect your privacy rights and provide you with reasonable access to the Personal Information that you may have provided through your use of the Services.

  • If you wish to access or amend Personal Information that you have provided to us, or to request that we delete any such information, you may contact us at the address listed below. At your request, we will have any reference to you deleted or blocked in our database.
  • You may update, correct or delete your information and preference at any time by contacting us or our third parties’ services providers.
  • Any changes you make will be reflected in the Database within a reasonable period of time.  We may retain all information you submit for backups, archiving, prevention of fraud and abuse, analytics, satisfaction of legal obligation, or where we otherwise reasonably believe that we have a legitimate reason to do so.
  • You may decline to share certain Personal Information with us, in which case we may not be able to provide to you some of the Services and/or other programs that we offer.
  • At any time, you may object to the processing of your Personal Information, on legitimate grounds, except if otherwise permitted by applicable law.

Your European Union privacy rights:

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation EU 2016/679) (” GDPR”), if you are an individual protected by the GDPR you may have certain rights as a data subject. To request information about or avail yourself of those rights, please send an email to the address below with “GDPR Request” in the subject line. In the email please describe, with specificity, the GDPR right you are requesting assistance with. Please note additional information may be requested prior to initiation of a request and that RIHub reserves the right to charge a fee with respect to certain requests. Upon RIHub’s completion of its review you will be notified if your request has been granted, denied, or if any exemptions apply.

Your California Privacy Rights: 

Under California Civil Code sections 1798.83-1798.84, California residents are entitled to ask us for a notice identifying the categories of personal customer information which we share with our affiliates and/or third parties for marketing purposes and providing contact information for such affiliates and/or third parties. If you are a California resident and would like a copy of this notice, please submit a written request to the following address:

RIHub
225 Dyer Street
Floor 2
Providence, RI 02903
info@rihub.org

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