Privacy Policy

The purpose of this privacy statement

Our alumni and supporters are extremely important to us, and this Privacy Statement explains how The University of South Florida Foundation and the Division of Advancement collects, stores, manages and protects your data. It outlines the types of data that we hold and how we use it to provide services to our students, alumni and supporters. We aim to be clear when we collect your personal information, and not do anything you would not reasonably expect.

Who we are and what we do

The USF Foundation and USF Alumni Association are direct support organizations of the University of South Florida and support The University of South Florida through contact with alumni, students, and supporters of the university. We do this by offering a range of academic, social and networking events and publications. We also fundraise to support the university’s students, teaching, research, and capital projects.

In order to do this, we have a database that contains personal data collected by the university or Foundation or Alumni Association 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 all Federal and State Data Requirements. The vast majority of the information we hold is obtained directly from you; and if you interact with any other Colleges, departments, divisions, schools or staff within the university we may receive data from these areas. 

We always aim to keep your details up to date, 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 USPS National Change of Address database (NCOA). 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 opt out. 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.

Full details of the university’s data protection policies are available here:

http://regulationspolicies.usf.edu/regulations-and-policies/regulations-policies-procedures.asp

As part of our work we process and store personal information relating to students, staff, alumni, current and potential supporters and friends of the university and we therefore adhere to USF Data Security Policies (see above), the CASE Statement of Ethics, CASE Principles of Practice for Fundraising Professionals at Educational Institutions, and CASE’s Donor Bill of Rights. The USF Foundation and Alumni Association process the information outlined in this Privacy 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 charitable mission (which includes fundraising and securing the support of volunteers);
  • Enabling the university to achieve its strategic and operational goals.

We may pursue these legitimate interests by contacting you by telephone, email, postal mail, text, 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 the USF Foundation and USF Alumni Association, is outlined in the ‘Your rights’ section below.

While the USF Foundation and USF Alumni Association 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, it recognizes that it is not the only lawful ground for processing data. As such, where appropriate the USF Foundation and USF Alumni Association will sometimes process your data on an alternative legal basis – for example, because you have given us your consent to do so.

The data we hold

The USF Foundation maintains a degree record of all former students of the university and, as such, we hold education records in perpetuity. Graduation information is published each year in graduation books 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. The personal data we store and process, the majority of which is given to us by our alumni and supporters but some of which we may obtain from other sources, 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;
  • 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;
  • records of communications sent to you by the USF Foundation or received from you;
  • volunteering by you on behalf of the university;
  • information about your wealth as it pertains to your ability to support our initiatives;
  • media articles about you;
  • information on your engagement in university meetings, events, groups or networks;
  • information about your use of www.giving.usf.edu, referral source, length of visit, number of page views and navigation around our website;

The university does not store any credit/debit card details and is fully PCI-DSS compliant. 

How we use your data

Unless you have requested otherwise, your data are accessible to the USF Foundation, USF Alumni Association, and the College you graduated from, and may be used and processed for a full range of alumni engagement and fundraising purposes. These include the following communications and marketing activities, which may be sent by postal mail, email, telephone, text, and social media:

  • Sending university publications;
  • Notification of alumni events;
  • Fundraising programs;
  • Promotion of discounts and services for alumni;
  • Promotion of alumni and student mentoring services.
  • The USF Foundation and USF Alumni Assocation may use third-party partners to support the activities described above. If you interact with the university through a third party then we may obtain information about you from that third party. The receipt of data by the USF Foundation and Alumni Association in this manner is subject to the third party’s own privacy policy. A list of parties with whom we partner in this way is available on request. Data obtained in this way are treated no differently than any other data held by the USF Foundation and USF Alumni Associatioin, and is covered by the terms of this Privacy Statement as soon as the data is received.

The USF Foundation and USF Alumni Association allow users to update their contact details online. Tools may be used to help us improve the effectiveness of the USF Foundation’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.

Wealth screening, data analysis and updating your contact details

The USF Foundation and USF Alumni Association are registered 501(c)3 organizations and to achieve our mission, we may gather information about you from publicly available sources – for example, Wealth Engine, Lexis/Nexis, and the Internet – to help us to understand more about you as an individual and your ability to support the university, including financially. We may carry out wealth screening, a process which uses trusted third-party partners to automate some of this work. You will always have the right to opt out of this processing. We may use information gathered from public sources or other departments, schools or faculties within the University of South Florida alongside the information you provide to undertake analysis of who might support the university and to understand the preferences of our alumni and supporters or potential supporters 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 also use publicly available sources to carry out due diligence on donors in line with the USF Foundation’s Gift Acceptance Policy.

We may carry out projects to find new contact details for alumni with whom we are not in contact to ensure the USF Foundation and USF Alumni Association 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://usf.to/update

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 Telephone Preference Service (TPS) 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 the USF Foundation’s work, and we are committed to working in a transparent, ethical, responsible and honest way. To reflect this commitment, we are a member of the Council for Aid and Support to Education (CASE) and the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) and we will also always abide by our institutional Donor Privacy guidelines.

Protecting your data

We are committed to holding your data securely and treating it with sensitivity. Your data is held in a database hosted on a secure server within the University of South Florida network. This database is protected by multi-level authentication and access is restricted to individuals who need to see the data to carry out their duties at the university or the USF Foundation or the USF Alumni Associaton. This is limited to: 

  • members of staff in the USF Foundation and USF Alumni Association; 
  • assigned IT support;
  • colleagues from other areas within the university who work closely with the USF Foundation and USF Alumni Association on the provision of services to alumni and supporters or potential supporters.

User access rights to the database are restricted according to individual job roles in order to ensure that users only see information relevant to them. This access is reviewed on a regular basis.

Unless we have a legal obligation to do so, we will not disclose your data to individuals, organizations or other entities outside the USF Foundation or USF Alumni Association other than those which are acting as agents for the USF Foundation and the USF Alumni Association. All external entities with whom data are being shared and to whom we are not legally bound must sign a contract and/or a confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement before any data transfer takes place. We do not sell or trade your data with any other organizations. The USF Alumni Association has affinity service partner relationships. Use of alumni data by the partner is limited to the sole purpose of offering benefits to the alumni, and any data shared with the partner must be returned or destroyed at the end of the contract. You may ask us to cease sharing your data with affinity partners.

Your rights

The USF Foundation and USF Alumni Association consider the relationship with alumni and supporters to be lifelong, and we will hold your details until you tell us you no longer wish us to do so. 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:

  • Be informed as to how we use your data (via this Privacy Statement);
  • Access or request a copy of the data we hold about you;
  • Update, amend or rectify the data we hold about you – you can manage your own data at usf.to/update
  • Change your communication preferences at any time to restrict how we process your data;
  • Opt out of some or all communication from the USF Foundation;
  • Ask us to remove your data from our records;
  • Withdraw consent, where it is used as a legal basis for processing;
  • Object to or restrict the processing of your information for any of the purposes outlined above.
SMS Messaging Privacy

Mobile phone numbers and SMS opt-in consent are collected solely for the purpose of delivering the text messages described at the time of opt-in.

Mobile phone numbers and SMS opt-in consent will not be sold, rented, shared, transferred, or disclosed to third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes.

 

The USF Foundation reserves the right to contact donors to conduct our legitimate business of managing and stewarding donors' gifts. If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement, or would like to receive a copy of the information, please contact:

via email: DIR_ADV_OPERATIONS@usf.edu
via postal mail:

USF Foundation, Inc.
Attention: Privacy Office/Legal Counsel
ALC 100
4202 E. Fowler Avenue
Tampa, FL 33620

Changes to the privacy statement

It may be necessary to change this privacy statement from time to time. We reserve the right to modify it. Please visit our website for the most-up-to-date privacy statement.