Privacy Policy

Last Updated · June 9, 2026

At Thrive College Partners LLC (“Thrive,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), we are committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect personal information when you visit thrivecollegepartners.com (the “Site”) or engage with our post-admission college advising services.

This Policy is designed to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), and other applicable U.S. state privacy laws.

1. Who we are and how to contact us

Thrive College Partners LLC provides post-admission college navigation and academic advising services. We are based in California and serve families across the United States.

For privacy-related questions or to exercise any of your rights described below, contact us at:

2. Information we collect

We collect only the information needed to provide our services and operate our business.

Information you provide directly

When you schedule a Discovery Call, complete an intake form, sign a service agreement, or communicate with us, we may collect:

  • Names of parents, guardians, and students
  • Email addresses and phone numbers
  • Mailing address (if provided for billing or correspondence)
  • The student’s college or university and academic year
  • Academic information shared with us during our engagement, including transcripts, degree audit reports, course plans, and institutional communications you choose to share
  • Payment information processed by our third-party payment processors (we do not store full payment card numbers)
  • Notes from sessions and written summaries of our work together

Information collected automatically when you visit our Site

Our website hosting provider (Netlify) maintains standard server logs that record basic information about visitors:

  • IP address and general location (city or region) derived from it
  • Browser type and version, operating system, and device type
  • Pages visited and date and time of visit

This information is used to operate the Site, maintain security, and understand general usage patterns. We do not use this information to identify individual visitors.

Cookies and similar technologies

Our Site does not use cookies or tracking technologies for analytics, advertising, or behavioral profiling. Our Site loads typefaces from Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com), and on the Discovery Inquiry page a display library from cdnjs.cloudflare.com used to size the embedded form. These services briefly receive your browser’s IP address when serving these resources but do not set cookies on your device or track your behavior across sites.

If you interact with our embedded Dubsado intake form or our Google Booking Pages scheduler, those services may set their own cookies as needed for those tools to function. Cookies set by Dubsado and Google in connection with those tools are governed by Dubsado’s and Google’s respective privacy policies.

Sensitive personal information

We collect limited sensitive personal information when necessary to provide our services or administer your engagement, including the student’s date of birth (to verify capacity), payment-related information processed by our third-party payment processors, and any sensitive information a student voluntarily shares during the engagement. We use sensitive personal information only to provide requested services, verify capacity, process payments, follow student communication preferences, address safety concerns, maintain records, or comply with legal obligations. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information to infer characteristics for unrelated purposes.

3. How we use your information

We use the information we collect to:

  • Provide the services you’ve requested, including academic advising, planning, and ongoing support
  • Schedule and conduct meetings, send appointment reminders, and follow up after sessions
  • Communicate with you about your engagement, including deadlines, scheduling, and updates
  • Process payments and maintain billing records
  • Maintain internal records of our work, including your student’s academic plan and our session notes
  • Improve our services and the Site
  • Comply with our legal, tax, and accounting obligations
  • Respond to your questions and provide customer support

We do not use your information for advertising, profiling, or automated decision-making.

4. How we share your information

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share your personal information with third parties for cross-context behavioral advertising.

We share information only in the following limited circumstances:

Service providers we use to operate our business

We work with trusted third-party tools that help us deliver our services. These providers access only the information necessary to perform their function and are contractually obligated to protect it. Our current providers include:

  • Dubsado — client relationship management, intake forms, contracts, scheduling, and invoicing
  • Google Workspace — email, calendar, video meetings (Google Meet), and document storage
  • Google Booking Pages — Discovery Call scheduling
  • Netlify — website hosting
  • Relay Financial — business banking (does not access client personal information beyond payment records)
  • Our accountant and legal advisors — bound by their own professional confidentiality obligations

This list may change as we update our tools. We update this Policy when material changes occur.

Legal compliance

We may disclose personal information when required by law, such as in response to a subpoena, court order, or regulatory request, or when necessary to protect our rights, your safety, or the safety of others.

With your consent

We may share personal information with any third party you specifically authorize us to share it with, including academic institutions, family members, or other professionals involved in supporting your student.

Business transfers

If Thrive is ever acquired, merged, or sells substantially all of its assets, your information may transfer to the new entity. We would notify you of any such change before your information became subject to a different privacy policy.

5. Educational records and FERPA

When a student is enrolled at a college or university, their educational records are protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). FERPA primarily regulates the educational institution itself, not our services.

When we work with a student, we may receive copies of academic records that the student or their family chooses to share with us. We treat this information with the same care as all other personal information described in this Policy, and we use it solely to provide academic advising services.

Before we contact an institution on a student’s behalf or receive records from an institution, we obtain a written authorization from the student authorizing that communication.

6. Children’s and minors’ privacy

Our services are not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If we learn that we have collected information from a child under 13, we will delete it promptly. If you believe we may have collected such information, please contact us at hello@thrivecollegepartners.com.

For minors aged 13 to 17, we work with families rather than directly with students. A parent or guardian initiates the engagement, attends our kickoff meetings, and remains involved throughout. We do not sell or share personal information of any minor for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we honor requests from minors or their parents to delete information we have collected.

7. Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you have certain rights regarding your personal information.

For California residents (CCPA/CPRA)

You have the right to:

  • Know what personal information we have collected about you, the categories of sources, the purposes for collection, and the categories of third parties we share it with
  • Access a copy of the personal information we hold about you
  • Correct inaccurate personal information we hold
  • Delete personal information we have collected, subject to limited exceptions (for example, information we need to retain for tax or legal purposes)
  • Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information — though we want to be clear that we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising
  • Limit the use of sensitive personal information — we collect limited sensitive personal information, as described in Section 2, and you may direct us to limit our use of it to providing our services and other purposes permitted by law
  • Non-discrimination — we will not deny services, charge different prices, or provide a different level of service because you exercised your rights

For residents of other U.S. states

If you live in another state with a comprehensive privacy law (including Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Texas, and others), you generally have similar rights to access, correct, and delete your personal information, and to opt out of sale or sharing where applicable.

How to exercise your rights

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at:

We will respond to your request within 45 days as required by California law. We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling your request. There is no fee to exercise your rights unless requests are excessive or repetitive.

When you submit a request to know, access, correct, or delete your personal information, we will verify your identity before fulfilling the request. For most requests, we verify identity by matching the name and email address provided in your request against the information we have on file for your engagement. For requests involving deletion of an entire engagement record or disclosure of sensitive personal information, we may ask you to confirm one additional piece of identifying information, such as your mailing address or the student’s name associated with the engagement. We will not fulfill a request if we are unable to verify your identity with reasonable certainty. If you submit a request through an authorized agent, we will require written confirmation that you have authorized the agent to act on your behalf before processing the request.

8. How we protect your information

We take reasonable measures to protect personal information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. These measures include:

  • Encryption of data in transit (HTTPS) on our Site and through our service providers
  • Multi-factor authentication on accounts holding client information
  • Access restrictions — only Catherine Riedstra and authorized members of the Thrive team access client information
  • Vetted service providers with their own security commitments
  • Routine review of our security practices

No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. We work to use commercially reasonable safeguards consistent with the sensitivity of the information we handle.

9. How long we keep your information

We retain personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes described in this Policy or as required by law:

  • Active client records, advising records, signed agreements, and student authorizations — for the duration of the engagement and for seven years after it ends, consistent with standard recordkeeping for professional services
  • Session notes and written summaries — for the duration of the engagement and seven years after it ends
  • Information collected through Dubsado — for the duration of the engagement and seven years after it ends; Dubsado’s own retention practices are governed by its privacy policy
  • Information collected through Google Workspace — for the duration of the engagement and seven years after it ends; Google’s retention practices for business accounts are governed by its terms of service
  • Payment and billing information — for the period required by applicable law and consistent with our payment processor’s retention practices, typically seven years for billing records
  • Tax and accounting records — for the period required by applicable law (typically seven years)
  • Discovery Call inquiries that don’t result in engagement — for up to 24 months, to enable future follow-up
  • Marketing contacts — for up to 24 months, to support our nurture follow-up with families who have expressed interest
  • Server logs and website visitor data — up to 12 months, after which they are deleted or anonymized by Netlify in the ordinary course of its operations

When we no longer need information, we securely delete or anonymize it.

10. Links to other sites

Our Site may contain links to other websites we don’t operate (for example, links to colleges, scholarship resources, or partner organizations). We’re not responsible for the privacy practices of those sites. We encourage you to review their privacy policies before sharing personal information with them.

11. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the “Last Updated” date at the top of this page. If we make material changes, we’ll provide additional notice — for example, by email to active clients or a prominent notice on our Site.

We encourage you to review this Policy periodically.

12. Questions or complaints

If you have questions about this Policy or our privacy practices, contact us first at hello@thrivecollegepartners.com or 805-225-4708. We take privacy seriously and will work to resolve any concerns.

If you live in California, you can also file a complaint with the California Privacy Protection Agency (cppa.ca.gov) or the California Attorney General’s office (oag.ca.gov).