The North Dakota State University Foundation (“Foundation”) respects the privacy of its constituents and this privacy statement explains how we collect, store, manage, and protect your data. It outlines the types of data that we hold and how we use this data to provide services to our donors, alumni, students, and supporters. Our intention is to be clear when we collect your personal information and tell you what we do with it.
The Foundation supports North Dakota State University (“University”) through contact with alumni, students and supporters of the University. We do this by offering a range of academic, social and networking events, and printed and online publications and communications. We also fundraise to support the University’s students, capital projects, teaching and research. In order to do this, we have a database that contains personal data collected by the Foundation during the course of our relationship with our students, alumni, donors and friends.
The Foundation maintains a record of friends, prospective donors, donors, and current and former students of the University. The majority of the personal data we collect is provided by the University, or the University departments, divisions, schools, faculties or associations with whom you have interacted.
If you give us a gift in person or online, or participate in fundraising activities we will collect and store your contact and gift information in the Foundation database.
If you have received a scholarship at the University, your data will be shared with the Foundation for donor stewardship purposes included tracking of awards, tracking of thank-you letters, and other scholarship reporting.
We may obtain, confirm or update other information about you, such as current address or occupation, form publicly available sources such as social media or the LexisNexis Accurint tool.
We may use third party services to obtain other information about you such as, date of birth, email address or cell phone number. We may also collect wealth screening/predictive modeling information from approved vendors.
We may obtain information about you from third parties to whom you have given your consent to share it (for example, a crowdfunding site to which you have contributed).
There are “do not track” or similar browser choices available to Internet users with respect to online web activity, but given the present lack of consensus of what constitutes an informed election, appropriate trigger or breadth of scope of such choice, our website will not operate any differently when a “do not track” signal is received.
(a) Traffic Data: Like most websites and applications, we collect certain information from your computer or mobile device by automated means when you visit our Websites or use our Services, such as IP address, domain server, software and hardware attributes, type of web browser, usage data, and pages accessed that provides us with data such as the number of visitors we receive or which pages are visited most often. This data helps us to analyze and improve the usefulness of the information we provide on our Websites and Services.
(b) Information We Receive From Others. We may obtain additional information about you from third party sources, such as service providers, vendors and social media platforms to provide you with more relevant information about our services. Our Websites and Services include social media features and widgets. These features may collect your IP address and the URL of the page you are visiting on our Websites, and they may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. We may directly host these social media features and widgets on our Websites or Services, or they may be hosted by third parties, in which case our interactions with the features will be governed by the privacy policy of that third party.
(c) Cookies, Web Beacons, and Other Technologies: Like most websites and applications, we and our service providers collect information from your visits to our Websites and use of our Services to help us gather statistics about their use and effectiveness, to evaluate the effectiveness of our ads both on and off our Websites and Services, to customize your experience on Websites and Services, and to improve the quality of our services. We do so through the use of various technologies, including cookies and tracking pixels. A cookie is a tiny data file that resides on your computer or device and allows us to recognize you when you return to one of our Websites using the same computer and web browser. You can remove or block cookies using the settings in your browser, but in some cases doing so may impact your ability to use the Websites or Services. In addition to cookies, we may use tracking pixels or web beacons, which collect certain standard information that your browser sends to our Websites or our Services such as your browser type and the address of the website from which you arrived at our Website. Tracking pixels do not identify individual users and the analysis of data obtained by tracking pixels is generally performed on an aggregate basis for site usage analytics, advertising auditing and reporting, and content and advertising personalization.
In addition to our own cookies, we allow third-party service providers to place cookies to help us optimize our Websites, tailor advertising and understand more about our Website visitors. Most browsers let you remove or reject cookies. To do this, follow the instructions in your browser settings. Many browsers accept cookies by default until you change your settings. For more information about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set on your computer or mobile device and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.com. We also use Google Analytics to provide us with demographic information about our visitors and to help us analyze how people use our website. For more on how Google processes your information, please visit https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
We use your personal data for our legitimate interest as described below, pursuant to a contractual agreement or by virtue of your consent, depending on the data involved.
We use your data to secure charitable contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations to support identified priorities for the University. Foundation staff members work in close partnership with University administrators, deans and faculty to fund undergraduate and graduate student scholarships, establish faculty chairs and professorships, provide college and departmental support, and enhance the campus infrastructure.
Our communications and marketing may be delivered to you by mail, email, telephone or social media. Together with the University and Foundation staff, we provide you with information about our fundraising programs and the University’s financial priorities. You may also receive University publications and news, academic course information, notification of alumni events, and promotion discounts, services and other benefits for alumni.
To help us understand more about you as an individual, your interests and your ability to support the University, we may carry out wealth screening/predictive modeling to determine the most appropriate donor experience for you. We may share your personal data with third party providers who provide research and analysis on matching donors and prospects with the right giving opportunities.
With respect to data collected when you visit our website, we use cookies and tools such as Google Analytics to improve our website and services. We use Google Analytics data in aggregate to monitor traffic and trends and improve our website and services, and not to look at the behaviors of individuals. We use other analytic tools to understand social media behaviors or our donors and prospects.
We are committed to holding your data securely and treating this data with sensitivity, although no organization can guarantee that data in its possession is completely immune to exfiltration or misuse. Your data is held on a database hosted on a secure server by a third party vendor, Blackbaud, and encrypted within the framework of that database software. This database is restricted to individuals who need to see the data to carry out their duties at the Foundation and the University. This is limited to: staff members of the Foundation, assigned IT support, and colleagues from other areas within the University. 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.
We do not share or disclose your personal data to anyone outside the Foundation, University or fundraising or alumni based committees other than vendors performing services necessary to our missions, such as the printer of our magazine and all hosts of our email server and online giving services. All third party vendors with whom your data is shared must agree to confidentiality and non-disclosure of the data before any data transfer takes place. We do not sell to or trade your data with any other organizations. No mobile information will be shared with third parties/affiliates for marketing/promotional purposes. Information sharing to subcontractors in support services, such as customer service is permitted. All other use case categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.
The Foundation considers its relationship with alumni and supporters to be lifelong and we will use your details until you tell us you no longer wish to hear from us. We will try to ensure that the data we hold for you is up to date and accurate.
You have the right to:
For inquiries about how the Foundation manages information, or to request changes, please email:
Gail Dancer, Vice President of Information Services
1241 University Drive North
Fargo, ND 58102
701-231-6817 | Email
If this statement changes, we will post the new statement on Foundation websites.
Last updated: August 2025
Margaret and her husband, Hugh Veit ’79, established the Eleanor S. Fitzgerald Memorial Graduate Student Scholarship to support NDSU students earning advanced degrees in the Department of Health, Nutrition, and Exercise Sciences or the Department of Human Development and Family Science.
Core areas of home economics remain part of current NDSU degree programs such as accounting; apparel, retail merchandising, and design; education; family and consumer science; financial planning; human development and family science; interior design; and nutrition science.
Home economics programs opened doors, particularly for women, to earn college degrees and pursue careers in education, Extension, state and federal government, business and industry, health care, and more. NDAC listed domestic economy as one of its courses in its founding year, 1890.
Established by Dr. Teresa Conner, dean of the NDSU College of Health and Human Sciences, and cochaired by Dr. Margaret Fitzgerald ’83 and Col. Esther Meyers ’75, the Wisdom Keepers provide support and share their knowledge and expertise with students, faculty, staff, and leadership in the College.
The home management house at NDAC was the first facility built on a college campus specifically for home management practice. In 1954, it was named in honor of Alba Bales, the first female academic dean at NDAC.