Privacy notice

Your GROW member account

You make a GROW member account in one of two ways. You can sign in with Google: GROW keeps the email address and name your Google account gives, and never sees your password. Or you can use Member sign in with the access code the GROW team sends to the address on your mentoring sign-up, typed with that same address: it makes your account for that address, with the name on your sign-up, the sign-up becomes yours, and the code is used up. A code only ever makes a new account: if that address has an account already, you sign in to it as you always do, and can add a code from your account’s menu. After that you sign in with Google, if that address is a Google account, or by asking for a sign-in link on the same page: it is emailed to your account’s address and works once, for 30 minutes. Whichever way you sign in, the portal opens only once GROW has approved your email address (see Who can use the portal), and an account shows you only your own things.

Only you make your account. Signing up for mentoring never makes one, and nothing on the site makes one for you or fills in your profile for you. For a short time in October 2026 the site’s daily check did: it made an account for everyone with a mentoring sign-up and no account, filled in their profile from the sign-up and gave tiers by the rules that began them, GROW mentor included, so it made an account again for anyone who had deleted theirs. It no longer does (see The site’s daily check). The accounts it made that show no sign of having been used, and that the GROW team had not acted on, have been deleted (one you signed in to only on the day of your sign-up, and then signed out of, shows none: signing in again makes your account afresh), and so have the profiles it filled in that their owner never saved, so you are asked to fill yours in. The GROW mentor tier it gave has been taken back, except from those who had used a mentor’s access code: an approved mentor sign-up or a pairing still makes you a GROW mentor. On the accounts kept, those it made GROW mentees, whose mentee sign-up the GROW team had accepted or paired, stay GROW mentees: their record names the start of the tiers as how, with the day the site made them one.

Every GROW member account holds your GROW profile: your name, your pronouns if you give them, what best describes you now (at school, taking a gap year, at university, in legal training, working), your university and what you study, and your course name and LinkedIn profile if you give them. Nothing sensitive: never your date of birth, your ethnic group, your health or anything about your family. You fill it in before you use your account, and, while the portal is open to you, you can change it at any time in Your profile, in the account menu. GROW uses it to fill in event sign-ups for you (see Events).

Your account shows your tier: GROW member (everyone), GROW mentee or GROW mentor. You become a GROW mentee when GROW chooses you: when you use an access code the GROW team sends you for your mentee sign-up, when the team makes your account a GROW mentee, or through the site’s daily check (below). Signing up as a mentee does not, on its own, make you one. A pairing makes you a GROW mentee or a GROW mentor once its cohort has started: one made for a cohort still to start is provisional until its start date, and a pairing recorded with no cohort (as some older ones are) counts at once. Until 27 October 2026 a pairing counted from the day it was made, whatever its cohort, so a mentee paired before then for a cohort still to start may already be a GROW mentee, and stays one. When the tiers began, the only members who became GROW mentees were those GROW had already chosen: whose mentee sign-up the GROW team had accepted, or paired with a mentor (outside the site, or in a pairing still running), linked to their account by its own email address or an access code. A sign-up still waiting for the team, withdrawn or turned down made no one a GROW mentee. You are a GROW mentor once the GROW team approves your mentor sign-up, while you are the mentor in a pairing whose cohort has started (or one recorded with no cohort), or when you sign in with a mentor’s access code; nothing else changes for mentors. When the tiers began, the members whose account showed them the mentor’s portal, with a mentor sign-up not withdrawn or turned down, became GROW mentors. An access code makes no one a GROW mentee or a GROW mentor once its sign-up has been withdrawn or turned down, and a code sent before the tiers began does so only as their start would have.

The site’s daily check. Each day the site goes through the GROW member accounts that have no tier yet, and makes a GROW mentee of each one GROW has chosen, by the rules used when the tiers began: one with a mentee sign-up, linked to the account by its own email address or an access code, that the GROW team has accepted, or paired with a mentor outside the site or in a pairing whose cohort has started (or one recorded with no cohort). That is all it does: it never makes an account, never links a sign-up, never fills in a profile and never makes anyone a GROW mentor. So a pairing for a cohort still to start does not, on its own, make its mentee a GROW mentee before its start date: the first daily check on or after that date does, unless their account already has a tier. The GROW team accepting a mentee sign-up makes its mentee one at the next daily check; an access code, or the team making the account a GROW mentee, does so at once, as above.

Mentors have accounts too. A mentor’s account shows where their sign-up stands and the events announced to them, and, once the GROW team has introduced them to their mentee, the catch-ups and objectives they keep together and, only if the mentee chooses to share it, the mentee’s progress (see Mentoring together).

Who can use the portal

• The GROW member portal is open only to the people GROW has approved, by their email address. GROW’s owner approves each person, and can stop approving them at any time. A Google account, an access code or a sign-in link is not enough on its own.
• An access code links your mentoring sign-up to your account and can make you a GROW mentee or a GROW mentor, but it does not open the portal on its own.
• If you sign in with Google, with an access code or with a sign-in link before GROW has approved your email address, the portal says it is not open to you yet and keeps nothing of that sign-in: no account is made, no sign-up is linked to you, your access code is not used up, your choice about partners’ emails is not recorded and you are not signed in. Instead, GROW keeps your request to use the portal: your email address, your name (as Google gives it, as on your mentoring sign-up, or as on your account) and when you first asked. If you were already signed in when you were not approved, your next visit signs you out and keeps a request in the same way.
• Only GROW’s owner sees the requests. A request is deleted as soon as GROW’s owner approves or declines it, and otherwise 30 days after you first asked: asking again does not change that date.
• Asking for a sign-in link proves nothing about who is asking, so it keeps no request, and a link is sent only to an address GROW has approved.
• If GROW stops approving your email address, you are signed out of the portal at once.
• While the portal is not open to you (before GROW approves your email address, or once it stops), you cannot use Download my data, Delete my account or Your profile yourself. To get a copy of your data or delete your account, email contact@growmentoring.org. GROW then either approves your email address so that you can use them yourself, and stops approving it again afterwards, or GROW’s owner deletes your account for you, exactly as Delete my account would. Either way, nobody at GROW downloads your data or sees your profile or your mentee details.
• GROW keeps your approval (your email address, when it was approved and who at GROW approved it) until GROW’s owner stops approving you or your account is deleted. If you have no account (GROW’s owner can approve your email address before you first sign in), it is kept until GROW’s owner stops approving it. Deleting your account deletes it, and any request, so using the portal again needs a new approval.
• Each approval, declined request and approval stopped is noted in GROW’s record of its work, naming your account if you have one and never your email address; once your account is deleted it says “a GROW member” instead. An account GROW’s owner deletes for you is noted only as “a GROW member’s” account.

GROW mentees and your mentee details

• Only GROW mentees are asked for their mentee details: your date of birth, your gender, your ethnic group, whether you are the first in your family to go to university, whether you were eligible for free school meals, the type of school you mainly attended, whether you have received a bursary, grant or other financial support for your studies, whether you have a disability or long-term health condition, whether you identify as LGBTQIA+, whether you are an international student, where you mainly grew up, the languages you speak, and your qualifications at 16 to 18 and their results. Every question has Prefer not to say, your date of birth included, and one button answers Prefer not to say to them all. GROW asks for them before a GROW mentee carries on using the portal. Nobody else is asked, and GROW keeps them for nobody else.
• GROW keeps them only with your explicit consent: you tick a box to agree, in words that say your answers include your ethnicity, health and sexuality, and GROW keeps those words, and when you agreed, with your answers. The box is never ticked for you, and you agree again each time you save a change. If you answer Prefer not to say to every question, you share nothing, so you need not tick the box: saying no to it never stops you using the portal.
• GROW keeps them only while you are a GROW mentee. If you stop being one, they are deleted at once, and they are deleted with your account. While the portal is open to you, you can change them, or delete them, at any time in Your profile; while you are a GROW mentee you are then asked for them again before you carry on, with Prefer not to say always an option, which needs no box ticked. While it is not, email contact@growmentoring.org (see Who can use the portal).
• They are for filling in the event sign-ups you choose to make, and for GROW’s statistics about who the programme reaches, which never name anyone. GROW publishes only anonymised statistics internally, shown only to GROW’s owners and to those in the GROW team GROW’s owner allows to see them: every count is rounded to the nearest 5, groups of 1 to 4 are shown as fewer than 5, a split is shown only when both groups are 10 or more, and where hiding a single small group would allow it to be worked out from a total, the next smallest group is hidden too, one question at a time and by academic year, never showing a name, an email address, a date of birth or anything typed in free text. For now, event sign-ups are filled in from your profile alone, never from your mentee details.

What your account keeps

• Your account: the email address and name it was made with (your Google account’s, or your sign-up’s when you used an access code), when you made the account, and when you last used it: the time of your first visit on the last day you used it (noted at most once a day).
• Your approval: when GROW approved your email address for the portal (see Who can use the portal).
• Your profile: your answers in your GROW profile, and when you last saved it; for a GROW mentee, also your mentee details, with the words you agreed to and when, if you ticked the box (see GROW mentees and your mentee details).
• Your tier: whether you are a GROW mentee or a GROW mentor, since when, and how: an access code, the GROW team, your approved mentor sign-up, or the start of the tiers and the site’s daily check.
• Your mentoring sign-ups: which of GROW’s mentoring sign-ups are yours, so the portal can show you where each stands. A sign-up becomes yours when you make your account from the page that confirms you have signed up; when it was made with the same email address as your account, or is the one an engagement email to you was about and you make your account from that email’s link; or when you type in an access code the GROW team sent you for it. Your account keeps how each was linked, and when: as the sign-up you had just made, or one an engagement email was about when that email went to an address other than the one on the sign-up (its link shows you read that inbox, not the sign-up’s); as your email address, when the sign-up’s address is your account’s or the one the engagement email reached; or as an access code. The sign-up itself is GROW’s record, which GROW runs the programme from.
• Your choice about partners’ emails: whether you want emails about GROW partners’ opportunities, and, as the record of your consent, every time you turned them on or off: how (when you made your account, in the portal, or from the link in an email), when, and the words you agreed to.
• Your tracker: the applications you keep in My tracker: the firm, the opportunity, its dates and link, where you are with it, the steps after you applied, and your notes. They are kept on GROW’s server, so they follow you from phone to laptop.
• Your practice: the score of each SJT practice group you finish, and which video interview questions you have practised; never your rankings, and never a recording (see SJT practice and video interview practice).
• Your choice about sharing your progress with your mentor: whether it is on, and every time you turned it on or off, when, and the words you were shown. Each choice is for the pairing you were in when you made it (see Sharing your progress with your mentor).
• Your to-dos: the to-dos you add for yourself, and which are done.
• Sign-in links you ask for: when each was sent, when it stops working, and whether it was used. The link itself is never kept, only a form of it that cannot be turned back into the link, and all of it is deleted about a day after the link stops working.

Home and the Events tab show the events GROW announces to you and your own sign-ups for them, read from GROW’s event records each time (see Events). The catch-ups and objectives you keep with your mentor or mentee are kept with your pairing rather than your account (see Mentoring together).

Who sees what

• While the portal is open to you, you see everything your account keeps.
• The GROW team sees your name and email address, when you made your account and the day you last used it (the date only, never the time), which sign-ups are linked to it and where each stands, and whether you have asked for emails about partners’ opportunities. With your mentoring sign-up, the team also sees whether it is in a GROW member account, and how you answered the engagement email for each of your pairs, with your note.
• Your profile and your mentee details are yours. The team sees your tier (GROW member, GROW mentee or GROW mentor) and whether your profile, and a GROW mentee’s details, are complete: never your answers. No one in the GROW team sees your profile or your mentee details in the portal’s own tools, and GROW’s statistics from them, shown only to GROW’s owners and to those in the GROW team GROW’s owner allows to see them, never name anyone. Within the team, only the people GROW chooses to look after members’ accounts, and GROW’s owners, see your tier and whether your profile is complete, and only some of them can make you a GROW mentee or end it. What you send with an event sign-up goes to the event’s team as any other sign-up does (see Events).
• Your tracker is yours, and your mentor’s to see only if you choose to share your progress, never your notes or links. The team sees only how many members track each partner opportunity, never whose tracker it is in, and never your dates, progress or notes. If you have asked for partners’ emails, the team can send an email about an opportunity to just the members who track it, or anything else at the same firm, so you may get it; the team is told how many it went to, never who.
• Your practice, your to-dos and your choice about sharing are yours too. The team never sees your SJT scores, the questions you have practised, your to-dos, or whether you share your progress. Your mentor sees whether you share it, and sees your practice and tracker only while you do (see Mentoring together).
• When the team does something about your sign-up (pairing you, sending you the engagement email, changing where it stands), GROW’s record of that work names you, as GROW’s audit trail. It never holds the words of your note. If your sign-up is erased, your name there is replaced with “a mentee”.
• Backups hold it all the same. A backup is a copy of the whole database, kept to put things back if they are ever lost, so your account and your tracker, notes included, are in GROW’s daily backups, in Fly.io’s daily snapshots of the database, and in the full copies GROW’s owners keep for safekeeping, for as long as each is kept (see How long things are kept). So are your profile, a GROW mentee’s details, your practice, your to-dos, and the catch-ups (notes included) and objectives your pair keeps. GROW’s daily backups and the full copies its owners keep are encrypted, and only the one person at GROW who holds the key can open them. Whoever can open a backup could read them there, though the portal shows them to no one but you and, for what you keep together or choose to share, your mentor or mentee.

Signing in, downloading and deleting

• Your sign-in is kept by a cookie (see Cookies and your browser). It ends after 30 days without use, after 180 days at most, or when you sign out. Signing out ends it on this browser, so the next person on a shared computer is never left signed in as you.
• A sign-in link goes only to the address of an account that already exists and that GROW has approved, never to any other address, and asking for one never makes an account: the page gives the same answer whether or not there is an account for the address typed. Each link works once, for 30 minutes.
• Download my data, in the account menu, gives you everything your account keeps, as a file, at any time while the portal is open to you, with the catch-ups and objectives of your pairs and your event sign-ups. That includes the sign-in links you asked for that are still kept (when each was sent, until when it worked, and whether it was used), and the catch-ups and objectives of pairings that have ended, for as long as GROW keeps them. It includes your profile, your tier and, for a GROW mentee, your mentee details with the words you agreed to and when, and when your email address was approved for the portal.
• Delete my account, in the account menu while the portal is open to you (or GROW’s owner, when you ask while it is not: see Who can use the portal), deletes the account and everything it keeps (your sign-ins, which sign-ups were yours, your consent record and your tracker, your practice, your to-dos and your choice about sharing, your profile, your mentee details and your tier, and your approval for the portal with any request) at once; copies stay in backups until those expire. The catch-ups and objectives you kept with your mentor or mentee stay with them, with nothing left to say which of you wrote or changed them, and event sign-ups you made from the portal stay with GROW, no longer tied to you. It leaves GROW’s record of your mentoring sign-up, which GROW runs the programme from: to have that erased too, email contact@growmentoring.org. Your account is never made again for you, even while GROW keeps your sign-up: you have one again only if you sign in again, which makes a new account.