Philanthropic Funding

Oxford is reaching for the skies with its ambitious new funding drive. UB delves into the world of high finance.

Towards the end of May, the University of Oxford announced its goal of pulling in a massive £1.25 billion. £575 million had already been secured at the time of the launch, described as the most important campaign ever for the university, and the plans for the money are challenging. The Campaign for the University of Oxford will sustain and enhance the university's international reputation amid an uncertain era of state funding and growing global competition.

Towards this end, the launch money is already earmarked for development. £25 million has been pledged to the New Bodleian Library by the Garfield Weston Foundation, the largest gift ever made by the Foundation. Equally, Mr Wafic Rida Said is creating a Strategic Development Fund for the Said Business School valued at £25 million, while some 20,000 smaller donors have contributed up until March this year. Jon Dellandrea, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Development and External Affairs at the University of Oxford, is heavily involved with the fund. As far as he's concerned, turning to old students and the private sector makes perfect sense, and it's no recent news either: There is a perception here that philanthropy is North American, that it's inherently based in a different culture and that it doesn't exist here. But this idea is in all ways completely inaccurate.

"Historically, when I first came here after my time in Toronto, the first thing I did was to read through the history of Oxford. That was quite a task, but one of the things I discovered is you're talking over 850 years of benefactors, which goes to show that Oxford was well ahead of the game when universities that are conventionally seen as being on top of funding, like Harvard, were only just starting out,” explains Dellandrea.

A timeline of this length bears out the truth in Dellandrea's words, but there are further political reasons why we have come to regard this funding tactic with some suspicion on these shores: “The University of Oxford has been doing this for ages, but post-Second World War, the welfare state kicked in throughout the UK and new attitudes meant the tradition faded. We're trying to rekindle that spirit of philanthropy, the notion that it doesn't exist in the UK is wrong," he insists.

"We're looking for a minimum of £1.25 billion and this will come from a concerted planning exercise "what do we need to do to go forward? We don't want to just maintain but we want to enhance the university's status, its excellent position in the top worldwide universities and its place at the forefront of 20th-century HE issues. The government does not have sufficient funds to achieve this, so private support has to be increased."

"We will build the bursary programme, in an ideal world we would like to achieve 'needs blind' admission, where anyone can access our education regardless of the cost. We also want the postgraduate service we provide to be competitive with the best in the world."

Overall it would seem that moves to externalise funding are on the rise, which will probably come as a relief to many circulating the corridors of Whitehall. There's a clear logic in tapping into the inherent goodwill of older students, and where they've launched profitable businesses themselves, so much the better.

Dellandrea concludes: "I think this is a wider trend for all universities. For the academic year 2005/06, reported legacies from 81 universities totalled £417 million, and 50 per cent of that was for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The government has announced a match-funding programme to increase inputs, and the details of this are due to be released in August this year. The same thing happens in countries such as New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Canada, so why not here?"