Staff Contacting Alumni

    Development and Alumni Relations Office - Keeping You Connected to Your Alumni

    Who we are:

    The Development and Alumni Relations Office (DARO) serves as a hub for activity and engagement with alumni and philanthropic supporters of Maynooth University. The office is responsible for connecting with and serving our 100,000 + alumni around the world through various programmes, events, publications and social media channels. The office is also responsible for raising philanthropic funds to support the Maynooth University Foundation. 
    The DARO team includes the following roles:

    • Senior Development Manager
    • Development Assistant
    • Events Officer
    • Communications Officer
    • Data Management Officer
    *Please note an Engagement Officer role is vacant within the Office at present.

    Once a student is conferred, their data is migrated from the student registry to our database. Our team manages the graduate’s contact details and consent preferences.
     

    How we can help you:

    DARO is here to support your alumni and development needs. We will work with you and your team to engage with your alumni. DARO supports departments, schools and other internal MU teams to address the specific goals and challenges in connecting with their alumni.

    To request support, follow the following steps:

    1. Review the various activities from the DARO support menu below.
    2. Select the appropriate request for your needs.
    3. Submit your request through the DARO request form.

    DARO Support Menu:

    * Please note: Philanthropic donations to Maynooth University should be processed via the Maynooth University Foundation as the University's preferred vehicle for accepting and processing gifts and adhering to the MU Gift Acceptance Policy. This enables the University to follow philanthropic best practice, including use of funds and recording donations to Maynooth University

    View the DARO support menu as a pdf here:.

    DARO support menu

    Once a request is received, a member of the DARO team will follow up with you. The number of activities delivered for any team will depend on resources and timelines.  
     

    How the process works:

    We need a minimum of 2 weeks’ notice for a standard request (e.g. communication to be sent to alumni), 3 weeks' notice for a more substantial request (e.g. an alumni employment summary and analysis report), and a longer lead time for event support, depending on the ask and capacity of the team within a given period.

    Our Communications Officer will discuss with you the goals of the outreach you'd like to make with your alumni and the best vehicle and timeline for the communication, and then work with you on the content. We'll do our best to support your timeline whilst managing other commitments of the Office.   

    Our Development team can provide support for fundraising appeals, including planning, activating and monitoring as well as fund administration and donor relations. Depending on the need, the Development supports vary from short to long-term engagements and should work towards advancing strategic initiatives.

    In line with GDPR guidelines, we cannot share alumni contact details with you, but we can send, for example, an email to your alumni on your behalf. We can also identify notable alumni names (whose information can be found publicly) and anonymised data.

    To ensure that our database is kept  up-to-date, we ask that you let us know outcomes of your engagement with alumni. For example, if you request an event invite to be sent, we ask that the attendee list is shared with us so we can record alumni attendance on our database. If we send out a survey on your behalf, we ask that DARO also has access to the data submitted. This collaborative approach helps us maintain accurate records, maximising the effectiveness of our communications with alumni.
     

    Alumni Data and GDPR:

    Please note that our Office processes alumni data under the legal basis of “performance of a contract". Failing to uphold GDPR could lead to compliance warnings and substantial fines for the University.

    Any data processing outside DARO’s remit requires freely given consent. You must ensure graduates understand that this is separate from DARO’s data processing. If a graduate unsubscribes from DARO’s mailing list, they are not automatically unsubscribed from another teams’ mailing list, and vice versa. 

    For expert guidance on compliance and alumni email consent, please contact our team first. We have the knowledge and experience to help you achieve your goals efficiently and effectively.

    We look forward to working with you.