1. Introduction

This Privacy Notice provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data through your use of our website, services, programmes, membership, supplier relationships and digital tools, including the Virtual Interview Tool, ABM Mentoring Toolkit and similar tools.

Our services, programmes and digital tools are intended for adults and professionals aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly provide services to children under 18.

The Association of Business Mentors is the data controller, and we are responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).

We have appointed a Data Privacy Manager who is in charge of privacy related matters for us. If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, please contact the Data Privacy Manager using the details below.

Our full details are:

Full name of legal entity: Association of Business Mentors 

Company Number: 07533326 

Registered Address: 124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX 

Name of Data Privacy Manager: Georgina Waite 

Email: enquiries@theabm.org

It is very important that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by emailing us at enquiries@theabm.org.

2. What data do we collect about you, for what purpose and on what grounds we process it

Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data. 

We may process the following categories of personal data about you:

• Communication Data that includes any communications that you send to us whether that be through the contact form on our website, through email, text, social media messaging, social media posting, becoming a supplier to us or any other communication that you send us. We process this data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuance or defence of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to reply to communication sent to us, to keep records and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.
• Customer and Supplier Data that includes data relating to any purchases of goods and/or services such as your name, title, billing address, delivery address, email address, phone number, contact details, purchase details, bank details and your card details. We process this data to supply the goods and/or services you have purchased and to keep records of such transactions. Our lawful ground for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into such a contract.
• Member Profile and Professional Information that includes data relating to your membership profile and professional background, such as your name, contact details, address information, business details, membership details, mentoring experience, areas of expertise, sectors supported, business sizes supported, delivery region, business operating location, and professional client group experience. We process this data to administer your membership, maintain accurate member records, enable access to member services, and provide membership services and benefits. This may include communicating relevant member opportunities, events, training, professional development, local member activity, partnership opportunities and programme-related opportunities, where these form part of your membership, member services, or an associated programme through which your membership is provided. Our lawful ground for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into such a contract. 

We may also use Member Profile and Professional Information to understand ABM’s member capability, support programme planning, improve our services, respond to partnership, funding or commercial opportunities, undertake due diligence, and provide aggregated or anonymised information about our mentor base, such as the number of mentors with particular specialisms, sector experience or regional delivery capability. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests, namely to develop ABM’s services, support members with relevant opportunities, and evidence ABM’s capability to partners, funders or commissioners. 

• Application, Programme and Digital Tool Data that includes data relating to applications, eligibility, suitability assessment, programme participation, mentoring or business support activities, and use of ABM digital tools, including the Virtual Interview Tool, ABM Mentoring Toolkit and similar tools. This may include your name, contact details, postcode, application answers, interview recordings, audio, transcripts, CV or supporting documents, online session content, meeting notes, summaries, reminders, action plans, business plans, diagnostics, templates, AI-assisted outputs, scores, recommendation labels, reviewer notes and related metadata. We process this data to assess and administer applications, deliver programmes and services, support mentoring and planning activity, maintain records, provide support, quality assure our services, and use information within ABM planning tools, templates and programme administration. Our lawful ground for this processing is primarily the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into such a contract. Where processing is for related operational, quality, security, reporting, review, improvement, evidence, audit or governance purposes, our lawful ground is our legitimate interests. 

Where ABM provides digital tools, including the ABM Mentoring Toolkit, ABM may act as controller, joint controller or processor depending on the relevant service, contract, programme, customer arrangement or instructions. We will explain this in the relevant terms, contract, programme documents or service information where needed. 

• User Data that includes data about how you use our website and any online services together with any data that you post for publication on our website or through other online services. We process this data to operate our website and ensure relevant content is provided to you, to ensure the security of our website, to maintain back-ups of our website and/or databases and to enable publication and administration of our website, other online services and business. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business. 

• Technical Data that includes data about your use of our website and online services such as your IP address, your login data, details about your browser, length of visit to pages on our website, page views and navigation paths, details about the number of times you use our website, time zone settings and other technology on the devices you use to access our website. The source of this data is from our analytics tracking system. We process this data to analyse your use of our website and other online services, to administer and protect our business and website and to understand the effectiveness of our advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business and to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy. 

• Marketing Data that includes data about your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences. We process this data to enable you to partake in our promotions and measure or understand the effectiveness of this advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.

• We may use Customer data, User Data, Technical data and Marketing Data to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you (including Facebook adverts or other display advertisements) and to measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve you. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which is to grow our business. We may also use such data to send other marketing communications to you. Our lawful ground for this processing is either consent or legitimate interests (namely to grow our business). 

Sensitive Data 

We do occasionally collect Sensitive Data. Sensitive data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. We do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offences. 

We may collect the following sensitive data about you in order to deliver some of our services: 

• Gender 

• Ethnicity 

• Age Range

Where required, we will ask for your explicit consent, so when you submit your details, we will send you a further communication asking for you to confirm your consent to this processing. 

Where we ask about professional experience supporting particular founder, entrepreneur or business owner groups, this relates to your professional mentoring experience only. We are not asking you to disclose your own personal characteristics through this question. 

We do not ask you to provide special category information when using the Virtual Interview Tool, ABM Mentoring Toolkit or similar digital tools. However, you may choose to include, or may incidentally disclose, information such as health, disability, ethnicity, beliefs or other sensitive information in recordings, transcripts, CVs, meeting notes or other content. We ask you not to include sensitive information unless it is relevant to the service, programme or opportunity. If we need to process such information, we will do so only where an additional legal condition for special category data applies, such as your explicit consent, legal claims, safeguarding, equality monitoring or another condition permitted by data protection law. 

Where information is optional, you can choose whether to provide it. However, if you do not provide certain information, ABM may not be able to identify you for relevant member benefits, programme-related opportunities, partnership opportunities, delivery opportunities or services. Where we need personal data by law or under the terms of a contract, and you do not provide it when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract or provide the relevant service. 

We will only use your personal data for the purpose it was collected for or a reasonably compatible purpose if necessary. For more information on this please email us at enquiries@theabm.org.

In case we need to use your details for an unrelated new purpose we will let you know and explain the legal grounds for processing. 

We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law. 

We do not make final suitability, progression or other significant decisions based solely on automated processing. We may use digital or AI-assisted tools, including the Virtual Interview Tool, ABM Mentoring Toolkit and similar tools, to support human review by transcribing, summarising or analysing information and producing notes, summaries, scores, recommendation labels, flags, reminders or draft outputs. These outputs support ABM staff, mentors, reviewers or other authorised users. A human will remain in the loop where a suitability, progression or comparable decision is made, and ABM staff or authorised reviewers can review, query or override AI-assisted outputs. 

If you believe that an AI-assisted summary, transcript, score, recommendation, note or other record is inaccurate or incomplete, you can contact us at hello@helptogrowmentor.com. ABM can review the relevant evidence and, where appropriate, correct records, add context, reconsider an output or explain how the information has been used. 

3. How we collect your personal data

We may collect data about you by you providing the data directly to us (for example by filling in forms on our website or by sending us emails). We may automatically collect certain data from you as you use our website by using cookies and similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for more details about this. 

We may receive data from third parties such as analytics providers, advertising networks, search information providers, providers of technical, payment, delivery, CRM, learning, transcription, AI, automation and email services, funders, commissioners, programme or delivery partners, mentors, mentees, business owners, suppliers, professional advisers and data brokers or aggregators. These providers and sources may be based inside or outside the UK. 

We may also receive data from publicly available sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the UK. 

4. Marketing Communications

Our lawful ground for processing your personal data to send you marketing communications is either your consent or our legitimate interest (namely to grow our business). 

Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, we may send you marketing communications from us if (i) you made a purchase or asked for information from us about our goods or services or (ii) you agreed to receive marketing communications and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving such communications since. Under these regulations, if you are a limited company, we may send you marketing emails without your consent. However, you can still opt out of receiving marketing emails from us at any time. 

Before we share your personal data with any third party for their own marketing purposes, we will get your express consent. 

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time (by logging onto the website and checking or unchecking relevant boxes to adjust your marketing preferences) OR (by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or) OR by emailing us at enquiries@theabm.org). 

If you opt out of receiving communications this opt-out does not apply to personal data provided as a result of other transactions, such as purchases, warranty registrations etc. 

5. Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below: 

• Service providers who provide IT, system administration, cloud hosting, CRM, email, payment, learning platform, event, video, transcription, AI, analytics, marketing, automation, security and support services. This may include, where relevant, providers such as AWS, OpenAI, Microsoft, Zoho, Canvas, Pointerpro, Stripe, Eventbrite, Calendly, Google, Meta, LinkedIn and Zapier. 

• Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers. 

• Government bodies, funders, commissioners, delivery partners and programme partners where required for programme administration, contractual reporting, safeguarding, audit, legal obligations or agreed delivery purposes. 

• Third parties to whom we sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets.

We normally provide funders, commissioners, government bodies, delivery partners and programme partners with aggregated or anonymised information wherever possible. We may share identifiable personal data only where this is necessary for programme administration, contractual reporting, safeguarding, audit, legal obligations, agreed delivery purposes, or to provide a service, opportunity or support connected with the relevant programme, membership or service. 

We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions, unless they are acting as a separate controller or joint controller under an agreed programme, service or legal arrangement. 

6. International Transfers

We and our service providers may process or store personal data in the UK, the EEA and other countries. This may include suppliers whose systems, group companies, support teams or sub-processors are outside the UK. 

Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards or lawful transfer mechanisms are in place. As such: 

• We may transfer your personal data to countries that UK authorities have approved as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data; or 

• Where we use providers that participate in a UK-approved data transfer framework or equivalent lawful mechanism, we may transfer data to them where the relevant safeguards apply; or 

• Where we use service providers located outside the UK, we may use the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, supplier data processing terms, transfer risk assessments or other lawful safeguards.

If none of the usual safeguards is available, we may rely on another applicable exception permitted by law, including your explicit consent where appropriate.

7. Data security

We have in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed or accessed without authorisation. We also allow access to your personal data only to those employees and partners who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they must keep it confidential. 

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if we are legally required to do so. 

8. Data retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collect it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. 

When deciding what the correct time is to keep the data for, we look at its amount, nature and sensitivity, potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the processing purposes, if these can be achieved by other means and legal requirements. 

For tax purposes the law requires us to keep basic information about our clients and suppliers (including contact, identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they stop being clients or suppliers. 

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you. 

Virtual Interview Tool recordings and transcripts are normally retained for no longer than 12 months after completion of the Virtual Interview Tool process, unless we need to retain them for longer to deal with a legal claim, complaint, safeguarding issue or regulatory requirement. 

Assessment notes, scores, recommendation labels and reviewer decisions may be retained for as long as the relevant programme continues and/or while the individual remains enrolled, active or under review within that programme, where this is necessary for programme administration, quality assurance, support, audit, queries or review. We periodically review the information we hold and delete or anonymise it when it is no longer required. 

Records created through the ABM Mentoring Toolkit or similar tools, such as meeting notes, summaries, reminders, diagnostics, business plans and action plans, are retained only for as long as needed for the relevant service, programme, contract, customer arrangement or controller instructions. 

9. Your legal rights

Under data protection law you have the rights in relation to your personal data that include the rights to: –  

Request Access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check we are lawfully processing it. 

Request Correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected; though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us. 

Request erasure of your personal data. (“also known as the right to be forgotten”) This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete to remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request for erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request. 

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms. 

Where you object to direct marketing we shall maintain a restricted record of Contact and Identity Data recording that you have opted out of receiving marketing and we can ensure no future marketing is carried out. Unless otherwise informed no other processing shall be carried out in relation to this restricted record. 

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it. 

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or a third party. We will provide you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you. 

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent. 

If you wish to exercise any of these rights set out above, please email us at enquiries@theabm.org.

For AI-assisted outputs, summaries, transcripts, scores, recommendations, notes or records connected with ABM digital tools, you can contact hello@helptogrowmentor.com if you want to query, challenge or ask for human review of the relevant output or record.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive or refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances. 

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response. 

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you. 

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, please contact us first so we can try to resolve it. We will acknowledge data protection complaints within 30 days, respond without undue delay, keep you informed where appropriate and explain the outcome. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). 

10. Third-party links

Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit. 

11. Cookies

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our cookie policy.

Where required by law, we will ask for your consent before setting non-essential cookies or similar technologies. 

This policy was last reviewed in June 2026.