Privacy Policy

We only ever collect what you type into a form. Nothing on this site tracks you around the internet.

When you register a guest for a VIP Empowerment Night

The guest’s first and last name and date of birth; a phone number and email address; the name, phone and email of the parent or guardian registering them; a pickup address; anything you tell us in the accommodations box; whether an adult is riding along; and the signature, date, time and IP address recorded when a release is signed. The date of birth is used to work out the guest’s age on the night, which decides supervision. The pickup address exists so the limousine or party bus can find you.

When you join the interest list

Your name, email, phone, city and anything you write in the notes box. For an organisation, also the organisation’s name, your role there and roughly how many people you expect to bring.

When you contact us as a sponsor, a musician or the press

Your name, email, phone, organisation and whatever you write in the message.

When you donate

Donations are processed by Givebutter, not by us. We never see or store your card number. We receive your name, email and the amount so we can thank you and issue a receipt.

When you simply read the site

We count page views. See analytics below, because how we do that is unusual and worth reading.

Most of our guests are children or adults with disabilities who are registered by a parent, guardian or care provider. We treat their details as the most sensitive thing we hold.

A registered guest’s own name, date of birth, phone, email, address, accommodations and signed releases never leave our own database. They are not sent to any email marketing platform, advertising network, analytics service or fundraising tool.

When a guardian registers somebody, the guardian’s own name, email and phone are added to our contact system so we can send confirmations and event information. That is the adult’s information, given by that adult, and it is the only contact record created. If an adult guest registers for themselves, their own contact details are used, because there is nobody else to write to.

We do not knowingly collect information directly from a child. Registration is designed to be completed by a parent, guardian or care provider.

To run the events, and nothing else. Specifically: to contact you about a registration; to decide who gets a seat when there are more people than places; to know who is supposed to board the vehicle on the night; to arrange the accommodations you asked for; to keep the signed releases we are required to keep; and to send you the receipt for a donation.

We also keep a record of who has attended before. That is what makes the selection fair: guests who have never been to a VIP night get the first chance at the next one, which is only possible if we remember who has already had theirs.

We do not use anything you give us to advertise to you, and we do not build a profile of you.

We do not sell, rent or trade your information to anybody, for any purpose, ever.

A small number of services handle specific pieces of it on our behalf:

• Givebutter processes donations and holds the payment details we never see.
• GoHighLevel holds contact records for adults: guardians, sponsors, donors, musicians and press contacts. Names, emails and phone numbers only. No dates of birth, no addresses, no accommodations, no signatures, and no details of a registered guest.
• Our own mail server sends the emails. Transactional email is sent from our own machine rather than through a third party, which is why a registration confirmation does not pass through anyone else’s system.

We will also hand over information if the law actually requires it, and we would tell you if that happened unless we were forbidden from doing so.

We count page views ourselves rather than using Google Analytics, and the difference matters.

We store the page visited, whether it was a phone or a computer, where the link came from, and a one-way scrambled code standing in for the visitor. That code is made from your address and browser mixed with a secret and the current date, so it cannot be turned back into an address, and it changes every day. Yesterday’s visitor cannot be matched to today’s. Your IP address is never written down.

Because of that, this site sets no analytics cookies at all and has nothing to ask your consent for, which is why there is no cookie pop-up. The only cookie the site sets is the one that keeps a staff member signed in to the admin area, which is strictly necessary and exists only for them.

Pages that embed something from elsewhere, such as the donation form or the TikTok feed, load that from another company and those companies may set their own cookies once loaded.

Sensitive fields are encrypted in the database itself, using AES-256-GCM, not merely protected by a password on the server. Email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, addresses, accommodation notes and signatures are all stored encrypted, so someone who obtained a copy of the database file without the key would find nothing readable in them.

The site is served only over HTTPS. The admin area requires a login, every action taken inside it is written to an audit log with the staff member and time, and a very small number of people have accounts. Backups are encrypted and kept off the server.

No system is perfect and we will not pretend otherwise. If we ever discovered that information had been exposed, we would tell the people affected.

Signed releases are kept for as long as we may need them, which for a document covering a minor can be several years after they turn eighteen. Attendance history is kept for as long as the organisation runs the events, because it is what keeps the selection fair.

Contact details are kept until you ask us to remove them. Analytics records are aggregate counts and are not tied to a person.

You can, at any time:

• Ask what we hold about you, and we will tell you.
• Ask us to correct something that is wrong.
• Ask us to delete it. We will, except where we are required to keep a signed release.
• Ask us to stop emailing you. Every email also has an unsubscribe link.
• Withdraw permission for photographs, which is covered in the release you signed.

Email brandon@myspecialworld.org and say what you want. You will not have to explain why, and asking will never affect whether your family is invited to an event.

If we change how any of this works we will change this page and update the date at the top. If a change is significant and affects families who have already registered, we will email them rather than expect them to check.

My Special World®, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, EIN 88-1555030, Phoenix, Arizona.
Brandon Riggs, Executive Director: brandon@myspecialworld.org
General enquiries: info@myspecialworld.org