The Development and Alumni Relations Team Privacy Policy

If you are a student or graduate, most of the data we hold would have been transferred from your student record in accordance with the University’s Programme Terms and Conditions. The vast majority of the information we hold will have been obtained directly from you; and if you interact with other departments, faculties, schools or University of Liverpool staff we may receive data from these areas to keep your details up to date.  The data we hold includes: 

• Education Details – for example what you studied and when you graduated
• Personal Identifiers and Biographical Information – for example your student and alumni numbers and your date of birth
• Contact Details – for example your address, social media handles, email address and telephone number (we update these whenever you tell us they have changed).
• Engagement details – for example details of clubs and societies you were/are a member of, your attendance at events, volunteering activity, details of donations you have made to the University, your personal contact with us and your relationships with other University of Liverpool alumni, staff or supporters and details of the communications we have sent and received.
• Information on awards, prizes and scholarships received by a student or alum may be recorded to fulfil institutional reporting obligations and/or to tailor communications accordingly
• Family Details – for example your marital status and details of your spouse and other family members
• Personal Details – for example disability and dietary preferences for event management purposes and only when you have supplied this data.
• Career information, we work closely with our Career department colleagues to keep records up to date.
• From a third party whom you have interacted with on behalf of the University, for example: JustGiving, Eventbrite and Gecko. The receipt of data is subject to the third party's own Privacy Policy. DART will treat this data as set out in this Privacy Policy
• Donation history, this can include lifetime giving and legacies.
• Your contact preferences – to help us engage you in the ways most relevant to you.

We may also augment data you provide with additional publicly available data, for example, we may record:

• Your career details and other achievements
• Your interests
• Your philanthropy, including donations and other support made to other organisations.
• Our assessment of your ability and willingness to make donations including information about your wealth and business. 

Communications:

We use your information to keep you informed about the University and to provide opportunities for you to continue to be involved in the life and activities of the University. This includes providing you with services you have requested, for administrative purposes, processing and recognising your donations, and furthering our charitable and educational aims, including fundraising, volunteering, event invitations, and newsletters.

If you provide us with contact details for a particular method of communication, we may update your record and communicate with you using that method unless you tell us otherwise.

We may, on occasion, contact you directly via social media messaging, e.g. LinkedIn. If you wish to opt out of receiving direct messages via social media from the University, you can contact alumni@liverpool.ac.uk to update your communication preferences or simply respond to any messages you receive on LinkedIn.

If you request to be added to our WhatsApp/digital community groups, we will use the mobile number you provide for this purpose. In some cases, your contact details may be shared with local Alumni Ambassador(s) solely for the purpose of adding you to alumni digital communities.

Once added to a group, your name, phone number, and any content you voluntarily share may be visible to other group members, depending on the platform’s settings.

Fundraising and engagement:

Fundraising is a key part of DART’s work, and we are committed to working in a transparent, ethical, responsible and honest way. To reflect this commitment, we are registered with the Fundraising Regulator and adhere to the Regulator’s Code of Practice.

Our fundraising and engagement activities are managed in-house and through third-party suppliers, and may include direct mail (both postal and electronic), direct debit processing (managed by Access Group), email, social media, events, telephone and face-to-face visits. We may undertake a number of data processing activities in this context to help us understand you better. This will help us::

• Ensure our communications are relevant to you and your interests.
• Assess your potential interest in - and ability to - make donations to the University.
• Identify alumni volunteering opportunities you may be interested in.
• Avoid sending you inappropriate or unwelcome communications.

Research:

To ensure we do not make inappropriate fundraising requests or send you irrelevant communications, we may undertake research to better understand your capacity and likelihood of making gifts to the University and/or how you may wish to be involved with us. Additional research (sometimes referred to as wealth screening) could be conducted in-house or through approved and trusted third-party providers and always within a contract. When using third parties; data processing is limited to specified processing and data is disposed of once completed.

Research helps us identify people and organisations who may be able to support the institution through a significant gift. It also helps identify other individuals or organisations that the University would like to engage with for purposes other than philanthropy, such as Council member nominations, honorary graduate nominations, preparation for meetings with senior individuals by University leadership, and events, etc.

The information we gather allows us to allocate our staff resources efficiently. Donor research is not excessive; it is conducted only if relevant to your current or potential relationship with the University at the time of the research and is guided by our findings as the research unfolds. The information we use in our research comes from publicly available sources and subscription tools. This can include: 

• LinkedIn
• ‘X’ (formerly Twitter)
• iWave
• Alma Connect
• GlobalData
• BoardEx
• Xapien for due diligence purposes.
• Reliable News and Press reports
• Companies House and other business-related resources including company website
• The Charity Commission and other websites relating to charitable trusts and foundations
• Sunday Times Rich List and other rich lists
• The Kings’s Honours Lists
• AI tools are sometimes used to review and aggregate information in the public domain. 

This research can include reviewing or updating your contact details; biographic details; areas of interest for philanthropy; financial capacity for philanthropy (based on an assessment of visible assets); and inclination ratings for giving. Research briefings and profiles may include details on:

• Geographic/Demographics
• Biographic both personal and career
• Connections
• Asset/capacity related data.

We use publicly available information to identify alumni who might be interested in volunteering for the University of Liverpool, for example by speaking or mentoring students. We research career histories and positions on platforms such as LinkedIn and may record LinkedIn handles and career information in our database.

To support this activity, we share a limited set of alumni information (name, course of study, graduation year, previous employment with our third-party service provider, Alma Connect. Alma Connect uses this data to automate matching with publicly available LinkedIn profiles and provide this information back to us. This data is also accessed by the University of Liverpool Careers Team to support students’ post-graduation with Careers support and to facilitate the Graduate Outcomes Survey.

If you would prefer us not to use your data in this way, please email alumni@liverpool.ac.uk.    

Due diligence:

We may undertake due diligence for prospective donors, volunteers, case studies and award recipients in line with the University’s Donation Acceptance Policy and volunteer guidelines. The purpose of the due diligence is to identify any potential ethical and reputational risks associated with volunteering and philanthropic support from an individual, trust, foundation or corporation and to ensure legal compliance with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations.

Recognising your support:

We are very grateful for the support of our donors, and we like to recognise this support, to both show our gratitude and to encourage others to donate. If you donate to the University and do not wish your donation to be publicly recognised, you can choose to give anonymously. This means we will record your donation in our systems but will not publicly acknowledge or publish your name on donor lists or in any other materials, whether online or in print. We sometimes publish fundraising and volunteering case studies online, on social media and in our magazines. We will always ask for permission from those involved before publication.

Any other purpose communicated to you at the point your data was collected. 

Personal data of alumni, donors and other stakeholders is stored on UoL-managed devices and systems, as well as in a cloud-based database supplied by Blackbaud, Inc., called Raiser’s Edge (RE), under a service contract. RE is hosted by Blackbaud on servers located in the EEA. Access to personal data is restricted to staff in DART and other members of the University staff who have a requirement to maintain a relationship with you. Access is controlled through password protection and user security profiles. Blackbaud, Inc. does not permit its staff access to the personal data stored in RE.

Where personal data is transferred outside the UK/EEA, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, such as Standard Contractual Clauses.

Security of data

Everyone working at the University has a legal duty to keep information about you confidential. Strict codes of conduct are in place to keep your information safe. Staff abide by all current data protection legislation and the University Data Protection Policy.

Accurate data

Ensuring our data is accurate also helps significantly reduce waste, increase efficiency, ensure regulatory compliance, and contribute to achieving the University’s sustainability targets.

To allow us to continually communicate with our alumni, supporters, and future supporters, we will periodically undertake cleansing of our data, or ‘data hygiene’ – this is conducted with trusted third-party data hygiene providers who use National Change of Address Files. These activities will include screening (a limited volume of) alumni and supporter data against data registers to identify and update deceased and/or gone-away records (constituents who have changed address where no forwarding address can be identified), and, where possible, update address information for alumni and supporters who have changed address and where a forwarding address can be identified.

Should we undertake a telephone engagement campaign we may screen telephone data against the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and carry out Active Line Testing. 

When conducting updates and hygiene activities, we only use vetted suppliers with the appropriate contracts in place. If you would prefer us not to use your data in this way, please email alumni@liverpool.ac.uk.

How long do we store data?

Our alumni are lifelong members of the University community, and as such, we will retain their personal data until the individual asks us to remove it from our records.  

If you are not a member of the alumni community but we have identified that we would like to engage with you, we will hold your data to make an initial contact with you. If you have not provided us with your data, we will provide this Privacy Policy at the earliest appropriate point, for example, in our first written communication to you. We believe that donors and volunteers demonstrate their connection to the institution, and as such we maintain their data to support a future relationship.

All alumni, supporters and potential supporters can decide that they no longer wish to receive communication from the University at any time – please see the ‘Your rights and Preferences’ section in this Privacy Policy.

The University has a legal obligation to supply some of the information we hold about you, as a graduate, to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) – the official agency for the collection, analysis and dissemination of quantitative information about higher education in the United Kingdom. HESA will treat your personal information in line with its Student Data Collection Notice.  

The University also participates in national surveys for some of its programmes that assess the quality of its teaching, learning and research. For example, the Financial Times Rankings for the University of Liverpool Management School ranked courses. In such instances, your personal information may be shared with the survey body so it can contact you for its research purposes; where this is the case, we will always ensure that there are no further uses of your personal information without your consent. These rankings are important because they feed into university league tables and rankings, which in turn are a measure of quality and further enhance the value of your degree.

The University may use third-party data processors to support activities described in this Privacy Policy. Where this is the case, the third party will always be contractually bound to the University and required to hold personal information confidentially and securely, and not to use it in any way other than as instructed by the University. Personal information will be kept by the third party only for as long as it is required to fulfil its obligation to the University, and will then be destroyed.   

From time to time, we may work in partnership with other charitable organisations that are contractually bound to the University on joint fundraising initiatives. In limited circumstances, we may share your name and information about the nature of your relationship with the University (e.g. the fact that you are an existing donor to the University) with those organisations. We do this solely to ensure that you are contacted for these joint initiatives only by the most appropriate partner. In such cases, all parties are bound by a contractual agreement governing the types and uses of the shared data, and will not be permitted to retain the data or use it for any other purpose (for example, fundraising beyond the joint project).

We may share your data internally with University staff.  We only share data for purposes that are compatible with the original purpose of its collection.

The University has official alumni networks worldwide. Our networks are co-ordinated by alumni volunteers who develop local networks and organise events to help alumni in their community to maintain a lifelong connection with the University. Specific alumni data may be shared with volunteers, for example, to manage and process event registrations.  

If you have donated, we may share data to process your donation with your bank, under your instruction and/or with HMRC to collect Gift Aid on your behalf where we have a valid Gift Aid declaration from you.

DART uses legitimate interest, legal obligation and contract as the lawful basis for processing data relating to our alumni and supporters. DART uses legitimate interest as the primary lawful basis for processing data relating to our alumni and supporters.  We also use legitimate interest as the primary lawful basis for processing data when we have good reason to believe that potential supporters may be interested in becoming involved with the University.  We carry out a Legitimate Interest Assessment (LIA) to ensure our interests are balanced against your rights and freedoms. You have the right to object to this processing at any time.

Our reasons for using legitimate interest as the primary lawful basis are:

• It is necessary to ensure that alumni and supporters are kept informed of opportunities to engage with and support the University in fulfilling our educational and charitable aims. The processing of personal information is necessary to achieve these aims.
• Our alumni and supporters have a connection with the University. They reasonably expect to hear from us and are unlikely to object to processing. This is evident in our very low rate of opt-out requests.
• Our proposed activities have a limited impact on the privacy of alumni and of current and potential supporters. We have carefully balanced our legitimate interests against the rights and freedoms of these individuals, and we are confident that our interests do not override theirs.
• We may use an alternative lawful basis where it is appropriate:
  • On the basis of public interest, the University holds personal data in order to maintain appropriate University records.
  • We may process data on the basis of consent, where consent has been given.

You are in control of your data and have the right to opt out of all or specific communication types at any time. To change your preferences, please contact us at alumni@liverpool.ac.uk.

When contacting us, please provide your name, year of graduation, subject of study, and student or alumni identification number, if possible. Please also specify whether you wish to unsubscribe from all communications or from specific communication types or channels.

If you ask us to delete your data, we will retain a skeleton record containing your name, subject of study, year of graduation, student number and date of birth. We do this to ensure compliance with statutory reporting requirements and to prevent us from inadvertently contacting you in future. We may also need to retain certain financial records for statutory purposes (for example, Gift Aid).

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation, you may have the following rights with regards to your personal data: 

• The Right to subject access – you have the right to see a copy of the personal data the University holds about you and to find out how it is used.
• The Right to rectification – you have the right to ask the University to correct or remove any inaccurate data it holds about you.
• The Right to erasure (right to be forgotten) – you have the right to ask the University to remove data it holds about you.
• The Right to restriction – you have the right to ask for your information to be restricted (locked down) on University systems.
• The Right to data portability – you have the right to ask for your data to be transferred back to you or to a new provider at your request.
• The Right to object – you have the right to ask the University to stop using your personal data, stop sending you marketing information, or to complain about how your data is used.
• The Right to prevent automated decision-making – you have the right to ask the University to stop using your data to make automated decisions about you or to stop profiling your behaviour (where applicable).

Please note that not all rights apply in all situations. To find out more about your rights under the UK GDPR, please visit the Information Commissioner’s website.

To request a copy of your data or ask questions about how it is used, contact the University Data Protection Officer.

• Email: legal@liverpool.ac.uk
• Post: Legal & Governance, University of Liverpool, Foundation Building, 765 Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L69 7ZX

Who can I complain to if I am unhappy about how my data is used?

You can complain directly to the Data Protection Team by writing to the University Data Protection Officer. 

• By email: legal@liverpool.ac.uk
• Post: Legal & Governance, University of Liverpool, Foundation Building, 765 Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L69 7ZX

Or, you can contact the Development & Alumni Relations Team by emailing alumni@liverpool.ac.uk

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office using the following details: 

• The Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
• Telephone: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45
• Website: www.ico.org.uk