Who We Are

Birch Road Associates, LLC ("Birch Road," "we," or "us") is a wealth stewardship advisory practice organized as a California limited liability company and based in Oakland, California. We operate a digital platform and provide advisory services to individuals, families, foundations, and financial professionals. This policy explains how we handle personal information collected through our website, our platform, and our advisory services.

Our Role

How we are responsible for your information depends on how you came to us.

• If a financial advisor or other professional invited you to the platform, that professional decides how your information is used in their work with you, and we process it on their behalf under a written agreement with them. Their own privacy policy also applies, and you can contact them or us about your information.

• If you engage Birch Road directly as a client, we decide how your information is used and are responsible for it as the controller.

This policy describes our practices in both cases.

What Information We Collect

Information you provide directly. Your name and email address, and your written responses to the reflection prompts in our guided journey, which ask about your values, your relationship with wealth, and your priorities. If you engage us directly, we also keep notes from our conversations with you.

Information collected automatically. When you use our website or platform, we collect basic technical information such as browser type, device type, and general usage patterns. We do not use advertising trackers. Our website's visitor statistics come from our website platform's built-in analytics, which we use only to understand how the site is used.

Information from advisors. If an advisor invited you to the platform, they may provide your name and email address so we can set up your journey.

You decide what to share in your reflections. The prompts do not ask for health information, and you do not need to include it. Because reflections can touch on personal matters, we treat all journey responses and conversation notes as confidential, whatever their content.

How We Use Your Information

We use your information to deliver the guided journey and your synthesis briefing, to share your outputs with your designated advisor where one is involved, to communicate with you about your engagement, and to improve and develop our services and research. For that last purpose, we first anonymize and aggregate the information so it cannot identify you.

If you engage us directly, we share your responses, synthesis outputs, and conversation notes with no one, including any organization you are associated with, unless you approve it in writing.

We do not sell or rent your personal information, use it for advertising, or share your responses outside Birch Road and your designated advisor without your explicit consent.

How We Use AI  

We use an AI language model provided by Anthropic to help organize your reflection responses into a written summary of the values and priorities they express. Before you begin the journey, we tell you that AI-assisted synthesis will be applied to your responses. The model works only from what you and your advisor provide. It does not access your financial accounts or any outside data about you.

Under our agreement with Anthropic, your information is not used to train its models. The synthesis supports human judgment and is reviewed by a person before it informs any advice. We do not use it to make automated decisions about you.

How Your Information Is Stored and Protected

Your information is stored and processed in the United States. It is held with an independently audited cloud infrastructure provider and encrypted in transit and at rest. Access is limited by role, so an advisor sees only the clients assigned to them, and sign-in does not rely on stored passwords.

If You Live Outside the United States

If you use our platform or services from outside the United States, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States, where data protection law may differ from the law where you live. Where the law that applies to you requires a specific basis for the transfer, such as an adequacy decision or standard contractual clauses, we put that basis in place. We require our service providers to protect your information to the standard described in this policy.

Your Rights

You can ask us at any time for a copy of your information, to correct it, to delete it, or to withdraw your consent to our use of it. To exercise any of these rights, please contact us. We will respond within 14 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may also complain to the data protection authority where you live.

Data Retention

We keep journey responses and synthesis outputs for as long as your advisory relationship is active, or for up to three years after your last interaction with the platform, whichever is longer. You may ask us to delete them at any time. When we delete information, we remove it from our active systems within 30 days. Copies in routine backups are overwritten as those backups expire on their normal schedule.

If you engage us directly, you may ask us to delete your journey responses, synthesis outputs, and conversation notes when the engagement ends, and we will do so within 30 days. We keep the records the law or our contract with you requires, such as the signed agreement, invoices, and payment records. Anonymized, aggregated information that cannot identify you is not affected.

Third-Party Services

We use service providers, located in the United States, in the following categories.

• Cloud hosting, database, and authentication.

• AI model processing, provided by Anthropic, as described above.

• Email delivery, for messages such as journey invitations and sign-in links.

• Website hosting and visitor statistics.

These providers may process your information only to provide their services to us and may not use it for their own purposes. Clients and their advisors can ask us for the current list of providers by name.

Cookies

Cookies are small files a website stores in your browser.

• Our website uses cookies that it needs to work securely, and analytics cookies that count unique visitors and sessions so we can see how the site is used. Analytics cookies are set only if you accept them on our website’s banner.

• Our platform uses only what it needs to keep you signed in after you follow your sign-in link.

We do not use cookies for advertising or to track you across other websites. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, though the platform may not keep you signed in without them.

Children's Privacy

The Birch Road platform is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from individuals under the age of 18. If you believe we have inadvertently collected information from a minor, please contact us, and we will delete it promptly.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy as our platform and practices evolve. We will notify active users of material changes by email. The date at the top of this page reflects the most recent update.

Governing Law

This policy is governed by the laws of the State of California. Nothing in it limits any rights you have under the data protection law that applies where you live.

Contact

For questions about this privacy policy or your personal information, please contact us:

Birch Road Associates, LLC

Oakland, California