How we use your data
When you sign up to our newsletters, attend our events or take part in our projects, we store and use your data.
Read our Privacy Statement for the Department for Social Responsibility and Sustainability – including the Community Engagement team – below.
Privacy statement
How we use your information
The information you provide – such as your name or email address - will be used by the University’s Department for Social Responsibility and Sustainability to send you newsletters you have opted in to or to interact with you about events and projects you have engaged with.
Subscribing to our newsletters
We distribute several newsletters, such as our SRS newsletter, the Edinburgh Local newsletter, and the Sustainability Champions newsletter.
If you have opted-in to receive our newsletters, we will use your personal data to:
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Keep you up-to-date with news about the University’s social responsibility and sustainability programmes and relevant activities
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Promote public and invitation-only events, activities and programmes
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Track open and click rates in newsletters to monitor engagement and tailor content to particular groups of contacts, such as students or staff.
We do not subscribe contacts to our newsletters without their permission. You can opt-out at any time by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ button or by emailing srs.department@ed.ac.uk.
Attending our events and engaging with our projects
If you register for an event, sign up for one of our projects or use one of our microsites (such as the Sustainability Awards platform), we store and use your data to provide the engagement you have asked for.
If you use your University email address or username to engage with us, we will look up your email address, name and school or department in the University’s user account database. We do this to save time, ensure the accuracy of the data we hold about you, and to make sure that our online services and your data are accessed securely.
Giving us your email address
If you provide us with your email address, either by signing up for our newsletters, attending our events or taking part in our projects, we store your email address and other data in a University-approved third-party Contact Management System called Salesforce. We use this system to securely store your contact details and to help us keep track of how many staff, students and external partners we are currently engaging with.
Using our websites and online services
When you use our websites, we collect information where available about your IP address, operating system and browser type. This is data about users' browsing actions and patterns. It is used to inform improvements to the websites, for system administration, and to report aggregate information, such as the number of website visitors per month.
Filming and photography
We will always ask for your consent if we would like to photograph or film you in a way that you can be recognised. For event recordings, we will either use the University's Media Hopper system, which records events from the back of the room or film it professionally. In both cases, the faces of those in the audience will not be captured, and only the audio is recorded from members of the audience asking questions.
The images we have consent to use may be used for promotion internally and externally, in print and digitally, e.g. on websites, e-marketing, posters, banners, advertising, film, and social media. Videos may appear on the Media Hopper platform, our YouTube channel or on social media.
Sustainability Champions
When you sign up for the Sustainability Champions Network, we aim to help you meet and collaborate with other students and staff in your area. To do this, we may put you in touch with other Sustainability Champions on Microsoft Teams, or share your name and University email address with them via email.
Third parties
We use a number of external companies to process information about you on the University’s behalf. The University remains responsible for the information and will ensure it is kept securely.
We use the following companies to process your information:
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Salesforce: to store your contact details and record your engagement with projects and events
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Dotdigital: to send newsletters
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Eventbrite: to allocate tickets at events
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Online Surveys: to provide and receive responses to surveys
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Google Analytics: to track website engagement
- Jump: to register you for the Take Action for Sustainability pilot
- Pawprint: to register you for the Take Action for Sustainability pilot
Our legal basis
For our newsletters, we are using information about you because you have given us your consent.
We use information about you related to your attendance at our events, participation in our programmes or requests for support because it is in the legitimate interest of the University. If we did not use your information we would not be able to provide the events and programmes you are participating in, and it would be much harder to efficiently answer thousands of support requests.
How long will we keep your data?
We will hold the personal data you provided us in accordance with our data retention schedule. If you do not opt-in to receive emails about future events and activities, we will delete your data one year after the last time you came to an event or participated in one of our programmes, or if you ask us to remove it.
We use an automated tool to ascertain your predicted level of interest in our programmes and events. We use this information to monitor the success of our work.
If you have any questions, or if you'd like your data to be deleted, please contact us at srs.department@ed.ac.uk.
More information
This privacy statement is continued on the University's Data Protection webpages.