Data protection and privacy

Terms

Alumni - Anyone who graduated from the university, or attended the university for 100 days or more, Honorary Awardees, former employees

Donors - Anyone who has made a donation to the university

Staff and senior volunteers - Including Council and Advisory Board members and Project Ambassadors

Friend of Royal Holloway – Parents, event attendees, local dignitaries and community contacts

The External Relationships team keeps in touch with our alumni, friends and supporters, providing benefits and services to them and engaging in relationships with potential and existing donors.

What information do we gather and how do we use your information?

The personal information we collect includes name, date of birth, contact details (including email address and mobile number), employment, areas of interest, details about various links with the university and other information where available publically. If you make a donation to the university, we will also record your donation details on your record. If you provide us with information via other means, such as event registration forms, this will also be added to your record.

We will use your personal information:

for administration purposes;
to provide you with services, such as careers support up to two years after graduation, access to the college library, reunions, wedding in the chapel, etc.;
to update you on latest news from the university and forthcoming events; and
to further our charitable aims, including for fundraising activities, telephone and direct marketing purposes.

We may create a summary of your relationship with the university and your interests and preferences so that we can contact you in the most appropriate way and with the most relevant information and we can avoid contacting you about opportunities which are not relevant to your interests. By creating this profile, we are able to work more effectively with our alumni, donors and friends to support the work of the College.

We may need to share your information with other departments, our service providers and agents for the purposes described above to support the objective of the university. Further details about data sharing are given below.

How do we collect information?

Alumni- All Royal Holloway student’s names, degree, contact details and other relevant information are copied from the Registry database (currently Banner) & used to create a record for you on the Alumni and Development database.

Donors- We obtain personal information from the individuals when they make a donation through our donation forms.

Staff and Senior volunteers – We obtain personal information from the individuals themselves or from HR and College Secretariat.

Friend of Royal Holloway - We obtain personal information from you when you enquire about our activities, register for an event or otherwise provide us with personal information.

We may also receive information about you from other sources for example from a friend who wants us to tell you about the activities we carry out, from searching on the internet or occasionally from our service providers.

How do we protect your information?

Your personal information is stored in a secure database. We take appropriate measures to ensure that the personal information disclosed to us is kept secure, accurate and up to date and kept only for so long as is necessary for the purposes for which it is used and is thereafter securely destroyed or permanently deleted.

Royal Holloway does not process credit card details for online donations; these are only handled by our PCI accredited Merchant Service provider (Blackbaud Merchant Service). We do not store your credit or debit card details at all, following the completion of your transaction. All card details and validation codes are securely destroyed once the payment or donation has been processed.

All information we handle is done so in accordance with data protection legislation.

Changes to information

If your personal details change, please help us to keep your information up to date by notifying us.

Right of Access / Freedom of Information requests

You have the right to request a copy of all the information we hold about you. If you wish to exercise this right, please email FOI@royalholloway.ac.uk or send your request to Freedom of Information, Secretariat, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX.

The request should include a name, an address for correspondence and the address the information should be sent to (if different) as well as a description of the information requested.

Your preferences

We may communicate with you by phone, email or post in order to achieve our work in the most cost-effective way. You have a choice about whether you want to receive news and information about the university, and by which method. We will not contact you if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted.

Change your preferences at any time or email development@royalholloway.ac.uk or alumni@royalholloway.ac.uk or by writing to us at External Relationships, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX.

Your Consent

By providing us with your personal data, you give approval to the collection and use of this information in accordance with the purposes described above and this privacy statement.

You also consent to our transferring your information to countries or jurisdictions which do not provide the same level of data protection as the UK, if necessary for the purposes set out above. If we do make such a transfer, we will, if appropriate, put a contract in place to ensure your information is protected.

If you request that your details are removed from our database, we will remove all personal data, with the following exceptions:

your name and any school(s) attended, subject(s) studied and year(s) of study/graduation;
a note of the request to remove your data will be retained, to prevent you from being inadvertently contacted in the future;
information needed to comply with statutory requirements (such as in relation to Gift Aid) may be retained, but only for so long as those statutory requirements specify; and/or
an anonymous reference may be attributed to you in documentation compiled from the record of your event attendances and/or the record of donations that you have given, for the purposes of internal or external recording or accounting for any event attended, and for any donation required to be retained for audit, reporting or accounting purposes.

Will we pass on information to third parties?

We never sell any of your personal information.

We may pass your information to a select group of partners to keep addresses up-to-date or for mailing purpose. We always make sure that appropriate controls are in place and these partners will never use your data for any other purpose and information will be destroyed or permanently deleted once the project has been completed.

We may also pass your information to trusted third parties who will use your data, along with that which is publically available, to provide us with wealth analysis which helps us to understand who may be able to support us with particular projects.

We may attribute a particular score to your record which will have been calculated using personal data, as well as how engaged with us you have previously been, and indicators of future engagement.

We may publish your current name in our alumni and donor magazine or the website and the fact that you are a donor to Royal Holloway only if you consent to this. You are given the option to remain anonymous on the donation form.

We may need to disclose your information if required by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies) or if we have your permission to do so.