Development and Alumni Relations Office (DARO)
Who we are and how we can help you
What we do?
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, and is responsible for raising philanthropic funds to support the Maynooth University Foundation.
After 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 can we help you?
DARO is here to support your alumni and development needs. The team includes an Events Officer, Communications Officer, Senior Development Manager, Development Assistant and Data Management Officer that will work with you and your team to engage with your alumni.
*Please note an Engagement Officer role is vacant within the Office at present.
Schools, departments and other internal MU teams can select activities from the menu below to address their specific goals and challenges. The number of activities delivered for any team will depend on resources and timelines.
DARO can support you in the following ways:
* 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 follow to philanthropic best practice, including use of funds and recording donations to Maynooth University
(View the DARO engagement menu pdf here).
DARO request form:
To raise a request, please fill in this form.
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.
Alumni Data and GDPR:
Please note that our Office has the legal basis “performance of a contract” to process alumni data on behalf of Maynooth University. We understand that your team may have a business need to process alumni data. You need to have a lawful basis for processing their data and ensure that consent is given freely. You must make it clear to graduates that this data processing is separate to that of the DARO team and if they unsubscribe from one mailing list, this does not mean that they are unsubscribed from the other. If you are at all unsure or don't have a robust system in place for tracking consent and unsubscribes, it is best to talk to us and see how we can collaborate to meet your goals. GDPR law must be upheld. If not, the university is at risk of GDPR compliance warnings. These are serious and can lead to a substantial fine.
We look forward to working with you on your alumni project.