CAIF Privacy Policy
Updated on: 15.12.2025
The Cooperative AI Foundation ('we' or 'CAIF') is committed to ensuring transparency in our use of personal information.
This Privacy Policy explains how we collect and use your personal data based on your interaction with us (e.g. applied for a job), and offers details on how we store this information, your data protection rights and how to make a complaint.
If you have any questions about this notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact operations@cooperativeai.org.
We collect and use your personal information for a few key reasons. Here’s a simple breakdown:
Grant applications: We use your name and contact details to communicate with you and your collaborators about your application. Your academic and professional background, career aspirations, and assessment notes are collected to evaluate your suitability for the grant. We also use information about your citizenship and country of residence to assess the risk to CAIF of any award we might make. We may follow up on your professional development over time to evaluate the long-term impact of our work.
PhD fellowship applications: We use your name and contact details to communicate with you, your supervisors, and referees about your application. Your academic and professional background, career aspirations, and assessment notes are collected to evaluate your suitability for the fellowship. We also use your information to manage your engagement with us if you are awarded a fellowship.
Job applications: We use your details to assess your suitability for a role, keep you updated on your application status, and contact your references if you are a successful candidate. We may also make notes during interviews and other assessments to help us make a recruitment decision. We may use information about your accessibility requirements to provide reasonable adjustments in the application process.
Events and activities[1]: We collect information to manage your application and involvement, including making any necessary accessibility or dietary adjustments. If you apply for an event or activity with limited places, we may make assessment notes as part of our screening and review process. This helps us to decide who we can offer a place to.
CAIF collaborators[2]: We use your name, contact details, academic background, and affiliations to assess your suitability as a collaborator and reach out to you with an offer for the role. We also use this information to assess any potential conflicts of interest. To help manage your involvement, we keep records of your work with us and, where applicable, your accessibility or dietary requirements to make reasonable adjustments.
Inquiries: If you reach out to the CAIF team via email or the contact form on our website, we keep a record of the email thread so we can assist you in the best way possible.
Diversity monitoring: When we collect demographic information, such as gender identity or nationality, we do so to better understand who participates in our initiatives and to help us promote equity and inclusivity. This information is not shared outside of CAIF’s records.
Promotional materials: With your explicit consent, we may use photos, videos, and quotes from Events and activities to promote CAIF on our website and social media channels. If you are awarded a fellowship or a grant, we may also use your photo for publicity.
Mailing list: With your explicit sign up to our mailing list, we will use your name, email and job title to send automated email communications campaigns via Mailchimp and keep you informed about future initiatives in the cooperative AI field.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management): We manage email communications through our Monday CRM. If you contact us via email, or we email you, your contact details will be held here. If you have applied or participated in a CAIF event or activity, and have given explicit consent, we'll also keep some information in our CRM to direct email you regarding future initiatives in the cooperative AI field.
Where necessary, we collect your bank details to reimburse you for expenses such as travel costs; to pay out a grant award; to compensate you for a collaborator role, and/or to fulfill accounting and audit requirements.
We only share your information with the people and organisations that need it to manage our grants, fellowships, collaborators, events and activities. Here’s a breakdown of who has access to certain information and why:
Your application details (including your name, contact information, CV, and professional background) are shared with our grant assessment team. This team includes CAIF staff, trustees, advisors, and external contractors, brought in to provide specific expertise or additional capacity.
With your consent, your application may be reviewed by people based outside the UK and EU in countries which have less stringent data protection laws. Where this is the case, it may not be possible to rely on your data protection rights under the UK GDPR.
Your application details (including your name, contact information, CV, and professional background) are shared with our job application assessment team. This team includes CAIF staff, trustees, advisors, and external contractors who may help us with the hiring process.
Assessment notes from your interviews or other evaluations are shared with the CAIF assessment team to help them make a final decision. We will also share your contact information with any referees you have named.
Accessibility and dietary requirements are shared with meeting venues, caterers, accessibility experts such as sign interpreters, or any other individuals or organisations involved in the provision of our reasonable adjustments.
If we’re running an event with an external contractor, they may process other details from your application on our behalf with the purpose of producing the event. If you apply for an event or activity with limited places, or are involved in a competition, we may share your details with an external advisor for assessment purposes.
Accessibility and dietary requirements are shared with meeting venues, caterers, accessibility experts such as sign interpreters, or any other individuals or organisations involved in the provision of our reasonable adjustments.
All other personal data is exclusively kept within CAIF’s records and not shared externally.
If you sign up for our mailing list, any information you provide is stored and managed using the email marketing service Mailchimp.
We keep some information such as your contact details, job title and organisation affiliations in our Monday CRM.
We share your bank details with Wise. On rare occasions and for auditing purposes (which are a legal requirement), our bookkeeping contractor and accountants may require access to your bank details.
We follow the UK's data protection law (UK GDPR). This law requires us to have a valid reason, or 'lawful basis' for collecting and using your personal information. Here’s a simple breakdown of the reasons we have for storing different types of personal data:
We process the following personal data because you have given consent to do so for one or more specific purposes:
We process the following personal data because you have entered into an agreement with us in respect of a grant, fellowship, or any activity where a place has been offered and accepted. Processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are party or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract:
We have a valid reason to process the following personal data because it is necessary for our legitimate interests as an organisation. We do this when you are applying for a role, grant, or event, or when your relationship with us does not involve a contract. CAIF’s interests are balanced by your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms which require protection of personal data:
Your accessibility requirements and demographic information may include sensitive personal data. We treat this information with care, and rely on your explicit consent (Schedule 1: Article 9(2) (a)) for using this for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Purposes or to make any necessary adjustments for your participation.
If your grant application is successful: we keep your contact details, information about your academic and professional background for seven years after the completion of the funded project.
If your grant application is unsuccessful: we keep your contact details, information about your academic and professional background for two years from the date of the grant decision.
If your fellowship application is successful: we keep your contact details, information about your academic and professional background, assessment notes, accessibility details for the duration of the fellowship and a further three years in order to complete all administration and assess the outcomes of PhD fellowships.
If your fellowship application is unsuccessful: we keep your contact details, information about your academic and professional background, assessment notes, accessibility details for one year in order to complete all administration and assess the outcomes of PhD fellowship applications.
We keep your contact details, information about your education, employment and experience, assessment team notes, and accessibility requirements for up to six months after making our recruitment decision.
If you apply for an event (successfully or unsuccessfully): Unless you explicitly consent to us keeping your data for up to seven years, we will retain your name, contact details, information about your academic and professional background, accessibility and dietary requirements for one year after the event or activity. If you attend, with your consent, we will retain and use photos, videos or quotes for up to seven years after an event or activity.
If you are an advisor: We will delete your name, contact details, information about your academic and professional background, information about your work with us and your demographic information from our list of advisors six years after you stop being an advisor. We will delete your accessibility requirements one year after you stop being an advisor.
If you are a reviewer: We keep your contact details, information about your academic and professional background, and information about your work with us for seven years after the completion of the grant-funded projects you assess. We keep the financial information on your invoices for seven years after the financial year in which they were submitted.
Unless you specifically ask us to delete your personal information, if you’ve provided explicit consent to be signed up to our mailing list we retain your personal information as long as it is necessary to keep you updated about CAIF. If you unsubscribe from our mailing list or request that we do not contact you, we will keep your name and email address on a 'do not contact' list to ensure we comply with your request.
For both email contact and event or activity applications (where you consent to CRM storage), we keep your personal data for seven years. Following that period, we will request your consent to continue to hold your data.
If we need to use your bank details, we will delete these from our CAIF systems one month after the transfer has taken place. However, our bank will retain records of this transfer according to their own retention policy.
Your information is securely stored using any or all of the following:
Under data protection law, you have rights including:
Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
Your right to object - You have the right to object to us processing your personal data.
Your right to erasure - Under some circumstances, you have the right to request that your personal data is erased.
You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.
Please contact us at operations@cooperativeai.org if you wish to make a request.
If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us at operations@cooperativeai.org
You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.
The ICO’s address:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk
This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the 'Updated on' date at the top of this Privacy Policy.
[1] Events and activities: we use this term to refer to scheduled happenings such as our Summer School, courses, competitions, etc.
[2] CAIF collaborator: we use this term to refer to advisors, reviewers, facilitators and any other role contributing to advancing CAIF’s work in a personal capacity (as opposed to representing an organisation). In most instances, CAIF will have reached out to you rather than you applying to be a collaborator.