Last Updated & Published 1st February 2025
1. Connecting with Strathclyde
The University of Strathclyde is a leading international technological University and we are proud to have a global network of alumni and supporters.
We want to stay in touch and deepen links with the Strathclyde family at home and around the world. The University aims to keep in touch with all alumni, provide services to them, seek their support and maintain relationships with non-alumni friends, students, staff, donors and potential donors.
Our alumni include all former students who attended the University and its founding and predecessor institutions, including graduates, former students who received non-graduating qualifications or no award and former exchange students.
The University of Strathclyde is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Notice is to inform you how your personal information is processed and used by the University.
The University is the 'data controller' as defined by the Data Protection Act 2018 (the “Act”). Personal information will only be collected and/or processed by the University in accordance with the Act.
As well as reading this notice, it is important that you also read Alumni & Development's Privacy Policy and Privacy Notice for Events.
2. Why we collect your information
Your information is used by the University’s Alumni & Development Office to keep in touch with you, to better understand how we can help you and how you might support Strathclyde.
Collecting your information helps to keep you informed of alumni activities and university developments, to provide services to you and to identify fundraising programmes which may be of interest to you to support, through donations and other forms of financial and non-financial support. Ultimately, collecting and using your information allows us to better support our alumni and advance the aims of the University.
We will contact you about news and developments concerning the University. Some examples include:
• details of alumni activities and programmes including events and volunteering opportunities;
• activities of academic and administrative departments;
• fundraising programmes or campaigns; including telethon campaigns and direct mail appeals;
• alumni surveys; and
• promotion of benefits and services.
3. The lawful bases for processing your information
The main lawful basis for processing your personal data for the purposes set out in this Privacy Notice is that it is necessary for the pursuit of the University’s legitimate interests.
We will always handle your personal data securely and minimise its use, and there is no overriding prejudice to you by using your personal information for these purposes. In addition, there is no statutory or contractual requirement for you to provide us with any personal data.
The Alumni & Development Office processes the information outlined in this Privacy Notice in pursuit of our legitimate interests in:
• communicating with students, staff, alumni, and current and potential supporters;
• providing benefits and services to students, staff, alumni and supporters;
• administration of student scholarships and prizes;
• furthering the University’s educational charitable mission (which includes fundraising and securing the support of volunteers); and
• enabling the University to achieve its strategic and operational goals.
Whilst we rely on legitimate interest as the lawful basis for processing where this is not overridden by the interests and rights or freedoms of the data subjects concerned, we also recognise that it is not the only lawful ground for processing data. As such, where appropriate, the Alumni & Development Office will sometimes process your data on an alternative lawful basis – for example, because you have given us consent to do so e.g., email communications regarding our activities, events, programmes and fundraising appeals, or where we have a public task to do so.
4. Your information
The Alumni & Development Office maintains a record of all former students of the University and, as such, we hold records for alumni, non-alumni friends, staff, students, donors and potential donors as long as necessary for the purposes described in this notice. We also record personal information that you give us during your interaction with the University e.g., registering as a student, registering for an event, making a donation, professional activities or updating your details. The data we hold includes:
• name, title, gender and date of birth;
• contact details including postal address, email address, phone number and links to social media accounts such as LinkedIn;
• information about your time at the University and other academic institutions;
• your career highlights (including salary) and other life achievements;
• your recreations and interests;
• family and spouse/partner details and your relationships to other alumni, supporters and friends;
• records of donations and Gift Aid status, where applicable (as required by HMRC, IRS and the CRA);
• bank details of regular donors;
• records of communications sent to you by the Alumni & Development Office or received from you;
• volunteering by you on behalf of the University;
• information relating to your financial ability and willingness to make donations, your philanthropy and other giving;
• media articles about you;
• information on your engagement in University meetings, events, groups or networks;
• sensitive personal data (e.g. data relating to physical disabilities) which will only be held if it has been provided by you for a specific purpose (e.g. event planning); and
• information about your use of www.strath.ac.uk/alumni, connect.strath.ac.uk and www.alumni.strath.ac.uk including your IP address, location, browser type, referral source, length of visit, number of page views and navigation around our websites may be recorded.
All former students of the University of Strathclyde, and its predecessors, automatically become members of our worldwide alumni community. The following institutions are predecessors of the University of Strathclyde:
• Anderson’s Institution (Anderson’s College);
• Royal College of Science and Technology (Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College and Royal Technical College);
• Scottish College of Commerce (Glasgow and West of Scotland Commercial College);
• Scottish Hotel School; and
• Jordanhill College.
In accordance with the Privacy Notice Students Registered and Accepted Offer, which is available on our webpages, students’ personal and educational data is transferred to the Alumni & Development Office three times a year prior to graduation ceremonies.
Personal and contact data, communications consent and preferences, event participations and donations captured in our online engagement platforms Strathclyde Connect and Strathclyde Alumni Online Community is securely transferred to the main alumni database (The Raiser's Edge) on a regular basis.
Information sources
The majority of the personal data we store and process is given to us by our alumni, non-alumni friends, staff, students and supporters, our agents, alumni groups and the University of Strathclyde USA Foundation, but we may also obtain some data from other publicly available sources. These include:
• public sources for companies such as Companies House and US Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as company websites;
• public sources for charities such as the Charity Commission and OSCR;
• public sources for individuals such as the King’s Honours Lists and National Change of Address services;
• public sources where you have provided the information e.g., professional networking sites such as LinkedIn; and
• reputable press sources.
Data analysis
The University of Strathclyde was founded with the help of philanthropy, and donors continue to make a major impact at the University. As we are a registered charity and fundraising institution, we may gather information about you to understand more about you as an individual and your ability to support the University, including financially.
We combine the information you provide to us with information available from external publicly available sources, such as those listed above. This is known as data-appending and enables us to re-connect with you in the event that you have changed your address, job, phone number or email address and not provided it to us.
Data may also have been obtained from recognised third parties such as the Post Office’s National Change of Address database via a contractually bound service provider.
We may also use information from publicly available sources, such as those detailed above, to carry out research to assess your inclination and capacity to support the University financially or by volunteering your time. This is known as prospect research and may include collecting and storing data relating to you that is in the public domain (such as career history and directorships) as well as data that has been provided by you.
We may use automated or manual analyses to link data together and to ensure communications are relevant and timely, and to provide an improved experience for our alumni, students and supporters. Understanding your background, capacity and willingness to support University projects helps us make appropriate requests at the right time and level for you.
Updating your contact details
We value our relationship with you, and we will use your personal data to ensure we contact you in the most relevant and appropriate way, to improve our services and ensure we work efficiently and effectively.
In order to keep your details up to date, we will check against publicly available sources to verify whether the contact details we have for you are correct, and where appropriate, update them. We really appreciate you letting us know when you have moved, changed job or have a new phone number or email address.
We may process your personal data, including data from the public domain, for due diligence purposes if you are being considered for an award, speaking at or attending an event, or where you wish to make a gift to the University, as noted in our Supporter Promise.
Managing your information
Information about how you can manage the ways that we contact you, including how to opt-out from some or all contact from the Alumni & Development Office, is outlined in section 8.
You have the right to:
• ask us for access to, or rectification or erasure of, your data;
• restrict processing (pending correction or deletion); and
• object to communications or direct marketing.
Where you exercise your right to erasure, we will continue to maintain a core set of personal data (name, subject(s), matriculation and graduation details, unique University identification number and date of birth) for alumni to ensure we do not contact you inadvertently in future. If you are not a member of the alumni community, your personal data – except for minimal identification details to prevent you being inadvertently added again to the Alumni & Development Office records – will be deleted should you not respond to our attempts to contact you, or should you state that you have no interest in forming a relationship with the University. We may also need to retain some financial records about you for statutory purposes (e.g. Gift Aid, IRS, CRA and anti-fraud and accounting matters).
Registered users of Strathclyde Connect and Strathclyde Alumni Online Community are able to request deletion of their accounts by contacting the Alumni & Development Office by any of the contact methods listed in section 9.
Scholarship Recipients
When applying to the University for a scholarship administered by the Alumni & Development Office, your data will be stored and processed as per the Applicants and Potential Applicants Privacy Notice.
Once you have accepted an offer to study at the University, your data will be stored and processed as per the Privacy Notice Students Registered and Accepted Offer.
The Alumni & Development Office maintains a record of recipients of the undergraduate and postgraduate scholarship programmes that we administer. The data we hold includes:
• name, title, gender and date of birth;
• your University of Strathclyde registration number;
• secondary education academic awards;
• contact details including email address and phone number;
• information about your academic progression;
• your recreations and interests;
• records of communications sent to you by the Alumni & Development Office or received from you; and
• sensitive personal data (e.g. data relating to physical disabilities) which will only be held if it has been provided by you for a specific purpose (e.g. event planning).
The personal data of students in receipt of a scholarship administered by the Alumni & Development Office will be stored and processed as per this notice.
In your first year of receiving the scholarship, permission will be sought to share your name and contact details with the donors funding your scholarship. If you choose to remain anonymous, your onboarding and end of year update reports will be anonymised before being shared with donors. Your scholarship application, reports and all other information held to enable us to administer your scholarship will be retained until all students within your cohort finish their studies.
When the University shares your data with others (our partners)
The security of your data is important. The Alumni & Development Office will never sell your data. We will also never share your data with anyone to use for their own purposes unless disclosure is permitted or required by law.
The University may engage third parties to undertake marketing or fundraising projects on our behalf. Any such companies are acting as agents of the University, and the University retains full responsibility for your personal data. Any transfers of data will be done securely and in accordance with best practice and in compliance with applicable data protection legislation.
All UK universities are obliged to give contact details for a survey of recent graduates/completers to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) in order to conduct a survey of graduate/completer destinations. This is called the Graduate Outcomes Survey. If you have opted out of receiving communications from the Alumni & Development Office, we are still required to pass your contact details to HESA for the Graduate Outcomes Survey. HESA will provide you with the option to opt out of future surveys when they contact you. You can read more about how HESA will use your data in their privacy notice for the Graduate Outcomes Survey.
Where necessary, to assist with the organisation and security of an event, we may pass attendee names and University education details, i.e., year and subject of study, to the event organiser. This may include alumni group volunteers and the University of Strathclyde USA Foundation Board. Typically, only your name and education details will be passed on. Personal contact details will only be shared where there is a need to do so, e.g., to contact you regarding a change of event location or cancellation. Contact details, including name, email address and phone number may also be shared with the University of Strathclyde USA Foundation Board for fundraising purposes. See the University of Strathclyde USA Foundation's Use of Personal Data - Information Notice for more details.
Any transfers of your data outside the United Kingdom, for example to the University of Strathclyde USA Foundation, as set out above, are covered by the UK adequacy regulations (declaring the recipient country as a 'safe' territory for personal data) or by another safeguard such as a Data Sharing Agreement, as set out in applicable data protection legislation.
5. Communicating with you
We want to communicate with you in a way that meets your needs and requests.
Communications may be sent by post, telephone or electronic means, depending on the preferences you have indicated. You have the right to choose not to receive these communications at any time (unless communications are required for administrative purposes), and clear and unambiguous opportunities to do so are included with all communications. If you wish to alter how you receive communications or you wish to stop receiving communications altogether, you can change your preferences via Strathclyde Connect and Strathclyde Alumni Community Online (for registered users), click on the relevant link at the bottom of any email, or contact the Alumni & Development Office by any of the contact methods listed in section 9.
Please note that where you have given consent for us to phone you, this overrides any registration you may have made with the Telephone Preference Service in the UK.
6. How we protect your data
Your personal data will be managed securely. Access will be restricted to only those staff or authorised agents who require it and on a ‘need to know’ basis. The University will employ any technical and organisational measures necessary to ensure the security of your data. You can find more information about our Information Security policies on our website.
We also work with carefully selected partners who carry out work on our behalf. These partners will be acting on behalf of the University, for the purposes set out in this privacy notice or for purposes approved by you e.g., alumni database supplier or mailing houses.
Partners working on behalf of the University will never use your data for non-Strathclyde purposes.
Fundraising is a key part of our work, and we are committed to working in a transparent, ethical, responsible and honest way. We are signatories to the Scottish Fundraising Adjudication Panel’s Good Fundraising Guarantee. We will also always abide by our Supporter Promise.
7. Online Strathclyde Communities
Strathclyde Connect https://connect.strath.ac.uk (the "Site") is an online service provided free of charge for University of Strathclyde alumni. Users can engage with other alumni, build networks and create, view and amend their online profiles within the Site as well as updating their communication preferences. These details are securely transferred to the alumni database (The Raiser's Edge) which is provided by Blackbaud Inc.
Strathclyde Connect is provided by Very Connect https://veryconnect.com, based in Glasgow, UK. Payments taken via this system (for event registrations or donations) are processed via Stripe https://stripe.com.
Strathclyde Alumni Online Community https://www.alumni.strath.ac.uk (the "Site") is an online service provided free of charge for University of Strathclyde alumni. Users can view and amend their contact details held by the Alumni & Development Office and update their communication preferences. These details are securely transferred to the alumni database (The Raiser's Edge) which is provided by Blackbaud Inc. Payments taken via Strathclyde Alumni Online Community (for event registrations or donations) are processed via Blackbaud Merchant Services (BBMS) https://www.blackbaud.com/products/blackbaud-merchant-services.
Blackbaud Inc. https://www.blackbaud.com, a US based company, are the software providers for the alumni and supporter database and its online portal: The Raiser’s Edge and NetCommunity (Strathclyde Alumni Online Community). Blackbaud Inc. have undertaken to comply with the principles of data protection legislation, and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. Blackbaud Inc. is a member of the Data Privacy Framework, further details of which can be found at https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov.
Strathclyde Connect and Strathclyde Alumni Online Community are fully PCI DSS compliant. Full payment card details are not shared with or stored by the University. Processing fees can be viewed at: https://stripe.com/gb/pricing and https://www.blackbaud.com/info/bbms/bbms-tier-1-processing-fees.
Direct Debits are processed in line with the Direct Debit Guarantee scheme.
Users of our Sites are subject to this Privacy Notice and the additional terms and conditions in our Privacy Policy and Privacy Notice for Events.
In order to ensure we comply with licensing restrictions, use of the library e-resources on Strathclyde Connect is monitored via Google Analytics. You can view the Library's copyright notice at https://connect.strath.ac.uk/page/copyright-notice.
StageClip https://stageclip.com is a video sharing platform that enables our alumni to watch and share a video clip of their graduation. Personal data and video footage for each graduation ceremony are securely transferred from the University to StageClip. StageClip process the data and video to segment the graduation ceremony video recording into personalised segments. Alumni who have opted-in to email communications, receive a personalised URL that allows them to view and share their video clip. The videos clips are hosted by StageClip on Microsoft Azure servers, based in Europe and the GDPR jurisdiction. StageClip’s Privacy Policy can be viewed at https://stageclip.com/privacy-policy.
We work with external providers to provide online fundraising campaigns which take place digitally (e.g. Giving Day and Telethon campaigns).
The Telethon platform (MOLE) is provided and hosted by Buffalo Fundraising Consultants Ltd. https://www.buffalofc.co.uk. Card payments taken via this system (for donations) are processed via Stripe https://stripe.com. Full payment card details are not shared with or stored by the University.
Digital tools may be used to monitor the impact of our communications and improve the effectiveness of the University’s communications, such as email tracking to record when an email is opened, and which links are clicked within a message. We may monitor website visits and use tools such as Google Analytics www.google.com/analytics to improve our website and services.
8. Your rights and changes to this notice
Depending on the lawful basis for processing, you may have the right to:
• be informed as to how we use your data (via this Privacy Notice);
• find out what personal data we process about you and obtain a copy of the data, free of charge within one month of your request. We may make a charge for additional copies of the same information;
• ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data;
• update, amend or rectify the contact information we hold about you by registering with Strathclyde Connect or Strathclyde Alumni Online Community or by any of the contact methods listed in section 9.
• change your communication preferences at any time to restrict how we process your data, or opt out of some or all communication from the Alumni & Development Office;
• ask us to remove your data from our records (though some may be retained - see section 4);
• withdraw consent to process your personal data at any time, where it is used as a lawful basis for processing;
• object to, restrict the processing of, or request erasure of your information for any of the purposes outlined above; and
• lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.
You can amend the information we hold about you, or your mailing preferences, at any time by calling +44 (0)141 548 2773 or emailing alumniweb@strath.ac.uk (full contact details in section 9).
If you have any queries, wish to restrict data processing or sharing including use for marketing, or do not want to be contacted by the Alumni & Development Office, please contact us.
Please see the University’s Data Protection webpages or contact dataprotection@strath.ac.uk for further information on the University’s policies in relation to Data Protection.
Our Data Protection Officer is responsible for monitoring compliance with data protection legislation and can be contacted at dataprotection@strath.ac.uk.
The notice is subject to change, and any changes to it will be published on our website www.strath.ac.uk/alumni. We recommend that you check our Privacy Policy and Notices each time you visit our Sites.
If you wish to enquire about Alumni & Development's services, this Privacy Notice, or any of our services or activities please contact alumniweb@strath.ac.uk.
9. Contact us
Alumni & Development Office
University of Strathclyde
Room 701 Learning & Teaching Building
49 Richmond Street
Glasgow G1 1XU, UK
tel: +44(0)141 548 2773
email: alumniweb@strath.ac.uk