** Reply to note from Jane Hopkinson <[log in to unmask]> Wed, 24 Jan 2001 14:54:45 GMT
> Our marketing/fund-raising people have suggested cold-calling parents
> of current students to see if we can raise funds that way (the plan
> is to start wiuth a pilot on the grounds of 'what would your response
> be' and then extend if it looks positive, but that's irrelevant to
> the principle).
>
> My view is that we cannot release information to enable them to do
> this. While marketing is one of the things we have identified we
> might use student data for, this isn't data which the student has
> released about themselves, it is data which they have given us for
> use in case of emergency which actually belongs to the data subject,
> viz their parent/next of kin/whomever. This is clearly not an
> emergency, so I am saying no way.
>
> I am however assured that other institutions have done this (and
> reaped financial rewards therefrom). Question - was this pre-the
> Act? Or have I missed an obvious loophole? My colleagues have
> suggested that we could just call the permanent home number which
> the student has given us and talk to whomever, but
> a) since we know that in term time they are not going to be at their
> home number unless it is also their term time address, how could we
> justify it? and
> b) it could be tricky anyway, since the callers would have no
> idea who lives there or what their relationship to the student is
Yo sis,
According to the COP (version 1 anyway) fundraising was permitted. However,
fundraising was to be done against the students themselves as graduates
(alumni). You are not been given the home contact number to use
for fundraising, and most likely you do not say why you are asking for it at
all.
In fact you may only be given a home number for "next of keen purposes" or
simply as a home address for a student. Further you have no right to
contact the parents apart from a next of keen capacity as you never asked
them for their permission ... and your contract in any case is with the
student and not the parents/guardians.
So far my advice is free :-)
The rest shall cost you œ1000 paid in a tax free haven.
Your marketing chaps live in cloud cookooland. When parents have to already
give a 1000+ pounds fees, when student grants have disappeared, asking
parents for more you will deserve all the abuse you might get. It is not
about loopholes in the law, it is about the socioeconomic background of your
students. You will not get money from those that do not pay 1000+ already
(as by definitions they do not have much to spare). I think it is unlikely
that a high proportion of your students comes from affluent families,
privately educated at boarding schools costing 10-20k per year, so being at
Uni. will have produced substantial cost savings for the family. Work out
the rest :-)
Under DP you cannot go for the fundraising you are saying. I don't think it
makes much sense either.
:-)
Invoice in the post.
Charles
PS. Give my answer to your marketing chaps and charge them 1500. 500 for you
:-)
==============================================
Charles Christacopoulos, Secretary's Office, University of Dundee,
Dundee DD1 4HN, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44+(0)1382-344891. Fax: +44+(0)1382-201604.
http://somis.ais.dundee.ac.uk/
Scottish Search Maestro http://somis2.ais.dundee.ac.uk/
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