Development and Alumni Relations data protection privacy statement

The High School of Glasgow External Relations, Crow Road, Glasgow G13 1PL is the data controller for personal data relating to you that it processes. The High School of Glasgow External Relations office gathers and uses personal data about you while you are a current student and after you leave the School and become one of our former pupils.

This Privacy Statement tells you what personal data we collect about you, how we use the data, the legal justification for using it and who might see it. Please note that we may have to amend this Statement from time to time to reflect changes in how we use personal data or to keep up with best practice, but we will only do this in line with the underlying principles on which this Statement is based – fairness, transparency and respect for your personal data. The current version of this Statement can be found on the School’s website.

This Statement is primarily intended for alumni and supporters of the School. The School has separate Privacy statements for Pupils, Parents and Staff.

The High School of Glasgow takes seriously its responsibilities under the law governing data protection in the United Kingdom. You can see our current Data Protection Policy on the School website. 

The purposes for which we hold and process your personal data and the legal basis for doing this

The Development and Alumni Relations Office supports the School and its alumni by cultivating long-term relationships with its network of former students and stakeholders.

Collecting your information helps to inform our alumni relations and fundraising programmes, allows us to provide a better service to our alumni and enables us to support the School and its work in the improvement of education.

Alumni relations

• To analyse the progression of pupils into further education, employment and, where appropriate, follow your career. This may include desk-based research drawing on publicly available information (e.g. company websites, media and press releases, or publicly accessible social media platforms).
• To send news, information and updates about the School.
• To provide information on the range of alumni benefits and services available to you.
• To re-engage former pupils who have lost contact with the School. This can be via referral from other former pupils, members of staff within the School and other members of the School community or through data shared in public sources (e.g. company websites, media and press releases, or publicly accessible social media platforms).
• To promote and facilitate mentoring opportunities between alumni and students.
• To identify and manage the alumni volunteering programmes (e.g. alumni as mentors or who give career talks)
• To invite you to School events.
• To undertake market research surveys which inform the development of alumni related programmes in the future and allow evaluation reporting of existing programmes within the School.
• To allow the School to tailor our communications to you through segmentation by considering your engagement history with our services and programmes, (e.g. attending an event or completing a survey).

Supporter relations and fundraising

Under its charitable objectives the School has a legitimate interest to conduct and manage fundraising programmes which secure additional financial support for students and development of education. This may involve fundraising campaigns via direct mail, email, telephone, face to face or online.

It is in the legitimate interest of the School to process your data in relation to fundraising for the following reasons:

• To keep you up to date on the impact of your donation through ongoing stewardship.
• To support peer to peer or reunion fundraising.
• To produce management information as part of the governance of the School to report on activities of donor programmes.
• To undertake appropriate due diligence before soliciting and accepting donations to ensure they fit within our ethical guidelines as a university.
• To ensure that all fundraising is conducted appropriately and in line with our knowledge about your engagement with us and your preferences and interests. To do this we may draw on personal data held in the alumni office as well as information available through publicly available sources. This may include wealth screening conducted in house or via a third party using publicly available information to identify those few individuals with the likely financial resources to be able to provide significant support from a large pool of alumni and potential supporters.

Personal data that we hold

We may hold information relating to you from a number of sources. A significant proportion of the information we hold about you as one of our former pupils is that which you or your parents provided to us (for example, on application to the School and subsequent education requirements). If you are a student or studied at The High School of Glasgow, your personal data is transferred from your student record to the School’s alumni database.

Most records contain:

• details of your education
• unique personal identifiers and biographical information (e.g. student number, date of birth)
• your contact details (and we update these whenever you let us know that they have changed)
• details of your interactions with the School, including:
  • your attendance at School and Former Pupil events
  • other contact with us
  • details of benefits and services provided to you
  • your relationships with other former pupils or supporters of the School
• details about your family (e.g. your marital status, the name of your partner or spouse)
• personal data provided by you for a specific purpose (e.g. disability and dietary preferences for event management purposes)
• your communication preferences, to help us provide tailored and relevant communications

We also record, where applicable, based on information which you provide to us and, in some cases, publicly available information:

• financial information, including:
  • your history of donations made to the School
  • your ability and willingness to make donations and whether particular donations or funding appeals may be of interest to you
  • your philanthropy and other giving, including donations to other organisations and other support that you provide (e.g. details of volunteering roles)
• your career highlights and other life achievements
• information about your areas of interest and extra-curricular activities

We may augment the data we hold from the School with publicly available data.

We use targeted internet searches and may search the following websites (either directly or using search engines), where relevant in order to obtain and maintain the accuracy of the data listed above:

• Public sources for companies (in order to find personal data of those companies’ employees, etc.):
  • Companies House and other business-related resources (free and subscription) for UK companies
  • Company websites
• Public sources for charities (in order to find personal data of those charities’ employees, trustees, etc., and to find information about donations and support):
  • Charity Commission and other internet sources for UK non-profits
• Public sources for individuals:
  • Who’s Who and Debrett’s People of Today (subscription)
  • Sunday Times Rich List
  • Other rich lists, including Forbes Magazine’s international rich lists
  • Property websites
  • The Queen’s Honours Lists
  • National change of address services
  • LinkedIn, to check business details
  • Facebook, and other Social Media
• Press sources
  • Various sources including, but not limited to, the Glasgow Herald, The Scotsman and any other relevant publications.

How we use your data

Your data is used by us for a number of interdependent purposes in support of alumni relations, supporter communications and fundraising.  These include:

• sending you publications (e.g. magazines and updates about the School)
• conducting surveys, including research on when and whether particular donations or funding appeals may be of interest to you
• providing services, including access to School facilities
• sending you tailored proposals, appeals and requests for donations
• sending you details of volunteering opportunities
• inviting you to alumni and other School events
• the promotion of other opportunities and services available to you (e.g. offers and opportunities available through our alumni network)
• images and videos taken during your time in School may be used for promotional activities 
• wealth analysis and research in order to improve our understanding of our alumni and supporters, inform our fundraising strategy and target our communications more effectively
• internal record keeping, including the management of any feedback or complaints
• administrative purposes (e.g. in order to process a donation you have made or to administer an event you have registered for or attended)
• discussion with related stakeholders in carrying out any School supporter communications and development

Before seeking or accepting major donations we are required to conduct due diligence, including reviewing publicly available personal data relating to the donor’s criminal convictions and offences.

Communications to you may be sent by post, telephone or electronic means (principally by email), depending on the contact details we hold and any communication preferences you have expressed. We will always include within our communications details of how you can let us know that you do not wish to receive any or any particular type of communication from us in the future.

We will always respect a request from you to stop sending any or any particular type of communication.

We will keep your data securely and only for as long as it is needed for the purposes set out in this Statement. Please note that if you do wish to exercise your right to have your data erased (see below) the School will still retain some data about you so that we know not to communicate with you and in order to maintain your academic record for archive, statistical and statutory purposes.

If you have concerns or queries about any of these purposes, or how we communicate with you, please contact us using the details listed below.

Your Data Protection Rights

You have the following main rights:

1. To be informed about how and why we gather your personal information, how we keep it and what we do with it.
2. To access the personal data we hold about you.
3. To have the information rectified if it is inaccurate or where appropriate, given the purposes for which your personal data is processed, to have incomplete data completed.
4. To have your information removed from our records. This is a limited right which applies, among other circumstances if there is no longer any justification for us to keep it or where consent has been withdrawn. There are also exceptions to this right, such as when the processing is required by law or is done in the public interest.
5. To object to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes without your consent.
6. To request that your data be copied or transferred to another organisation in certain circumstances.
7. To restrict the processing of your personal data. This is a limited right which will apply in specific circumstances and for a limited period.
8. To obtain a copy of your data in a commonly used electronic form if the data is processed by automated means and the processing is based on your consent or contractual necessity.
9. To complain to us and/or to the Information Commissioner’s Office if your information is being used unlawfully.
10. Where we are relying on your consent to use your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.

Further information and contacts

If you:

• wish to access the personal data held by the Development Office about you;
• wish to up-date your information, including your address and preferred contact details, or, where we are relying on your consent to process your personal data, if you wish to withdraw or change your preferences relating to any consents you have given 
• require more information about how the Development Office manages personal data generally,

contact the External Relations office:
The High School of Glasgow
637 Crow Road
Glasgow G13 1PL
development@hsog.co.uk

Data Protection Office directly please use dataprotection@hsog.co.uk

Our data controller registration number provided by the Information Commissioner’s Office is Z6483284. 

Last updated: 17/06/2022