Universities to receive matched government funding for private gifts
Howard Lake | 13 February 2007 | News
The Guardian reports that the Prime Minister will this week announce that the Government will provide £1 from public funds for every £2 donated to 75 universities in England by an individual or business.
The matched gifts are designed to help UK universities establish endowment funds similar to those created by US universities, although there will be a cap of £2 million on matched funds available to each university.
The Prime Minister is said to believe that this new scheme will help develop and embed a culture of charitable giving to universities.
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Some UK universities have established endowments, but even Oxford University and its colleges hold only £3.6 billion, compared to Harvard University in the US which holds £14.9 billion.
The Guardian claims that in the UK “there is no culture among former students of giving small donations en masse”, which would probably be disputed by the development professionals in UK universities, some of whom have been running fundraising programmes for well over 10 years.
The initiative follows the publication in December 2006 of a report by the Sutton Trust, which supports education opportunities for students of underprivileged backgrounds, which concluded that UK universities needed to adopt a similar fundraising approach to US universities.
The initiative does not cover Scotland. The Scottish Executive told The Scotsman that it has no immediate plans to introduce the scheme in Scotland. Howver, ministers would be monitoring the impact of the system in England.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.