Data Protection Statement

The UCL Office of the Vice-Provost (Advancement) (OVPA) (“We”) are committed to protecting your privacy, keeping your data safe and not doing anything with it that you wouldn’t reasonably expect. This statement describes how we collect and use personal information. The terms of this statement may change, so please check it from time to time- you can see the date it was last changed above.

If you have any questions, please contact us at ovpa.dp@ucl.ac.uk or call us on +44 (0)20 3108 3833

What information do we collect and what do we use it for?

As outlined in the UCL Student Privacy Notice, we process data for Students and Alumni.

Before you graduate, we create an outline record for you from the UCL Student database with name, department, gender, date of birth, “UCL Person ID”, Student Number and your UCL email address. This is so we can run careers mentoring registration and record touchpoints. When you leave UCL, we add on the rest of your personal contact details and a degree summary, For Alumni who graduated before circa 1970, we collect similar data from paper records in the UCL records Office if you get in touch with us.

We collect lists of members of UCLU clubs, as outlined in the UCLU Privacy Notice. We append this information onto your Alumni record so we can run reunions and other events and let you know about related activities.

We get a list from the UCL HR database of staff who self-identify themselves as a UCL Alum, so we can flag you as a current staff member and communicate with you more effectively.

We encourage Alumni and Supporters to keep their record up to date - mainly with employment activity and contact details, so we can make sure you are invited to appropriate activities.

If you support us, for example make a donation, volunteer or sign up for an event, we will store all the data you submit on the donation or event booking form, apart from your credit card details. Only the information that is necessary to process your request will be mandatory.

Every time you get in touch with us, we get in touch with you, or you take part in any UCL activity, we record this touchpoint on your record.

We will use your data to:

• Provide you with the services, products or information you asked for
• Send you information about activities we believe are most relevant to you, including fundraising.
• Administer your donation or support your fundraising
• Keep a record of your relationship with us
• Ensure we know how you prefer to be contacted
• Understand how we can improve our services or information.

If you enter your details onto one of our online forms, and you don’t ‘submit’ the form, we may contact you to see if we can help with any problems you may be experiencing with the form or our websites.

Building profiles of supporters and targeting communications

We use profiling and screening techniques to ensure communications are relevant and timely, and to provide an improved experience for our supporters and Alumni. Profiling also allows us to target our resources effectively, so we don’t waste them, or your time. Understanding the background, capacity and willingness to support particular UCL projects of those who support us helps us to make appropriate requests.  Importantly, it enables us to raise more funds, sooner, and more cost-effectively, than we otherwise would. 

When building a profile we may analyse geographic, demographic and other information relating to you in order to better understand your interests and preferences in order to contact you with the most relevant communications.  In doing this, we may use additional information from third party sources when it is available.  Such information is compiled using publicly available data about you, for example addresses, listed Directorships, typical earnings or house prices in a given postcode/area and publicised donations to other causes. 

Alumni and Supporter Communications (Direct Marketing)

We will contact you to let you know about the progress we are making and to ask for donations or other support, this includes relevant newsletters and event invites.  We make it easy for you to tell us how you want us to communicate, in a way that suits you. We include information on how to opt out when we send you marketing. If you don’t want to hear from us, that’s fine.  Just click unsubscribe, or let us know on ovpa.dp@ucl.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 3108 3833.

Where do we collect your information from?

We collect information in the following ways:

When you give it to us directly

You may give us your information in order to sign up for one of our events, make a donation, request an Alumni card or communicate with us.   UCL student records are copied from the UCL Student database to the UCL Alumni database (MySupporters), as outlined in your UCL Student Privacy Notice. For Alumni who studied pre circa 1970, we manually create records on MySupporters after verifying with the UCL records team.

When you give it to us indirectly

Your information may be shared with us by independent event organisers, for example fundraising sites like Just Giving or Virgin Money Giving.  These independent third parties will only do so when you have indicated your consent. You should check their Privacy Policy when you provide your information to understand fully how they will process your data.

When you give permission to other organisations to share or it is available publicly

We combine information you provide to us with information available from external sources.  This is known as data-appending and enables us to contact you in the event that you change your address, job or phone number, or didn’t provide it to us.  We also use this information to gain a better understanding of our supporters to improve our fundraising methods, products and services and make sure we contact you in the most relevant and appropriate way.

The information we get from other organisations depends on your privacy settings and the responses you give them. This information comes from the following sources:

Companies You may have provided permission for a company to share your data with third parties, including charities.  This could be when you buy a product or service, register for an online competition or sign up with a comparison site.

Information available publicly This may include information found in places such as Companies House or published in articles/ newspapers.

When we collect it as you use our websites or Apps.

Like most websites, we may use “cookies” to help us make our site – and the way you use it – better. Cookies mean that a website will remember you. They’re small text files that sites transfer to your computer (or phone or tablet). They make interacting with a website faster and easier – for example by automatically filling your name and address in text fields. There are more details in the UCL Cookie Policy.

In addition, the type of device you’re using and the settings on that device may provide us with information, including what type of device it is, what specific device you have, what operating system you’re using, what your device settings are, and why a crash has happened. Your device manufacturer or operating system provider will have more details about what information your device makes available to us.

We also use Google Analytics to monitor web traffic, however this data is anonymised and we cannot identify individuals. You can find out more about Google Analytics here.

When someone you know refers you to us.

On occasion, someone you know, for example friends, family or a business associate, may give us your name and contact details as someone who is likely to be keen to be approached to support a UCL project. We will contact you as soon as is practicable to let you know we are processing your data in this way.

How do we keep your data safe and who has access to it?

Your data is stored in a secure central database, managed by the UCL Information Services Division (ISD), following industry good practice. Our website has been approved by the ISD Security Team. UCL does not process credit card details for online donations; these are only handled by our PCI accredited Merchant Service providers. If you provide your card details to us on a paper form or over the phone, we will use them to process your payment securely and then immediately shred the card number into the secure waste.

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.

Your information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff and contractors.

If you have joined a specific Alumni group or society, such as the History Alumni Association or Women's Dining Club, then we may share limited data with the organisers of that group, so they can manage events and communications. The organisers will have first signed an agreement to handle your data securely and only for this agreed purpose. We do not give out your data to organisers of groups that you have not opted into, but we may contact you on their behalf.

We may pass your information to our service providers. We always make sure there are appropriate controls in place first; the service provider will never use your data for any additional non-UCL purpose. Some examples of service providers would be using an emailer service to send out personalised email newsletters, using a mailing house to send out Alumni magazines, or screening names and addresses via a data bureau to remove deceased people from our mailing list and keep addresses up-to-date.

We may occasionally share your name and contact details with selected "UCL Partners" and their associated charities, UCL Academy and a handful of other UCL charities that are registered separately with the Charities Commission, solely for the purposes of managing joint fundraising campaigns. This is so that UCL and the fundraising partner do not both approach you about the same project in an uncoordinated manner. A current list of UCL partners can be viewed at the UCL Partners website.

Because UCL pass lists are published at the time of graduation, your name at time of study and course name and year are public domain data and may be re-published. If you make a donation to UCL, you are given the option of deciding whether your name can be used on donor lists and other stewardship materials. If you consent to this, we may publish your current name and the fact that you are a UCL donor.

We may need to disclose your details if required to the police, regulatory bodies or legal advisors.

We will only ever share your data in other circumstances if we have your explicit and informed consent.

We never sell or swap any of your personal information.

Fundraising Regulator

UCL is a voluntary member of the Fundraising Regulator and we continually review our practises to respect the privacy of our alumni and supporters.

Why we can collect your information and how you can tell us to stop

The legal basis for processing your personal data is your consent, where you have provided this, and otherwise our legitimate interests. In the case of our legitimate interests to process your personal data we are required to ensure that our interests are balanced against any detriment you may face from our processing.

We may on occasion transfer your personal information to countries or jurisdictions outside the UK if necessary for the above purposes. These countries may not always provide the same level of data protection as the UK. If we do make such a transfer, we will use controls such as Privacy Shield or model contract clauses to ensure your information is protected.

You have a right to ask us to stop processing your personal data in cases where we are relying on our legitimate interests, and if it’s not necessary for the purpose you provided it to us for (e.g. processing your donation or registering you for an event) we will do so.  You also have the right to withdraw your consent in cases where you have provided this. Contact us on ovpa.dp@ucl.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 3108 3833 if you have any concerns.

Right of access

If you are a UCL Alumnus/Alumna and have created an account for our Alumni Online Community, you can sign into your account to access and update most of your information.

You have a right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies in your information corrected. If you want to access your information, send a description of the information you want to see and proof of your identity to ovpa.dp@ucl.ac.uk.

If you have any questions please send these to ovpa.dp@ucl.ac.uk, and for further information see the Information Commissioner’s guidance here (link is external).

Keeping your data up-to-date

Where possible we use publicly available sources to keep your records up to date; for example, the Post Office’s National Change of Address database and information provided to us by other organisations as described above.

We really appreciate it if you let us know if your contact details change you can email us here: advancement@ucl.ac.uk or call us +44 (0)20 3108 3833.