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Trinity College Cambridge Data Protection Statement

How we use your personal information

— Alumni and other supporters

This statement explains how Trinity College (“we” and “our”) handles and uses data we collect about alumni (“you” and “your”), including those with ‘affiliate alumni’ status (e.g. Post-Doctoral Society Alumni).  In broad terms, we use your data to manage the ongoing relationship between the College and you as part of our lifelong community of scholars, including keeping in touch with you, keeping up to date on your achievements, and engaging with you on how you can continue to contribute to College life and otherwise support the College.

We will retain your data indefinitely or until you request us to do otherwise.  When changes are made to this statement, we will publish the updated version to our website and notify you by other communications channels as we deem appropriate or necessary.

The controller for your personal data is Trinity College, Trinity Street, Cambridge CB2 1TQ.  The Data Protection Officer for the College is the Office of Intercollegiate Services Ltd (OIS) – [12B King’s Parade, Cambridge; 01223 768745; college.dpo@ois.cam.ac.uk]: OIS Ltd. should be contacted if you have any concerns about how the College is managing your personal information, or if you require advice on how to exercise your rights as outlined in this statement. The person within the College otherwise responsible for data protection at the time of issue, and the person who is responsible for monitoring compliance with relevant legislation in relation to the protection of personal data, may be contacted at data.protection@trin.cam.ac.uk.

  1. The legal basis for processing your personal data is that it is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests, where we have concluded that our interests do not impact inappropriately on your fundamental rights and freedoms, except where elsewhere in this statement we have indicated otherwise.  You may ask us to explain our rationale at any time.

NB. All of College’s data protection policies are included on the Data Protection Notices page of the website: https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/website/dpn/

How your data is used by the College

We collect and process your personal data, as specified below, for a number of purposes, including:

  1. Maintaining a formal record of your academic progress and achievements of the College and the University of Cambridge and elsewhere;
  2. retaining a formal record of your academic, career or other life achievements in order to promote and improve the reputation of the College and help you to network with other College members effectively;
  3. engaging you in College and University events that we believe will be of interest to you, including alumni and open events, volunteering opportunities, and other ways you can contribute to the life of the College;
  4. providing you with information about the development of the College, including major initiatives and programmes relating to either the academic endeavour or the provision of services and facilities to members and the wider public;
  5. encouraging you to make a financial contribution to the College and/or the University, and processing any such contributions;
  6. assessing the likelihood that you will, now or in the future, make a financial contribution (gift) to the College;
  7. promoting third-party services we believe will be of interest to you.

Further details are provided in the Annex. If you have concerns or queries about any of these purposes, or how we communicate with you, please contact us at the address given below. 

Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Alumni Relations & Development
Trinity Street, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ UK
T:+44(0)1223 761527
E: alumni@trin.cam.ac.uk

Communications

If you are a new contact for our Alumni Relations and Development Office we will ask you at the outset how you would like to receive news and other communications from us.  If you are already receiving such communications, you are able to change your preferences (or ask us to stop sending you news and other communications completely) by contacting us at the address given above.

How we share your personal data

We believe that most alumni understand in detail the complex and many interactions of the College with the University of Cambridge.  Personal data of our members is shared with the University routinely throughout any course of study, and it is our strong preference to continue such collaborative working thereafter.

The University and its partners (including the College) have a data sharing agreement to govern the sharing of personal data of alumni and other supporters.   This is necessary because they are distinct legal entities.  The agreement outlines that, depending on constraints set by you, and which you may change at any time, the University and College may share any of the above categories of personal data with the University, and can be viewed in full at https://www.ois.cam.ac.uk/system/files/documents/data-sharing-protocols.pdf  . Any transmission of data to or from the University is managed through agreed processes which comply with UK data protection legislation.

In addition to the database managed by the Alumni Relations and Development Office, the College has a secure internal contacts system that holds a restricted set of alumni contact data. In order to help facilitate alumni events and alumni benefits, assist alumni with queries regarding their benefits and rights, and the promotion of specific services to you, other departments and Fellows in Trinity College may therefore have access to your Trinity College education record and some of your contact details. These departments include, but are not limited to, the Accommodation Office, Catering, Chapel & Choir, the Porters’ Lodge, Tutorial Office, and the Master’s Lodge.

For clarity, the College has a separate database from the University, but has access to the University’s database: additionally, we maintain other electronic and paper records.

The University has its own data protection statement and procedures – please see:

https://www.alumni.cam.ac.uk/data-protection

Additionally, we share data on a considered and confidential basis, where appropriate, with: 

  • Cambridge in America (the University’s affiliate alumni office in the US) https://www.ois.cam.ac.uk/system/files/documents/data-sharing-protocols.pdf ;
  • third party agencies who provide us with data in the public domain about alumni and supporters, as outlined above;
  • selected companies who provide College-branded or College-endorsed products and services, as outlined above;
  • volunteer partners closely related to us (e.g. College trustees, development board members, alumni group representatives), and
  • contractors providing services to you on our behalf or services to us (our “data processors”), as outlined above, including but not limited to Blackbaud software company, First Mailing Ltd (the mailing house we use) Shared Vision, Buffalo, Vanilla Soft, Hubbub (all fundraising consultants), Shift-Learning (market research) and Aluminati Network Group (e-networking & mentoring).
  • third parties for whom we process donations such as, but not limited to, Trinity in Camberwell and the Isaac Newton Trust, for the purposes of engaging, thanking and recognising donors to those charities. Data passed on will include email addresses unless we have received instruction to the contrary.

We also facilitate communication between individual alumni (of the College or the University), but in doing so we do not release personal contact details without prior permission.

Any transfers of your data overseas or to international organisations, as set out above, are protected either by an adequacy decision by the European Commission or by standard data protection clauses adopted by the European Commission (which are available from the Trinity College Data Protection Lead data.protection@trin.cam.ac.uk). 

Your rights

You have the right: to ask us for access to, rectification or erasure of your data; to restrict processing (pending correction or deletion); to object to communications or direct marketing; and to ask for the transfer of your data electronically to a third party (data portability).  Some of these rights are not automatic, and we reserve the right to discuss with you why we might not comply with a request from you to exercise them.

Where you opt out of all future communications or 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) to ensure we do not contact you inadvertently in future, while still maintaining our record of your academic achievements.  We may also need to retain some financial records about you for statutory purposes (e.g. Gift Aid, anti-fraud and accounting matters).

You retain the right at all times to lodge a complaint about our management of your personal data with the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

At minimum, this statement will be reviewed annually. 

Last updated: August 2023.
Trinity College Data Protection Lead. 

Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Alumni Relations & Development
Trinity Street, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ UK
T:+44(0)1223 761527
E: alumni@trin.cam.ac.uk

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