Published 11 May 2018
Throughout its history, Balliol has relied upon alumni, friends and benefactors to help realise its mission of learning and advancement. We are committed to maintaining your confidence and trust with respect to your privacy. Our principles are simple - we will be transparent about what data we are collecting about you, where that data comes from, how we use the information we hold about you, the legal rights you have, and the choices you can make.
The overarching purpose of collecting and processing your data is to provide you with the best possible experience of being an alumnus/alumna, donor, or supporter of Balliol. It also enables us to ensure that any approaches we make to ask for your support of our alumni relations or fundraising goals are respectful, professional, and relevant to you. Balliol works closely with the University to ensure we engage with you in a coordinated manner.
If at any point you have questions about our privacy notice, or how we are using your data, please contact us at development.office@balliol.ox.ac.uk
The purpose of this privacy notice is to explain how Balliol College (referred to as "Balliol", "we", "our", "us") hold and use personal data about alumni, donors and supporters ("you"), and how we use it for alumni and supporter relations, and fundraising purposes. Please see Balliol's privacy notices relating to other activities and relationships.
Development and Alumni Relations teams across the collegiate University work closely together and have aligned our policies around data privacy and our privacy notices to provide clarity for our alumni, donors and supporters. Please see the University's privacy notices relating to other activities and relationships.
Balliol's Development Office exists to establish and develop lifelong relationships with and amongst our alumni, donors and supporters. We're here to help you stay connected with each other, with Balliol and with the wider University. Our communications with you will include College news, invitations to events and reunions, exhibitions, volunteering opportunities, information about alumni benefits, and fundraising projects and progress updates that are important to you.
Donations and bequests play a vital role in the pursuit of academic excellence at Balliol. It is thanks to the regular support of thousands of alumni and friends that Balliol is a college that is accessible to talented students whatever their background. Whether through providing life-changing opportunities for students or endowing Fellowships to support the tutorial system, philanthropy shapes the College today and in perpetuity.
We, Balliol, collect information from you in three ways: directly from you during your ongoing relationship with us, or with the University and other Oxford colleges you may have attended that participate in our shared relationship management system (DARS); from publicly available sources; and/or from third parties providing us with services or acting on our behalf.
The amount of data we collect and hold depends on the frequency and nature of your interactions and engagement with us. Information may be gathered across the lifetime of our relationship with you and from many different forms of interaction.
We may hold and process the following types of personal data about you:
Your personal data are used by us for the following purposes in support of alumni and supporter relations, and fundraising:
If you do not wish your data to be used in any of the ways listed above, or have any questions, please contact us.
We may, from time to time, need to share your personal data within the collegiate University of Oxford or with third parties working on our behalf. We will only do this in appropriate circumstances, by secure means, and with the relevant data sharing agreements in place. We do not, and will not, sell your data.
Third parties will only process your personal data on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat your data confidentially and to keep it secure. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes nor to keep your data after the processing is complete. All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies.
Whenever your information is shared, we will always seek to share the minimum amount of information necessary to fulfil the purpose, this includes the use of anonymised or pseudonymised data where that is sufficient.
Your data may be shared in the following ways:
We may share your data with colleges and departments that make up the collegiate University. We will do this only where it is necessary in order to carry out any of the purposes listed in this privacy notice. For example, where the University is coordinating with one or more colleges to organise shared events to which you are invited; to manage and coordinate relationship management activities with you; to ensure your contact information is up-to-date, to distribute to your college any gifts received via the University's payment methods.
We may also share relevant data, in appropriate circumstances, with college or University Sports Clubs and Societies where you are (or were) a member or supporter of that club or society.
The collegiate University of Oxford utilises a shared relationship management system, known as DARS (Development and Alumni Relations System), to store and share data across participating teams, departments, and colleges. Our objective in doing so is to improve our mutual understanding of the multiple relationships you have across the collegiate University; we believe this understanding is crucial for us to be able to provide you with the best possible experience we can. Developing a better appreciation of our relationship with you should improve our communications with you and mean we are better able to respond to your preferences about how we stay connected with you. This includes improving the quality of the data we hold about you and ensuring that we are processing the latest and most accurate data you have provided.
Balliol uses DARS and is therefore a "joint data controller" of your personal data, together with the University of Oxford and other college participants. This means that if you have questions about your data you can either contact us or the University and we will liaise as appropriate to respond to your query. A list of participating colleges, including the University, can be found at the Joint Data Controllers page.
We benefit from a network of organisations and individuals who volunteer their support to Balliol. We may share relevant data with them, in appropriate circumstances, by secure means, and with the relevant data sharing agreements in place. These may include:
The following organisations enable tax-efficient giving to Balliol and the collegiate University of Oxford, from outside of the UK. Data may be shared by us with these organisations where it relates specifically to donations you have made, or have pledged to donate via these organisations.
These include but are not limited to:
Balliol takes precautions to safeguard your personal information against loss, theft and misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure and destruction through the use of appropriate administrative, physical and technical security measures.
Our shared relationship management system, DARS, is hosted on infrastructure within the University of Oxford's network and is protected by logical access controls. Access is limited to individuals who need to see and use the data to carry out their duties, and access rights are restricted according to individual job roles in order to ensure that users only see information that is relevant to them. All DARS users receive appropriate training, including training on data privacy, before being granted access.
Where you have provided us with your credit or debit card information, over the phone, or on a printed giving form, that data is stored securely and destroyed after your payment has been processed. Bank details used for processing Direct Debits are stored under the Direct Debit Guarantee Scheme. Online donations are processed via our third-party payment service providers and your credit or debit card information is not collected or stored by us.
Transfers of your data outside of the UK - although most of the information we collect, store and process stays within the UK, some information may be transferred to countries outside of the UK. This may occur if, for example, one of our third-party partners' servers are located in a country outside of the UK. This may also occur where staff in our international offices access DARS, our shared relationship-management system.
Transfers outside of the UK will only take place if one of the following applies:
Balliol considers its relationship with alumni, donors and supporters to be life-long and we will retain much of your data indefinitely unless you request otherwise. When determining how long we should retain your personal data we take into consideration our legal obligations and tax or accounting rules. If you have pledged a legacy gift, it will be necessary to retain your data until your gift is received, so that we can identify the gift against that pledge. When we no longer need to retain personal information, we ensure it is securely disposed of. We may keep anonymised statistical data indefinitely, but you cannot be identified from such data.
We will only use your personal data where the law allows us to do so. Most commonly we rely on the following legal bases for processing your personal data:
We will only process your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another related reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your data for an unrelated purpose, we will seek your consent to use it for that new purpose. Please note that we may process your data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
Depending on the circumstances and the nature of your request it may not be possible for us to do what you have asked, for example, where there is a statutory or contractual requirement for us to process your data and it would not be possible to fulfil our legal obligations if we were to stop. However, where you have consented to the processing, you can withdraw your consent at any time by emailing the relevant department. In this event, we will stop the processing as soon as we can. If you choose to withdraw consent it will not invalidate past processing.
If you want to exercise any of the rights described above or are dissatisfied with the way we have used your information, please contact Andrew Murton, Head of Development Operations, at andrew.murton@balliol.ox.ac.uk. We will seek to deal with your request without undue delay, and in any event in accordance with the requirements of the GDPR. Please note that we may keep a record of your communications to help us resolve any issues which you raise.
If you remain dissatisfied, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office at the ICO website
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or about your personal data, or if you want to provide updates to your data, make any changes to your communication preferences or exercise any of your rights as outlined above, please contact us at one of the following addresses:
Development OfficeBalliol CollegeBroad StreetOxford, OX1 3BJUnited KingdomEmail: development.office@balliol.ox.ac.ukIf possible, please quote your Alumni Number
University Development and Alumni Relations Database TeamUniversity of Oxford Development OfficeUniversity Offices, Wellington SquareOxford, OX1 2JDUnited KingdomEmail: database@devoff.ox.ac.ukPhone: +44 (0)1865 611530If possible, please quote your Alumni Number
If you have registered with Oxford Alumni Online, either via the Balliol website or the central University Alumni Office, you can login and update your communication preferences at any time.
This privacy notice was last updated on 08 August 2022 with some minor text clarifications.
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time.