Notice Contents:

1. The aim of this Data Protection Notice
2. Who we are, what we do, and how we collect your data
3. The purpose and legal basis for processing your data
4. The data we hold
5. How we use your data
6. Philanthropy, data analysis and updating your contact details
7. Details of third parties with whom we share personal data
8. Cross-border data transfers
9. How long we will keep your data
10. Your rights
11. Questions or Complaints

The aim of this Data Protection Notice

Our alumni and supporters are extremely important to us, and this Data Protection Notice explains how University College Cork collects, stores, manages and protects the data of its alumni and supporters. It outlines the types of data that we hold, who we share them with and how we use them to provide services to our alumni and supporters. We aim to be clear when we collect your personal information, and not do anything you would not reasonably expect.  It also explains your rights under data protection law in relation to our processing of your data.

Who we are, what we do, and how we collect your data

Throughout this Notice, “we”, “us” and “our” refers to University College Cork.

The Office responsible for processing data relating to UCC’s Alumni and Supporters is the Alumni and Development Office. For more information about that office, please refer to:  https://www.ucc.ie/en/alumni/. Alumni and Development is part of University College Cork, and the University is the Data Controller.

The University’s data protection policy is available here: UCC Data Protection Policy

Alumni and Development supports University College Cork through contact with alumni, staff students, supporters and future supporters of the University. It does this by offering a range of academic, social and networking events and publications and providing employment and skills advice for recent graduates. It also fundraises to support the University’s students, teaching, research and capital projects.

In order to do this, we have a central database within Alumni and Development that contains personal data collected by the University during the course of our relationship with students, alumni, donors and supporters. Initially, data about students are transferred into our database from the student record system, in accordance with the Student Data Protection Notice. Most of the information we hold is obtained directly from you; and if you interact with any other departments, schools or units within the University, we may receive data from these areas. We always aim to keep your details up to date where necessary, and we will conduct projects to check the contact details we have for you are correct, and, where appropriate, update them. As a result, some of the data may also have been obtained from publicly available sources – for example, we may find a new address for you by using the company registration office (CRO) and electoral register.

We may also use information from publicly available sources to carry out research to assess your inclination and capacity to support the University financially or by volunteering your time. More information on these activities is below and you will always have the right to object to your data being used in this way.  We value our relationship with you and we use your personal data to ensure we contact you in the most appropriate way, improve our services and to ensure we work efficiently and effectively.

The purpose and legal basis for processing your data

The University processes and stores personal information relating to students, staff, alumni, current and potential supporters and friends of the University and it will only be used by us in accordance with the purposes in this notice. 

We process the information outlined in this Data Protection 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;
• Furthering the University’s educational mission (through fundraising and volunteer support);
• Further strengthening regional, national and international ties with alumni and friends;
• Enabling the University to achieve its strategic and operational goals;
• Enabling the alumni and supporters to further enhance the current student experience and UCC’s impact in the local community.

We may pursue these legitimate interests by contacting you by telephone, email, post or social media. Information about how you can manage the ways that we contact you, including how to opt out from some or all contact from Alumni and Development, is outlined in the ‘Your Rights’ section below.

Whilst we rely on legitimate interest as the legal basis for processing where this is not overridden by the interests and rights or freedoms of the data subjects concerned, we recognise that it is not the only lawful ground for processing data.  As such, where appropriate, we will sometimes process your data on an alternative legal basis – for example, because you have given us consent to do so.

The data we hold

Alumni and Development maintains a record of all former students of the University and, as such, it holds education records in perpetuity. Graduation information is published each year in conferrings booklets and is therefore considered to be in the public domain. If we become aware that your name has changed, we will update our records to reflect this.  In subsequent instances where we provide your name (e.g. a class list) we will use your current name alongside any previous names to ensure you can be identified correctly.  The personal data we store and process may include:

• name, title, gender and date of birth;
• contact details including postal address, email address, phone number and links to social media accounts;
• information about your time at the University and other academic institutions including degree(s) and year(s) of graduation;
• your occupation and professional activities;
• your recreations and interests;
• family and spouse/partner details and your relationships to other alumni, supporters and friends;
• records of donations and Charitable Donation Scheme status where applicable;
• records of communications sent to you by Alumni and Development or received from you;
• your volunteer activities at the University;
• information about your wealth;
• information about your philanthropy;
• media articles about you;
• information on your engagement in University meetings, events, groups or networks;
• information about your use of University resources or facilities;
• information about your use of https://alumni.ucc.ie and www.ucc.ie including your IP address, location, browser type, referral source, length of visit, number of page views and navigation around our website.

How we use your data

Your data may be used and processed for a full range of alumni engagement and fundraising purposes. These include the following communications which may be sent to you by post, email, telephone and social media:

• Sending university newsletters and other publications;
• Invitations to alumni events;
• Information on fundraising programmes;
• Promotion of services and discounts for alumni;
• Promotion of career and mentoring services for alumni and students.

The University may use third-party partners to support the activities described above. If you interact with the University through a third-party (e.g. by taking part in an interview or completing a survey), then Alumni and Development may obtain personal data about you from that third-party. The receipt of data in this manner is subject to the third-party’s own privacy policy. 

Tools may be used to help us improve the effectiveness of the University’s communications with you, including tracking whether the emails we send are opened and which links are clicked within a message. We monitor website visits and use tools such as Google Analytics to improve our website and services.

Philanthropy, data analysis and updating your contact details

Philanthropy makes an enormous impact at our University. As we are a fundraising institution, we may gather information about you from publicly available sources – for example, Companies Registration Office, the Electoral Register and the media – to help us to understand more about you as an individual and your ability to support the University, including financially. We may use information gathered from public sources or other departments, schools or faculties within University College Cork alongside the information you provide to undertake analysis of who might support the University and to understand the preferences of our alumni about events, communication and services.  By doing this, 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 an alumnus/na, donor or potential donor which is appropriate for you.

We may carry out projects to find new contact details for alumni with whom we are not in contact to ensure the University can remain in touch with as many of its alumni as possible. Many of our alumni choose to manage and update their own details, which you can do online at: https://alumni.ucc.ie   

If you provide us with contact details for a particular method of communication we will assume that you have given us your consent for us to update your record and communicate with you using this information, unless you have told us otherwise. Contact details provided directly by you will update any previous preferences in relation to this channel unless you inform us otherwise. If you are registered with the National Directory Database opt-out register but provide us with a telephone number, we will assume that we have your consent to call you on this number.

Fundraising is a key part of our work, and we are committed to working in a transparent, ethical, responsible and honest way. To reflect this commitment, we are registered with the Charities Regulator, members of Charities Institute Ireland and committed to the governance code.  We will always abide by our Institutional Donor Charter.

Details of third-parties with whom we share personal data

The University will share your data with the following third-parties where necessary for purposes of the processing outlined above:

• alumni chapters, groups and networks (included selected volunteers),
• the Cork University Foundation,
• alumni volunteers, and
• alumni related sports and other clubs associated with the University. 

Where we use third-parties to process personal data on our behalf (acting as data processors), a written contract will be put in place to ensure that any personal data shared will be held in accordance with the requirements of data protection law and that such data processors have appropriate security measures in place in relation to your personal data.

Cross-border data transfers

In the course of processing your personal data, it may be transferred outside of the European Economic Area on the understanding we rely on legally approved mechanisms to lawfully transfer data across borders including the Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission.  For example, data may be shared while planning international Alumni events.

How long we will keep your data

In keeping with the data protection principles we will only store your data for as long as is necessary. For the purposes described here we will store your data in accordance with our Record Retention Schedules.

Your rights

We consider our relationship with alumni and supporters to be lifelong. We will always try to ensure that the data we hold for you are up to date, reasonable and not excessive. You will always have the right:

• to find out if we use your personal data, access your personal data and receive copies of your personal data;
• to have inaccurate/incomplete information corrected and updated;
• in certain circumstances, to have your details deleted from systems that we use to process your personal data or have the use of your personal data restricted in certain ways;
• to object to certain processing of your data by UCC;
• where we have relied upon consent as a lawful basis for processing, to withdraw your consent to the processing at any time;
• to not be subject to solely automated decision making;
• to request that we stop sending you direct communications.

If you wish to avail of these rights, please contact the Information Compliance Manager, University College Cork, by email to: gdpr@ucc.ie

Questions or Complaints

If you have any queries in relation to Alumni and Development Relations, please contact a member of the Alumni Team by email to: alumni@ucc.ie or +353 21 4902720.

If you have any complaints in connection with our processing of your personal data, you can contact the Information Compliance Manager, University College Cork, by email to: gdpr@ucc.ie

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Commission if you are unhappy with our processing of your personal data. Details of how to lodge a complaint can be found on the Data Protection Commission’s website (www.dataprotection.ie), or by telephoning 1890 252 231.