Alumni and Supporters
The Privacy Notice for Alumni and Supporters should be read in conjunction with the overall Privacy Notice.
The Advancement Team, within Internationalisation and partnerships, is primarily responsible for alumni relations and fundraising at the University of Stirling. This section relates to personal data of alumni and supporters and clarifies the storage, processing and usage of data by the Advancement Team.
This statement applies to external relations data, managed by the Advancement Team, but other departments that may hold your information for different purposes may process data under different grounds.
Purpose and legal basis for Processing your personal data
The University relies on legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) of UK GDPR) as the legal basis for processing of alumni relations and fundraising activities, carried out by the Directorate for Internationalisation and Partnerships.
This is because alumni and supporter relations is of clear benefit to the University and its students, alumni and stakeholders, through its efforts on teaching, research, on-campus support for our students and provision of events, services and opportunities for alumni. Our Privacy Impact Assessments indicated that our activities have a limited impact on the privacy of our alumni and supporters and their interests do not override the University's interests. We have also evaluated that these activities are within the reasonable expectations of alumni and supporters.
Where we communicate with stakeholders via electronic means with information about the University (such as offers, invitations to events and opportunities) we do this on the basis of consent. The University provides means for constituents to tailor their consent to various types of communication, or to opt-out entirely.
What Personal Data we process about you
The Advancement Team holds basic records for all Alumni including contact details, courses studied, date of birth, nationality and scholarships awarded, which are obtained from your student record when you leave the University. In addition, we also keep a record of communications with you and any other details you provide voluntarily such as employment details or fundraising causes you are interested in.
The Advancement Team will only hold special categories of personal data where you provide us with such data for a specific purpose and permit us to store that information. For example, information about a disability may be disclosed for the purposes of ensuring that access requirements are met when attending an event, with permission given to record those requirements for subsequent events.
Use of data by other University departments
The data you give us whether online, by email, telephone or post may be made available as appropriate to our academic and administrative departments, recognised University of Stirling alumni clubs and associations. When doing this we will ensure that your wishes are respected and make sure the data processing is lawful.
This internal data sharing is primarily done to allow University departments to engage with alumni and other contacts who fit a particular set of criteria (e.g., geographic location, graduation year, subject of study). Wherever possible, data shared for such purposes will be anonymised to leave only the information pertinent to the planned activity, with personally identifiable information being removed. Primary responsibility for external engagement data remains with the Advancement Team, whose staff will process communications on behalf of other departments, maintain data security, and process requests for removal from contact lists (or removal from the database itself).
Sharing your data
We will not disclose your data to third parties without your consent, except where they are acting as authorised agents for the University for the above purposes or where we are permitted or required to do so by UK GDPR.
Fundraising research
We use alumni and stakeholder data to carry out fundraising activities to support the University of Stirling and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our fundraising operation. In order to do so, the University may conduct research using publicly available data. This data is used to assess the capacity of a particular individual, or organisation, to donate to the charitable purposes of the institution. The University does not share data with third parties when carrying out this research, nor are any special categories of data involved.
Data storage outside the EU
The Advancement Team uses Mailchimp, which stores data outwith the EU, on an occasional basis for email marketing, though the vast majority of our emails are sent via an EU-hosted emailing system, provided by our CRM database provider (Blackbaud). The database itself is also hosted by Blackbaud, at their EU data centre. Mailchimp is hosted in the USA, and provides two layers of protection for data transfers from Europe to the US: standard contractual clauses and compliance with the EU-US Data Privacy Framework standard, which has been approved by the European Commission as providing satisfactory protections for data subjects.
In addition, we use the Typeform application to power our communications preferences survey, found on the alumni pages of the University website. Typeform is based in the EU and uses EU-based data storage, however, may use service providers outwith the EU and, where this happens, they use standard contractual clauses to provide appropriate safeguards for any transfer of data.
The Advancement Team continues to monitor developments in this area of data security and law, and will cease to use the above providers if their protections no longer meet the required standards.
How and why we may contact you
We will use the details you have given us to contact you by post, email or telephone about the full range of alumni activities and other relevant University activities or services, including:
- the sending of alumni publications, such as the University magazine (in print) or e-newsletters;
- the promotion of benefits and services available to alumni;
- notification of, and distribution of information about, events and reunions;
- facilitating the establishment of networking groups;
- University fundraising and other Advancement Team programmes;
- requests to complete relevant surveys;
- careers information;
- providing information about masters courses or continuing professional development.
Contact details relating to Alumni and Supporters
If you want further information about how your personal information is used or would like to request to correct, restrict, erase personal details or opt out of receiving any particular type of communications from us please contact: