About Circle our online community platform

Making better use of digital technologies to enhance collaboration, communication, learning, and engagement, was highlighted as a need by fellows, for fellows.

Why was this community developed?

Conversations started at the 2020 Digital Summit and carried through to the Fellowship Digital Services project. In response, a digital platform – Circle – has been scoped and delivered to bridge this identified gap. This online community is strategically vital in delivering a central, scalable, global, fellowship offer, and provides a tangible place for fellows to chat, connect and collaborate.

The selection process

We selected Circle as our chosen community platform following a market review of 17 leading suppliers. Demonstrations were undertaken with nine of those platforms and then a technical audit of three were progressed with Circle, Hivebrite and Higher Logic. Circle stood out as the best option.

Your community. Your data

We take the data and privacy issues around the use of our chosen digital platform very seriously. As stated in the terms, any data collected is used solely for improving the service offered, and it is fully compliant with GDPR.

We recently rewrote our own privacy policy to be transparent about Circle’s data usage and sharing and it can be found here Privacy policy - The RSA. This was reviewed and signed off by both our Audit and Risk Committee and the RSA Trustee Board. We also signed a Data Protection Agreement with Circle compelling them to inform us of any change to their data policy. This ensures we can update our own policy in alignment, as well as immediately notify Circle users of any change.

Our sign-up journey to Circle ensures you have full access to the policy before agreeing to these conditions. A ‘Your data and privacy’ channel has also been set up on the platform itself, where all relevant information is readily available and where you can ask any questions or raise any concerns: Your data and privacy - The RSA | Circle.

We want Circle to be a vibrant space for fellows to engage with each other and to help make collective impact. We are confident that this is a safe, compliant, and beneficial space for fellows.