Privacy Policy

Global Macedonians is an association based in Zürich, Switzerland. We are responsible for the personal data described in this policy. You can reach us about anything in it at info@globalmacedonians.org.

We process personal data under the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and, where it applies to you, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

When you fill in a form (apply to join, pitch a startup, request support, or contact us):

• your name and email address;
• your city and country, company and position, and LinkedIn profile, where the form asks for them;
• a phone number, if you give one on the support form;
• what you write to us, such as your motivation or your request;
• how you heard about us.

When you become a member and use the member area:

• your account email and a password, which is stored only as a secure hash; or, if you sign in with Google, the name, email address and profile photo Google shares with us;
• two-factor authentication settings, if you turn them on;
• the profile you complete, and whether you want it listed in the public member directory;
• your membership contributions and payment standing.

When you visit the website:

• if you accept analytics, a random visitor and session identifier stored in your browser, the pages you view, the website that referred you, and clicks on Apply. We do not use third-party analytics or advertising trackers;
• to keep spam out of our forms, Cloudflare Turnstile checks your IP address and browser characteristics;
• our hosting provider keeps short-lived technical logs (such as IP address and request time) to run and secure the site.

• To review applications and run the First Hello calls: this is a step you ask us to take before membership.
• To run your membership: member area, communication, events, contributions and the member Slack community.
• To answer your requests and messages, and to follow up on startup pitches and support requests.
• To publish your profile in the member directory, only if you choose to.
• To understand how the website is used, only if you accept analytics.
• To protect the website and our forms from abuse, and to keep accounting records the law requires.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not use it for advertising.

Only the board and operations team members who need it can see your data. We use these service providers, who process data on our behalf:

• Vercel, which hosts the website;
• Supabase, which stores our database, member accounts and uploaded files;
• Cloudflare, for spam protection on forms;
• Resend, to send account and notification emails;
• Slack, where the team is notified of new applications and requests;
• Google, if you choose to sign in with your Google account.

Donations and contributions are processed by Stripe, PayPal and RaiseNow (TWINT) on their own pages, under their own privacy policies; we receive a record of the payment but never your card details. Event registrations are handled by Luma. The homepage video is played from Vimeo and our Instagram photos are served through Behold; these services receive your IP address when their content loads.

Some of these providers process data outside Switzerland and the EU, including in the United States. In those cases we rely on the safeguards they offer, such as the Standard Contractual Clauses or the Swiss-U.S. and EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.

We keep personal data only as long as we need it for the purpose it was collected for. Member data is kept for the duration of your membership and deleted or anonymised after you leave, except for accounting records, which Swiss law requires us to keep for ten years. Applications and requests that do not lead to membership are deleted when they are no longer needed to follow up with you.

The site stores your cookie choice in your browser. Members who sign in receive session cookies that keep them logged in; these are necessary for the member area to work. The analytics identifiers described above are stored only after you click Accept. To change your choice, clear this site's data in your browser and the banner will ask again.

You can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct or delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, or to receive it in a portable format. Where we rely on your consent, such as for the public directory or analytics, you can withdraw it at any time. Write to info@globalmacedonians.org and we will reply within 30 days.

If you are unhappy with how we handled your data, you can complain to the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) or, in the EU, to the data protection authority where you live.

We will update this page when the way we handle personal data changes, and change the date below. Significant changes will be communicated to members directly.