The information collected

Log files

The University's website does not automatically capture or store personal data from visitors to the site, other than to log your IP address and session information. Session information includes the time and duration of your visit to the site, the files requested, and the browser used. This information will only be accessed by authorised persons of the University of Glasgow or its agents. The information will be retained by the University and will only be used for the purpose of (a) managing the site system, (b)  the identification of broken links, and (c) for statistical and audit purposes.

Web forms

You may occasionally be asked to provide personal information to gain access to specific services. The processing and retention of this information will be explained at the point of collection.

This privacy policy does not cover the links within this site to other non-University sites nor the content of external internet sites.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files placed on your device by the web server via your browser, and may be used to collect information to help identify you and prepare customised pages for you. Cookies may remain on your computer either for the duration of the session or indefinitely. You can configure most standard web browsers to refuse cookies.

Occasionally, we give users the opportunity to save settings for viewing pages. This involves the setting of a cookie. We do not track such cookies. 

Information on cookies can be obtained from www.allaboutcookies.org.

Adjust your preferences

Google Analytics

The University and our authorised agents make use of Google Analytics to produce anonymised statistics on website usage: to help us to improve our site and the experience of our users. Google Analytics uses cookies in this process. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. All data collected is anonymised. 

• How Google uses cookies

Clarity

Microsoft Clarity helps us improve the navigation and features on our website, to enhance the user experience.

• Clarity cookies

Development and Alumni Office Privacy Notice

This privacy notice explains how the University of Glasgow’s Development & Alumni office (D&A) collects, manages, uses and protects your data. It outlines the types of data we hold and how we use that data to provide services to our alumni and supporters, and manage their interaction with the University.

D&A is part of the University of Glasgow, and the University is the data controller. You can find out more about the University’s data protection policies at gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/dpfoioffice

Our legal basis for processing your data

D&A process and store personal information relating to alumni, students and staff, as well as current and potential supporters and friends of the University including those who attend University events. Alumni include graduates, former students receiving non-graduating qualifications and former exchange students.

All graduates of the University of Glasgow are members of the General Council, the graduate and academic body of the University. As part of our public task the University has a statutory obligation to retain a list of General Council members, to conduct General Council elections and to inform members about General Council activities. You can find out more about the General Council at gla.ac.uk/explore/generalcouncil.

For purposes other than General Council membership, D&A processes the information outlined in this notice in pursuit of our legitimate interests in: 

• communicating with alumni, students, staff, events attendees, and current and potential supporters
• providing benefits and services to alumni, students, staff, friends and supporters
• furthering the University’s educational charitable mission (including fundraising and securing the support of volunteers)
• enabling the University to achieve its strategic and operational goals.

We may contact you by post, email, phone, text and/or social media. Where appropriate, D&A will sometimes process your data on an alternative legal basis – for example, where you have given your consent for us to do so.

Where your data comes from

Most of the data held by D&A is obtained directly from our alumni, donors and friends. Core alumni information is carried over from their student record. We may receive data from the colleges, schools or units within the University. Data is also collected directly from alumni such as when they update their details online, return an alumni questionnaire or donation form, meet with one of our team or attend an event.

Some information may also come from reliable, public sources. For example, the Electoral Register, the National Change of Address Register, or publicly viewable information on LinkedIn.

The data we hold

We hold the following types of information about our alumni, supporters and friends.

• Your name, title, gender, and date of birth if we have it.
• Your preferred postal address and any known previous address, as well as email addresses and telephone numbers.
• If you are an alumnus/a, your University qualification(s) or those gained from predecessor institutions. For some alumni, we may hold course information and details of your membership of clubs, societies and alumni groups as well as any scholarships or awards held as a student.
• A log of our interactions with you, including agreed notes from any meetings with you, communications we have sent or if we have received communication from you, if we asked for your support, or invited you to an event and any event attendance.
• Communication preferences, such as whether you receive Avenue by post or email, or if you have told us you do not want any contact from us.

We may also hold some of the following, based on the information you provide to us or, in some cases, from trustworthy public sources.

• Donation information, including gift aid status (as required by HMRC).
• Event-related information such as dietary or access requirements or car registration.
• Information about your volunteering at the University, including online or in-person participation and event attendance, communications and your stated availability (in terms of dates, locations and interest in specific types of volunteering)
• Business details, such as job title, employer/ company name and contact information.
• Your career highlights or other achievements, including media articles.
• Links to social media accounts such as Linkedin.
• The name of your partner/spouse and other family relationships, or connections you may have with other alumni and supporters of the University.
• Information about your areas of interest, including your volunteering or philanthropic giving to other organisations.
• Information about your ability to support the University, such as your income if you have told us, as well as information on publicly quoted remuneration.

How we use your data

We will use your details to manage your interaction with the University and to contact you by post, email, phone, text and/or social media, complying with any preferences you have expressed: see Your rights and preferences below. We contact you to

• keep you informed of University news, and the achievements and advances being made by the University, its students and staff, and our alumni
• tell you about the benefits of being an alumnus/a of the University, including discounts and services
• invite you to events hosted by the University, partner organisations or your fellow alumni (for example reunions)
• offer opportunities for you to engage with the University as an ambassador, volunteer, friend and supporter. This may include asking you for your financial support through making a gift to one of the projects which help to deliver the University’s mission of creating and sharing knowledge, or asking you to give your time to help students.

To use University resources efficiently and effectively we may use the data we hold to determine the support opportunities and communications most relevant to you. As part of that, we may consider your ability to give support (including financial ability) and may record this on our database. To support this activity, we may use automated or manual processes such as wealth screening to analyse and segment our data. On occasion, we may use trusted third parties to carry out this analysis. D&A and these third parties may augment any analysis conducted using information from trustworthy public sources such as Companies House, news sources such as Nexis and specialist subscription services for both individual and company information, such as FAME. LinkedIn profiles may be used to gain up-to-date information about you and to carry out research to assess your capacity to support the University financially or by volunteering your time. We may use trusted third-party partners, such as Live Alumni, to carry out this type of data collection to automate some of this work. This information is in the public domain (i.e. only from profiles with privacy settings that make the profile publicly viewable) and includes details related to corporate business position, industry and location. We may append this data to your existing alumni record on our database. 

You will always have the opportunity to opt out of any of this processing: see Your rights and preferences below.

We may also use publicly available sources to carry out due diligence on financial supporters in line with our Gift Acceptance Policy and to meet money laundering and other regulations.

If you provide contact information, and unless you specify otherwise, we will assume this includes consent for us to use that data for the purposes listed above. For example, if you provide us with a telephone number registered with the Telephone Preference Service, we will assume you are happy for us to use this number for the purposes stated above. If we lose touch with you, we may use publicly available contact details to re-establish our connection and seek your permission to update your contact details. You can manage your communications preferences at any time.

The University has a legal obligation to supply information about our graduates for certain statutory surveys. For example, we provide contact information to the Higher Education Statistics Authority for the purposes of the Graduate Outcomes survey. This is regulated by the UK Statistics Authority.

The University participates in national surveys for some of its programmes to rank the quality of its teaching, learning and research, for example the Financial Times Rankings for the Adam Smith Business School.  This is necessary for the University’s legitimate interests in promoting the reputation of the University’s research and programmes. In such instances your personal information (name and email address) may be shared with the survey body in order to contact you for your opinion, or we may forward you a survey link directly. Your data will be shared with the survey body for this purpose only and wherever possible we will email you before we share your details to provide you with an opportunity to manage your preferences and with a direct link to the organisation’s privacy information.  These rankings are important as they inform university league tables and rankings which help to illustrate and promote the value of our qualifications.

Protecting your data

The personal information we obtain is processed in accordance with all relevant data protection legislation. When this legislation is amended or replaced, we review and update our data processing practices accordingly.

Your data is always securely processed and transmitted, protecting against unauthorised or unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction or damage. Your data will not be disclosed to any external organisations except for those acting as agents for the University under defined written agreements. Data is never “sold” to third parties. Limited data may be shared with affiliates of the University such as senior volunteers serving on our boards. This information is shared only for University purposes and is not retained by the affiliate for longer than necessary.

Some of your data may be anonymised and shared with a third party to help with the preparation and management of our fundraising. None of your data is retained by the third party once the process is complete or used by them for any other purpose.

If you engage with the University through a third party (for example, supporting the University via JustGiving or through a gift to a partner such as American Alumni of Glasgow University in the USA) then we may obtain information about you from that third party. Data obtained in this way is bound by the terms of this privacy notice.

While we are happy to facilitate communication between individual alumni, we will never pass on your details without prior permission.

From time to time it may be necessary to share some of your information to trusted third parties outside the EEA. For example, event venues may require details of attendees for safety and security purposes. We will seek your consent to use data for these purposes and ensure these third parties provide an adequate level of protection in accordance with UK data protection law.

How we process your donation

If you make a donation, this will usually be processed by the University of Glasgow Trust (‘the Trust’), but in some cases your donation will be paid directly to the University of Glasgow. Your donation form or page will inform you which of these is relevant to your donation. 

When your donation is paid to the Trust 

The Trust will be the data controller and your data will be controlled and processed according to the Trust’s privacy notice. 

When your donation is paid to the University

The University will be the controller of your data and your data will be controlled and processed by the University under the terms of this privacy notice. 

When you make a donation directly to the University, the University will process the following data: 

• Biographical data, including name and title 
• Contact details, including:
  • Address
  • Email
    
  • Telephone number

• Payment details, including:
  • The method by which you paid
  • Bank details (if donating via cheque or standing order)
  • Encrypted credit card details (only if your card donation is set up to recur)

• Donation information, including:
  • Gift Aid Status
  • Inscription (which may include name)
  • The cause to which you donated

• For the following purposes:
  •  To administer your donation
  • To contact you with queries to finalise gifts
  • To create a donor record (if you do not have an existing record i.e. alumni will usually will have an existing alumnus record)
  • To process your Gift Aid claim on behalf of the University (if applicable)
  • To satisfy audit requirements
  • For the purposes outlined in the How we use your data section of this privacy notice.
    

Your rights and preferences

D&A considers its relationship with alumni and supporters to be lifelong. We will always try to ensure that the data we hold for you is up to date, reasonable and not excessive. You always have the right to:

• be informed as to how we use your data (via this privacy notice)
• access or request a copy of the data we hold about you (see below)
• update your information and/or manage your communications preferences at any time
• opt out of specific types of processing
• ask us to remove your data from our records (see below)
• withdraw consent, where it is used as a legal basis for processing.

At any time, you can

• update your details at gla.ac.uk/alumni/reconnect/updateform
• specify your communication preferences at gla.ac.uk/alumni/communicationpreferences
• contact us at alumni@glasgow.ac.uk to tell us about your preferences
• Exercise your rights under the GDPR, such as making a request to opt out from data processing, at Data subject rights

If you are an alumnus/a and exercise your right to be removed from our database, we will maintain some core data (name, qualification information, General Council number, date of birth) for archive purposes and to ensure we do not contact you inadvertently in future. If you are a donor, we may also need to retain some financial records for the period of time required for statutory purposes (for example Gift Aid, anti-fraud and accounting matters).

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this privacy notice please contact us at

Development & Alumni

External Relations

Berkeley Square, Pavilion 3

University of Glasgow

Glasgow

G12 8QQ

T: +44 (0)141 330 4569

E: alumni@glasgow.ac.uk

For wider enquiries about how the University manages information please contact

Data Protection & Freedom of Information Office

Tay House

University of Glasgow

Glasgow

G12 8QQ

Future changes

From time to time we may use your data for new purposes not currently described in this privacy notice. If our data practices change at some time in the future we will always post the policy changes on this page.

Note regarding addresses in China

If the address we hold for you is in China we will use your data in accordance with Chinese laws and regulations on fundraising.

 

Updated November 2023

Surveillance and monitoring

Staff, students and visitors should be aware that the University operates CCTV and similar equipment to monitor safety and security and to aid the prevention and detection of crime. In addition, the University may monitor postal, telecommunications, data communications, and other communications as permitted by the relevant legislation and University Regulations. Please see:

• Monitoring & Surveillance (CCTV/WebCam).