How we handle what you share

If you request an invitation or write to the hosts, we keep what you share in that form: your name, your email address, your home city, the name of anyone who referred you, and your note.

If you become a member, we keep your profile name and email, the role a host assigns you, your replies to invitations, the guests you bring, any dietary or accessibility notes you choose to give us, and anything you write in the private forum.

We also keep a plain record of consequential actions taken inside the members area, such as a host approving a gathering or publishing notes. That record exists so the hosts can answer the question of who decided what, and when.

We do not ask for payment details, identity documents, or anything about your health beyond a dietary or accessibility note you volunteer.

Every request is read by a person. Nothing is approved automatically, and no score, ranking, or software decides whether you are invited.

While your request is open, the hosts and authorized coordinators and administrators can see it. It sits in a private queue that no member and no visitor can reach.

A host can mark your request for an invitation or decline it. A personal invitation is sent separately. The request and its review history remain in the private queue unless they are removed; declining a request does not automatically erase its contents.

You can ask at any time where your request stands, or ask us to withdraw it and delete it.

When you reply to an invitation we keep your answer, the date you answered, whether you are bringing a guest and that guest's name, and any dietary or accessibility note you add.

Your reply is visible to the hosts and authorized coordinators and administrators who run the room. Other members cannot see who has replied, and the guest list is never shown on a public page.

Dietary and accessibility notes go only to the hosts and to the people arranging the meal. They are not shown in the member directory, on any list we print for the room, or in the notes afterward.

Venue details, addresses, and arrival instructions stay in the private member area and personal invitations. The public homepage does not show the private calendar or guest list.

If you cancel, we keep the fact that you replied and cancelled so the hosts can manage the seat count and the waiting list. Ask us and we will remove your note and your guest's name.

The forum is visible only to signed-in members. Posts, comments, and reactions carry your name to the other members who can see them, and are never published on a public page or shown to search engines.

Saving a post or reporting one is private. The author is not told who saved their post, and a report goes only to the hosts.

Editing a post replaces what other members see, but the hosts keep the earlier version so a moderation question can be answered honestly. Deleting a post removes it from the forum for everyone.

Notes from a gathering are drafted by a coordinator, reviewed, and published by a host. Members read only the published version. Source notes, recordings, transcripts, and the review history stay with the hosts.

Where a gathering runs under the Chatham House Rule, the published notes carry the substance of what was said without attributing it to anyone by name.

Hosts and authorized coordinators and administrators can see requests, replies, guest lists, dietary and accessibility notes, and the members area. Coordinators can prepare work but cannot make the final decision to publish anything.

Members can see the member calendar, the private forum, published notes, and the entries of members who have opted into the directory. Members cannot see requests, replies, guest lists, or anyone's private notes.

Visitors to the public site can read about the Forum and send an invitation request or a question. The private calendar, gathering details, guest lists, and notes require the appropriate access.

The member directory is opt in and is never public. If you do not opt in, other members cannot see your entry at all.

You can sign in with an email link, or with the Google or Apple account that matches your invitation. Those providers handle their own sign-in credentials; the Forum does not receive their passwords.

The site is invitation only, so a sign-in link is only ever sent to an address a host has already invited. If an address is unknown, the page shows the same neutral response either way, so nobody can use the form to learn who is a member.

Your session lives in your browser. Signing out on a device ends it there. Tell us if you lose a device and we will end your sessions for you.

Information is stored in the site's own database, hosted on managed infrastructure in the United States, and reachable only through the site with the permissions your role allows.

We have disabled the hosting platform's optional visitor analytics. We do not use advertising trackers or marketing cookies.

Our hosting and email services also process technical records needed to deliver pages and messages, maintain security, and investigate errors. These operational records are separate from optional visitor analytics.

Email to members is sent through an email delivery service, which by nature sees the address it is delivering to and the content of the message.

Forum email carries a small invisible image and web links that pass through the forum's own site. When your mail program loads that image, or you tap a link, we record that it happened, on which message, and against your own record. That is how the hosts know an invitation was read and a reply is still outstanding.

Many mail programs block images, and some load them on their own, so these counts are a floor and never a certainty. We treat them that way.

No outside advertiser or tracking company is involved. Links in forum email point only back to the forum, so nothing about you travels to a third-party site through them.

If you write back to a forum message, your reply is stored with the hosts, matched to you and to the gathering, and forwarded to the hosts' own inboxes. A person decides what to do with it. Nothing changes your reply to an invitation without that person's approval.

You can stop optional forum email from the footer of any message or from your email preferences in the members area. Sign-in and account mail continues, because it is how you get in.

We use what you share to consider your request, to plan and seat a gathering, to prepare the meal correctly, to send you the notes afterward, and to keep the community small and appropriate.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your information. Access is limited to the hosts and authorized coordinators and administrators, the service providers needed to operate the forum, and disclosures required by law.

Invitation requests and review history remain in the private queue until removed. Closing or declining a request does not automatically delete it. You can ask the hosts to withdraw or delete your request.

Member records, replies, and forum posts are kept while you are a member, so the community has a continuous record of its own conversation.

Records of email we sent you, whether a message was read, replies you sent back, recordings and transcripts of a gathering, and the record of decisions the hosts made are kept until a host removes them. There is no automatic deletion date. Ask the hosts and they will tell you what is held and remove what they can.

If you leave the Forum, contact the hosts to arrange removal of your personal information. Leaving or losing access does not automatically erase all records. Published gathering notes and records of decisions may be retained; the hosts can explain what your removal request will cover.

You can ask to see everything we hold about you, correct it, or have it deleted.

You can leave the directory, change or remove your dietary and accessibility notes, or stop receiving messages, from your member settings.

You can ask us to withdraw an open invitation request, or to remove a post you have written.

To make any of these requests, write to the hosts using the contact form on the home page. A person replies.

Many gatherings run under the Chatham House Rule. What is said in the room may be used afterward. Who said it may not be repeated outside the room. We ask every guest to hold to that, and we hold to it in everything we publish.

If how we handle your information changes in a way that matters, we will update this page and tell members by email. The date at the top of this page shows when it last changed.