Guest privacy.

01Who we are

What’s The Story is a podcast made by Crowd Church, which is part of Frontline Church, a charity registered in England and Wales (charity no. 1109814), Lawrence Road, Liverpool, L15. Frontline Church is the controller of your personal information, which means we decide how it is used and are responsible for looking after it.

If you have any questions about this notice or your information, email hello@crowd.church.

02What we collect

When you apply, we collect what you give us on the form:

• Your name, email address and, if you give it, your phone number.
• Where you live, your church’s name and website, and any social media links you add.
• The story you would like to share and how you heard about us.
• Anything you would like to mention on the show, such as a book or event, with its link and details.
• The date and time you agreed to the guest terms.

As your application goes forward, we may also hold:

• Information that is publicly available about you, such as what your church’s website, your public social media profiles and the links you gave us say, and the results of a web search for your name. We use this to write a short research brief (see section 04).
• Booking details from Calendly, such as your name, email, time zone and the times of your precall and recording.
• Our emails and messages with you.
• A recording of your Zoom precall, with its transcript, summary and our notes. We will tell you at the start of the call that it is being recorded.
• The audio and video recording of your interview, and any photographs, biography or publicity material you send us.
• Any restrictions or special arrangements we have agreed with you.

03Sensitive information

What’s The Story is about faith and courage, so your application and interview will usually say something about your religious beliefs. You may also choose to talk about your health, relationships, family or other personal matters. The law calls this “special category” information and gives it extra protection.

We use special category information only with your explicit consent, which you give by sending your application and by taking part in the recording. You can withdraw that consent at any time by emailing us. If you do, we will stop using that information for anything new and will edit or remove it from the places we control. We cannot recall copies that other people have already downloaded or shared.

Please only tell us about other people’s sensitive matters if they are happy for you to do so. See section 04 of the guest terms.

04How we use it, and why

Data protection law says we need a lawful basis for each way we use your information. Ours are:

• Considering your application and preparing for your precall. This includes checking that you and your church are who you say you are, looking for anything public that would make the show unsafe or unsuitable, and drafting a brief so the host arrives prepared. Our basis is our legitimate interest in running a safe, well-prepared podcast.
• Arranging, recording, editing, publishing and promoting your episode. Our basis is performing our agreement with you (the guest terms) and our legitimate interest in sharing stories of faith with a wide audience.
• Keeping published episodes available. Our basis is our legitimate interest in keeping a lasting archive of the podcast.
• Keeping records of what we agreed with you. Our basis is our legitimate interest in being able to show what was agreed and to deal with any questions or claims.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed them against your rights, and you can object at any time (see section 09).

We use AI tools to help draft the research brief, to transcribe and summarise your precall, and to transcribe, edit, caption and write show notes for episodes. A member of our team reads the brief and checks anything we publish. We do not make decisions about you using automated processing alone.

05Who sees it

Inside Crowd Church, your application is seen by the small team who make the podcast, including the hosts.

We use trusted service providers to run the podcast. They handle your information on our instructions and are not allowed to use it for their own purposes. They include:

• Supabase, which hosts the database behind our admin system, and Vercel, which hosts our website.
• Mailgun and our email provider, for emails with you.
• Calendly for booking, Zoom for the precall, Fathom to record and transcribe the precall, and Riverside for the recording.
• Anthropic, whose AI model Claude we use for the research brief, editing and show notes, and AssemblyAI, which transcribes episodes.
• Captivate, which hosts the podcast, and YouTube.

Once your episode is published, it is public. Anyone can listen to or watch it on podcast apps, YouTube, our website and social media, and it may appear in our newsletter.

We may also share information if the law requires it, or with our professional advisers if there is a legal question. We never sell your information.

06Information sent outside the UK

Some of our service providers are based in, or store information in, other countries, including the United States and the European Union. When that happens, we make sure your information is protected by UK adequacy regulations (such as the UK–US data bridge) or by contract terms approved for that purpose.

07How long we keep it

• If your application does not go ahead, we delete it, along with the research brief and any precall recording, 12 months after we were last in touch.
• If you appear on the show, we delete the precall recording and its transcript 12 months after your episode is published.
• If you appear on the show, we keep your contact details, the agreement records and the raw recording for as long as the episode is published, and for six years after it is taken down, so we can answer any questions or claims.
• Published episodes, transcripts and show notes are kept as a permanent archive unless they are removed under the guest terms or because the law requires it.

08Mailing lists

Applying or appearing on the show does not add you to our newsletter or any marketing list. We will only email you about your application and episode unless you sign up separately.

09Your rights

You have the right to:

• Ask for a copy of the information we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct anything that is wrong or incomplete.
• Ask us to delete your information.
• Ask us to limit how we use it.
• Object to us using it where we rely on legitimate interests.
• Withdraw your consent where we rely on it.
• Ask for a copy of information you gave us in a format you can take elsewhere.

To use any of these rights, email hello@crowd.church. We will reply within one month. Some rights have limits, for example where we need to keep a record of what we agreed with you, and if that applies we will explain why.

If you are unhappy with how we have used your information, please tell us first so we can try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

10Changes to this notice

We may update this notice when the way we make the podcast changes. The date at the top shows when it last changed. If a change affects an episode you have already recorded, we will let you know.