Privacy Policy - University of Essex

Alumni

Alumni Supporters Privacy Notice

1. About this Privacy Notice

This statement explains how the University of Essex, primarily, but not exclusively, through the Alumni Relations and Philanthropy offices (collectively known as the Advancement Office), will process your personal data. The term ‘You’ refers to alumni, friends, external agents and supporters of the University, as set out in Section 5 below. The term ‘Marketing’ refers to any communication regarding the objectives or activities of the Advancement Office and/or the University of Essex as a whole.

Please read this notice alongside our overarching privacy statement, which is available on our Privacy Hub.

It is important that you read and retain this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information and what your rights are under the data protection legislation.

The University of Essex is the controller for the purposes of data protection law.

2. What type of information we collect about you

We may collect the following information from you when you enrolled as a student or registered for our programmes, or when you complete surveys or application forms, contact us for support, or offer help. Our privacy notice relating to the way in which we store and process information about you when you were a student is available on our Privacy Hub.

Personal information we record and process about you as a member of our alumni, a friend to the University or a supporter, whether or not you previously studied with us, may include:

biographical information (e.g. name, salutation, date of birth, gender)
your postal addresses
your phone numbers
your email addresses
information about your time at the University, if applicable, and other education history
your current and past professional activities (e.g. organisation name, position, industry)
your membership of groups both internal to the University and external
your current interests (e.g. interests in supporting particular areas of the University)
where you feature in media coverage (e.g. news articles, blogs)
your family and spouse/partner details
your relationship to other alumni, donors and friends
volunteering activities you have undertaken and any expression of interest you have made in volunteering
your registration and attendance at events
details of donations you have made (e.g. donation amount, donation date)
your donor status, research and fundraiser reports/briefings relating to you and wealth assessment information, indicators of your interest in giving, and ethical and reputational risk analyses
records of communications, meetings and marketing activities by the University shared with you
Gift Aid information linked to you
Your bank details, if you have a standing order or direct debit with us

We do not store any credit/debit card details within our database.

2.1 Research and Wealth Screening

The University of Essex was founded with the help of philanthropy, and philanthropy continues to make an enormous impact at our university. As we are a fundraising institution, we may gather information about you from publicly available sources to help us to understand more about you as an individual and your interest in supporting the University, whether in-kind through volunteering, or through a financial donation. The research is carried out internally by University employees, and gathers information including job details, media coverage, interests and previous giving, and contact information available in the public domain, or via subscription services like LexisNexis or LinkedIn that aggregate publicly available information.

On very rare occasions, and in circumstances where carrying out this research would be difficult in-house (for example where there are language issues or limited access to in-country media), we may carry out wealth screening through trusted third-party partners who conduct this work on our behalf. Those partners use biographical information supplied by us to find additional publicly available information on matters such as occupation, interests and previous giving, and use them to provide an estimated potential level of giving. This is only done once the partner has signed a contract that requires them to work in accordance with the strict instructions of the University and to meet data protection standards.

By doing this research, we can focus conversations we have with you about fundraising and volunteering in the most effective way and ensure that we provide you with an experience as a member of our alumni, donor or potential donor which is appropriate for you. You have rights over the personal data that we collect (see below).

We also use publicly available sources to carry out due diligence on donors in line with the University’s Gift Acceptance Policy and to meet money laundering regulations.

3. Why we use your data – and our legal basis for doing so

The mission of the Advancement Office at the University of Essex is to keep in touch with University alumni, friends and supporters, providing benefits and services to them and engaging in relationships with potential and current supporters. We use the personal data collected for alumni and supporter relations.

Occasionally, we conduct alumni telephone campaigns to promote alumni services, careers support or fundraising. We inform all those we intend to phone, by post or email, of our intention to call at least four days in advance and offer the opportunity to opt-out of receiving a call. We will never call you if your telephone number has been registered with the Telephone Preference Service or the Fundraising Preference Service and you have not consented to receive such a call. We do not use automated calling systems.

When we collect or otherwise process your personal data, we need both a purpose (i.e. a reason) and a legal basis. Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation there are several legal bases. We generally rely on the following legal bases when processing your personal data:

3.1 Table 1 – Other legal basis for processing your data

Purpose	Legal basis
For processing orders that you have submitted and payments	Necessary to enter into or perform a contract we have with you.
To support, deliver and administer our services, events and activities and to update or inform you about them	Legitimate interests. We need to process your personal data for our legitimate interest of allowing us to manage and carry out our operations as an education provider.
Administration of Alumni relations	Legitimate interests. We need to process your personal data for our legitimate interest of allowing us to manage and carry out our operations as an education provider.
Record keeping in relation to Alumni	Legitimate interests. We need to process your personal data for our legitimate interest of allowing us to manage and carry out our operations as an education provider.
To monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our programmes, events, and activities, through data tracking, research, statistical analysis, and surveys	Legitimate interests. We need to process your personal data for our legitimate interest of allowing us to manage and carry out our operations as an education provider.
For application and registration purposes, and in the collection, processing and evaluation of feedback, in relation to participation in an event, programme or activity	Consent
Communicating with you to inform you of news and developments at the University which we believe will be of interest to you	Consent
Offering alumni services and membership benefits such as JSTOR access, careers support, discounts on further study, networking and reunion opportunities, and exclusive experiences	Consent
Requesting volunteers for speaking engagements, student mentoring, focus groups, recruitment fairs, and for case studies for publications and promotional literature or marketing materials and University prospectuses	Consent
Inviting you to events and processing event registrations and ticket purchases where applicable	Consent
To seek your views or comments on our services	Consent
To take photographs, audio and video footage at our events, programmes, and activities for use in digital and printed materials, communications, publications and social media sites to promote the benefits of our services	Consent
Where we are required by law to process data or to meet a legal obligation, e.g. the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) to conduct the Graduate Outcomes survey	Necessary to comply with our legal obligations

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

where we need to protect your vital interests (or someone else's vital interests)
where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes

3.2 Control of your data and communication preferences

You have a choice about whether you want to receive information about the University, our progress or fundraising activities, and by which methods of communication. You can also request that we remove your contact details from our database or change the way we process your individual details.

If you want to update your contact preferences, or personal data, please contact advancement@essex.ac.uk, or call +44 (0)1206 873372 (9am-5pm, Monday-Friday). You can also contact the Data Protection Officer by emailing dataprotectionofficer@essex.ac.uk.

All our email communications contain links to opt-out of future communications, should you change your mind – but you may also use the contact details above to let us know if you wish to change how, or if, you hear from us, if you prefer. You may also update your preferences at any time via your profile on the alumni website (alumni.essex.ac.uk).

4. Where the data we hold comes from

For our alumni, we collect some of this information directly from the University’s student record system at the point of completion of studies. Other information recorded will have been obtained directly from you (for example through a registration form for an event, alumni update form, donation form) or we may gather information about you from publicly available sources.

We may record special category data which is sensitive data that you provide directly to us for a specific purpose e.g., about a disability you disclose to us to ensure we have appropriate facilities in place at our events. We might also record special category data about publicly available criminal records if we believe this information could affect the reputation and present an ethical risk to the University of Essex.

5. Whom we share your data with

We may share your data with external agents contracted by us directly for purposes benefiting the University or its alumni and friends. This may include organisations such as mailing houses and fundraising agencies.

We only share information with these partners once they have signed a data processing agreement that requires them to meet UK data protection legislation standards, treat your information as securely as we do, only use the information for the purposes for which it was supplied, and that allows us to check these conditions are being carried out. We will never sell your details or share them with anyone else for non-University of Essex purposes.

We are committed to ensuring that your personal information is held securely. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial processes to safeguard and secure the information we collect. Our website is maintained on a secure server. All our suppliers meet the standards required under data protection legislation. Staff training is undertaken regularly, and checks are made by IT staff to ensure that data quality is maintained.

The University may facilitate communication between two individuals on request, but in doing so we will never release personal contact details without prior consent.

We are also required to share alumni details with the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) to conduct the Graduate Outcomes survey.

6. Where we keep your data and how long we keep it for

We have retention schedules that set out how long we keep information of all types. Our retention schedules are available here: Retention schedules.

7. Changes to this Privacy Notice

This privacy notice was published on 6 December 2024 We may change this privacy notice from time to time.

If you have any queries or comments about it, please contact the Advancement Office at advancement@essex.ac.uk or call 01206873372.

Last revised November 2024.