University of Leeds launches £60m fundraising campaign
Howard Lake | 1 December 2013 | News
The University of Leeds is embarking on a £60 million fundraising campaign, its first major fundraising campaign since 1925. The funds will be used to create new student , push forward its research and support its vision of a place among the world’s leading universities.
The Making a World of Difference Campaign is structured around five key areas of the university’s people and research – Arts & Culture, Climate Change, Global Society & Business, Human Health, and Students.
First stage of the campaign
The first stage of the Campaign has already attracted over 10,000 gifts so far, and these are already helping hundreds of students and supporting research.
The University has also received its biggest ever donation, a gift of £9 million which will support the creation of its new library on its city centre campus. The library will be named after the donor, Irvine Laidlaw, who studied economics at Leeds in the early 1960.
The four-storey building, due to open in the spring of 2015, will also provide a new home for some of the University’s outreach work with the local community.
Lord Laidlaw has been a donor to the University for some time, providing scholarships for students from less privileged backgrounds and supporting the brightest undergraduates to join major research projects.
He said:
“I came from a quite privileged background and at that time Leeds was very much a working class university. As Grants and Welfare Secretary for the students’ union I was able to help people who were facing serious money issues – and I found out about deprivation in a way I’d not experienced before.
“This experience showed me how privileged I was and it stayed with me. I have been very fortunate; my business has been a great success, but success is not just about talent or ability. It’s also about encouragement, whether from the family, school or University, and we need to do more to nurture people’s ability”.Advertisement
Other major donations
The Campaign has already received a number of other large donations:
• A £2.5 million gift from Bacteriology and Biochemistry graduate Peter Cheney and his wife Susan has established a programme of fellowships
• A donation from Economics and Politics graduate Michael Beverley enabled the University to build a Super Resolution Light Microscope
• The Liz and Terry Bramall Foundation is funding the University’s Reach for Excellence programme for five years, supporting work in local schools and communities to encourage more local young people to aim high and achieve their full potential.
University Chancellor Melvyn Bragg explained how these donations revive a tradition of philanthropic support for universities:
“In the post-war era, state funding for universities grew and the need for philanthropy declined. But now the state is pulling back, and I don’t see how we can be an ambitious university, creating inspirational opportunities for our students and growing our research to tackle the major challenges of the modern world, without the support of our donors”.
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.