Written on behalf of Lori Houlihan, Vice-Provost (Advancement)

Next time you walk through the Wilkins Terrace, look out for a striking new piece of public art literally reaching out to you. The installation, featuring over 60 hands individually cast in bronze and aluminium, is UCL’s new Donor Wall – a high-profile celebration of the enormous role that philanthropy plays in supporting our community and delivering our long-term ambitions.

Close up of the new Donor Wall in Wilkins Terrace

The hands belong to members of UCL’s Circle of Benefactors, a diverse group of our most generous donors who give to us at the £1m+ level, plus other leading supporters of UCL. They include TV presenter Nick Ross representing the Jill Dando Fund, AI pioneer Demis Hassabis representing DeepMind, Founder and Executive Chairman of Iceland Food Sir Malcolm Walker, Hong Kong-based alumna Cathy Lee, and alumni Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas – plus many more individuals, companies, organisations, charities, trusts and foundations from around the world.

The Wall was created by Slade School alumna Dr Sarah Fortais and you can find out more about her concept in this video.

We officially unveiled the Donor Wall last week at a wonderfully celebratory event to demonstrate to our largest donors how much their investment and partnership matters to UCL.

Unveiling the Donor Wall: (l to r) Angharad Milenkovic, Director of Development; alumnus and donor George Farha; artist Sarah Fortais; President & Provost Michael Arthur; Vice-Provost (International) Nicola Brewer

Guests included UCL alumnus George Farha, whose name will be familiar to all of us thanks to his outstanding and very diverse support of UCL, which ranges from funding the George Farha Café to supporting scholarships and posts in areas including women’s health, social justice and the built environment.

Recalling his student days, he commented that UCL is “a lot bigger and quite a bit shinier” than in his day, adding that “the thing that has remained the same is UCL’s commitment to its radical roots.”

The event was also an opportunity to update guests on the progress of the It’s All Academic Campaign, to which they have contributed significantly. The Campaign total now stands at £525 million and is set to reach its target of £600 million in 2020 – one year ahead of schedule.

Students who have received a scholarship thanks to philanthropy reveal the latest Campaign total

These huge sums of money are hard to visualise but what we can see very clearly is the tangible impact they are having. Thanks to philanthropy, hundreds of students have received life- changing opportunities through scholarships. A major new home for our neuroscience research bringing is rising up on Grays Inn Road, bringing UCL’s Queen Square Institute of Neurology and the hub of the UK Dementia Research Institute together under one roof.

Nick Ross marks the Donor Wall unveiling on behalf of the Jill Dando Fund, which supports the UCL Jill Dando Institute

Generous donations have catalysed the creation of institutes and research programmes which harness UCL’s multidisciplinary excellence to lead the way in artificial intelligence, mental health, mission-oriented economics, early years education, and much more.

The success of the Campaign, and the breadth and diversity of Circle of Benefactors members, is a great tribute to Lori Houlihan, Vice-Provost (Advancement). Under her leadership, UCL has grown to become one of the UK’s highest performing fundraising universities and this Campaign has broadened and globalised our supporter base significantly.

Celebrating transformational philanthropy

Unfortunately, due to ill health, Lori couldn’t be at last Thursday’s event to see the fruits of her astute and creative leadership. I was privileged to step in on her behalf. While she is recovering, she has asked me to look after OVPA and I am happy to be working with her brilliant team in the interim.

I know that Lori would want me to thank the whole UCL community, whose support has been vital to making the Campaign the great success it is. The Donor Wall provides a highly visible testament to how far UCL has come in establishing fundraising as a university-wide endeavour and a crucial enabler of our academic mission.

What we do here at UCL matters enormously.

We provide society’s best chance of tackling some of the most pressing issues of our times. We change students’ lives and improve their life chances.  As a university, we aim to be a force for public good and have a positive impact on people, lives and communities.

All of this is worth paying for.

I fully support calls for greater public investment and secure funding streams for the transformative work that we do. However, the environment in which we strive to fulfill our multiple ambitions has become increasingly complex as successive governments reduce levels of core funding while introducing more rigorous performance measurement and accountability. Increased competition, shifts in demand, changes in student numbers and behaviours, as well as the potentially transformational impact of technology and innovation have also affected our operating environment. These challenges have been further exacerbated by the abiding uncertainty regarding the impact of Brexit.

The support of universities by individuals and organisations is not new. Philanthropy has an illustrious tradition in the UK and education has been a significant beneficiary since the Middle Ages. UCL was founded by philanthropy and it remains an important part of our funding mix, and one that makes a unique contribution to what we can achieve.

Professor Alan Thompson gives keynote address at the annual New York reception

In September 2016, UCL publicly launched It’s All Academic – a major philanthropy and engagement campaign to raise £600m and generate 250,000 volunteering hours for UCL. It is focused on four key themes, reflecting areas in which UCL is genuinely world-leading and is making a unique impact – health, London, students and disruptive thinking. The key projects include research into dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, eye health, and economics and public policy, capital projects including a new neuroscience building, UCL East, a new building for vision and the new Student Centre, and student support such as scholarships.

I’m delighted that health is one of the four major themes of the fundraising Campaign and continues to be the strongest in regards to funds raised. As of the end of January 2019, the theme has raised £369M (cumulative since August 2011).

Professor Mark Emberton addresses a sold out alumni event in Kuala Lumpur

In addition to the scale of the campaign, I have been impressed by its strategic sophistication and professionalism. The Office of the Vice Provost (Health) and the SLMS Senior Executive Group works closely with the Office of the Vice-Provost Advancement (OVPA) to ensure an integrated approach to fundraising planning and activity. The Deans and I are personally involved in the actual fund-raising initiatives. Importantly, we are not using donations to fill in budget holes but to transform SLMS in order to deliver our ambitions for real world impact.

Some key successes  

A hub for the UK Dementia Research Institute and a new home for the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology.

Significant gifts totalling over £38m have been raised for a new neuroscience facility on Gray’s Inn Road to host the central hub of UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) and the Queen Square Institute of Neurology. These include: £5M from a UK Foundation, a £3M gift from a Hong Kong based Alumna and £2M from the Wolfson Foundation. Our aim is to create a world-class facility to find effective treatments for dementia and neurological diseases such as: Multiple Sclerosis, Huntington’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, Motor Neurone Disease, Stroke and Epilepsy.

Notable gifts for Cancer include £1.87M from a grateful patient donor to support prostate cancer research, £660k from the John Black Charitable Trust to support the MINIMA minimal cancer magnetic therapy Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) project led by Professor Mark Lythgoe in the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Engineering (CABI), and a recently awarded gift of £763k from the JP Moulton Foundation to support a clinical trial in prostate cancer led by Professor Mark Emberton.

SLMS colleagues are also working closely with OVPA on a number of emerging fundraising priorities:

• The Institute of Global Health Leadership aims to improve the efficiency, safety and quality of emerging health care systems.
• A potential fundraising partnership between UCL and the Zoological Society of London could drive forward the ‘one health’ approach linking human, wildlife and domestic animal health.
• OVPA have recently commissioned a fundraising feasibility study for Oriel, to test the philanthropic appeal of our ophthalmology research. Our plan is to build a brand new centre for world-class eye care, leading-edge research and professional training to address the growing burden of eye disease in an increasingly ageing population. The study will help inform our fundraising strategy and support of the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology more widely.

We have also historically benefited from other philanthropic support:

• The Pears Foundation donated £5million towards a new building at the Royal Free which will house the UCL Institute of Immunity and Transplantation (IIT);

The Pears Building will combine NHS patient care with the latest developments in research to provide better treatments for diseases such as cancer, diabetes, HIV and tuberculosis, as well as for traditional and tissue-developed transplants.

• The cost of the Zayed Centre for Research into Rare Disease in Children was met by a combination of fundraising led by Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, £10m of funding from the Research England UK Research Partnership Investment Fund(UKRPIF) and a gift of £60m from Her Highness Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak; and

The Zayed Centre for Research is a world-leading centre of excellence that will enable scientists and clinicians to more accurately diagnose, treat and cure young people with rare diseases.

• The Paul O’Gorman building which houses the UCL Cancer Institute was established through the help of Children with Cancer UK.

Philanthropy is not core funding but it helps us to add excellence to the core, and amplifies and expands what we do. Importantly, it acts as a catalyst to leverage further funding. For example, the combined philanthropic match of £102m for the IIT, Zayed Centre and Queen Square secured £51m from the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund. It increases the profile and influence of a particular project or area of work, brings together people and institutions in new ways, nurtures novel early-stage research and takes it through proof of concept to the point at which funding councils, the NHS, business and industry and other partners have the confidence to invest.

Philanthropic giving in the UK has a healthy trajectory. For 2017-18, giving to UK universities was up 11 percent (£979m to £1.08bn. This reflects both a growing awareness that universities are fundraising organisations and the increasing professionalism of university fundraising.

At the end of 2018, the UCL campaign had raised over £485m and had generated 160,000 volunteering hours. UCL is one of the UK’s highest achieving fundraising universities, usually ranked third in the UK for the level of fundraising income secured, behind Oxford and Cambridge.

Later this month UCL will unveil its new Donor Wall on the Wilkins terrace, which will for the first time recognise donations of over £1m to UCL.  Look out for this innovative piece or art designed by a Slade Student – a fitting celebration of philanthropy at UCL.

It is clear that philanthropic giving represents an absolutely vital income stream for SLMS, the university and the health sector as a whole. I look forward to seeing us build on this success.

UCL’s 2018 alumni survey showed that 89% of alumni who responded feel positive about the experience they had as students here and 91% describe themselves as ‘proud’ to have been a UCL student.

Notably, UCL graduates who are still in touch with other alumni are significantly more likely to say that their student experience was excellent, to be proud of UCL and to still feel connected to the university.

Cathy and Martin Lee present £3m donation to UCL

These proud, connected alumni are our biggest advocates, our volunteers and, in many cases, also our donors – as we saw in November, when Hong Kong alumna Cathy Lee and her husband Martin announced a donation of £3 million to support our neuroscience research. So keeping that strong sense of connection to UCL and their UCL network is vital.

Clearly student experience in the round plays a huge part in that and the investment UCL is making to support students to have an excellent social as well as academic experience – for example through the new Student Centre – is very important.

Keeping graduates in touch with UCL and each other

But what we do after students graduate can also make a big difference in keeping them connected to UCL and each other, and to maintaining that sense of pride and belonging.

As Vice-Provost (Advancement), alumni engagement is one of my key responsibilities. That’s why UCL’s It’s All Academic Campaign is as focused on building and growing our worldwide alumni community as it is on raising £600 million in philanthropic income.

UCL alumni professional development event

Since the Campaign launch in September 2016, my office has led a wide range of alumni relations activities, from delivering a range of social and professional development events in London, the UK regions and key international markets to developing online platforms through which alumni can network, find friends and contacts, and support each other and current students.

Strongest relationship is with departments

However this isn’t and could never be the totality of our alumni engagement. The survey confirmed what we have long known – that the majority of alumni feel the strongest sense of relationship with their schools, faculties and departments.

Therefore a big part of what we do is work with departments to support, develop and facilitate their own targeted alumni engagement.

Your alumni want to stay involved and can help you tremendously, through mentoring and work experience opportunities for current students, research and business collaborations, course marketing support, advocacy, and of course philanthropy.

We know that many departments already have well-established alumni programmes in place, while others are still developing or are at an early stage. Whatever stage you are at, my office is here to help you reach and engage your alumni through a variety of methods and channels.

Opportunities to engage international alumni

Professors Hazel Genn and Geraint Rees meet Hong Kong alumni

The alumni survey also gave evidence of something that we have long been intuitively aware – that international alumni communities are some of our most active and engaged, despite having fewer opportunities to physically come back to visit UCL. Travelling abroad to study is momentous and memorable; that chance to meet people from different cultural backgrounds (often for the first time) and to live in an iconic capital city is life-shaping and forges a powerful connection.

All relationships need work and attention to keep them going, and our key international communities hugely appreciate visits from UCL staff to keep them feeling part of the community as well as our regular digital communications.

USA alumni reconnect with UCL

Through 2019, we will be working hard to nurture and build on our international alumni engagement, in particular in the key markets of China and Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, Japan and the USA.

If you have plans to travel in those regions this year and might be interested in taking part in alumni events or meetings, please contact my team for more information.

University years are a memorable and, for many people, transformative time, shaping the rest of our lives. The time students spend here at UCL is comparatively short but the memories last a lifetime – and so should the relationship. Investing in keeping our alumni close reaps multiple benefits for UCL, our students and for alumni themselves.

For advice on how the alumni relations team can support you to further your alumni engagement or on how to take part in international alumni events, please contact us on alumni@ucl.ac.uk.

We are now just over two years since the public launch of the It’s All Academic Campaign to raise £600m in philanthropic income for UCL. Earlier in 2018 we hit the £400m mark a year ahead of the projected schedule and we will reach £500m in the first quarter of next year.

Barring extreme unforeseen circumstances, our next campaign will certainly put UCL in the highly exclusive club of non-USA universities with billion pound campaigns. So this seems like a good time to reflect on how we have managed to come so far so quickly, and how we build on this success to drive forward our future fundraising – especially in an economic and political environment that has become deeply unpredictable.

Philanthropy in the funding mix

Philanthropy helps UCL multiply and accelerate its local, national and global impact. With a declining proportion of the funding for our research, teaching and enterprise coming from the state, we need to diversify sustainable financial support for the academy’s important work. In the US, a big chunk of that traditionally comes from private philanthropy. In the UK, as the role of the state increased after World War II, the role of philanthropy declined.

There is an urgent need for it to grow again, as state support shrinks. UCL’s Campaign puts us at the forefront of efforts to encourage that.

Anticipating emerging global concerns

The process of philanthropy is sometimes seen as being driven by the needs or priorities of a particular institution, department or individual. In this model, the need for funding is identified and it is then the job of the advancement team to find and cultivate the right donors. In planning this Campaign, for example, we consulted widely with the academic community to set the major priority projects on which we would focus.

Wolfson Foundation Chief Executive Paul Ramsbottom meets UCL’s Adrian Ivinson to tour the UK Dementia Research Institute interim hub

Many more times, however, the drive is the other way – the world says ‘this is important’ and UCL’s expertise and excellence puts us in the driving seat. This is where philanthropy really becomes an art as well as a science. As the external environment changes, so does the impact that major global philanthropists want to have. UCL’s success lies in its ability to anticipate emerging priorities and concerns so that it is positioned to lead the way rather than playing catch up.

Academic expertise to engage donors

A really close relationship between the academic community and UCL’s fundraising professionals is crucial to this. Over the past very busy few months in particular, the time, energy and expert knowledge of many academic colleagues has been what has enabled UCL to create meaningful engagements with potential donors and expand their understanding of UCL in a compelling way.

Professor Tariq Enver conveys the unique impact of UCL cancer research to current and prospective donors

From mobilising quickly to respond to emerging opportunities in artificial intelligence to dedicating deep consideration to how we coherently tell the complex and unique story of cancer research and translation at UCL – this is where the expert knowledge of the academic community is vital and irreplaceable. We know there are already multiple demands on your time and we are hugely grateful for your willingness to work hand in hand with the fundraising team. It is this approach – the fundraising university rather than any university with a fundraising office – that makes the difference between the merely good and the global elite in the world of philanthropy.

Thinking outside in and inside out

An added bonus of being a fundraising university with close connections to global influencers is the dual perspective this gives us – ‘outside in’ as well as ‘inside out’ thinking. In a sector in which reputation is hard currency operating in a highly political environment, the information and insight we gain from interested, supportive and sometimes critical friends is immensely valuable.

Philanthropy, Brexit and global UCL

As we edge closer to March 2019, I hear more and more concern across the community that our philanthropic fundraising will be negatively affected by Brexit. It’s true that anecdotally I am starting to hear from a small number of philanthropists that the uncertainty around the UK’s political and economic position is making them think twice about giving right now. From a philanthropy point of view, though, it is not the impact of an economic downturn that is my major concern: we saw that the 2008 economic shocks had very little effect on levels of philanthropic giving. We can hope that any economic downturn caused by Brexit would have similarly little lasting impact.

The greater threat to my mind is the damage that is already being done to the UK’s reputation for being open and global, a place that is internationally engaged and collaborates across borders. Philanthropy is global and major philanthropists want to partner with institutions that share that internationalist ethos. UCL’s cross-disciplinary excellence and ethos make it a unique and highly desirable partner, but we can’t solve all the world’s challenges by ourselves. Leading global philanthropists are even more impressed by how we partner internationally to address large-scale problems that no one institution or industry can do alone.

Engaging supporters and alumni in Hong Kong

That makes our preparations for Brexit, and in particular the excellent work led by the Global Engagement Office to expand our international partnerships, crucial. If the UK is going to become more inward-looking, we must ensure that UCL expresses ever more proactively its internationalist ethos. It is work that the Provost and Vice-Provost (International) are leading but in which all of us play our part. I am confident that UCL’s determination to maintain and expand it’s global vision against the current political tide will win us even greater philanthropic support and success in the coming years.

With the It’s All Academic Campaign for UCL now well into its second year, I thought this would be an opportune time to recap the ways in which my team – the Office of the Vice-Provost Development (OVPD) – can support you with managing the donors and donations you are already working with, and help you to expand the pool of potential donors with whom you are engaging.

Campaign update

At the end of February 2018, the It’s All Academic Campaign was £374m towards its target of £600m. We are committed to engaging a community of supporters and mobilising them to become ambassadors, volunteers and donors. These goals and actions, fully support the UCL2034 priorities.

Professor Nick Fox, who helped to establish the UCL Dementia Retail Partnership, which uses the plastic bag levy to support UCL research

Recent successes in the last two months include a £5m donation from a UK foundation and a £1.2m legacy gift, both to support neuroscience capital projects. This month we are announcing a donation of £1m that has come from Baillie Gifford to support the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), directed by Mariana Mazzucato, to kick-start their training, research and public engagement activities related to ‘mission oriented innovation’. A number of other high level donations are in the pipeline and relationships with some significant global philanthropists are progressing promisingly.

We are honoured when people choose to donate to UCL, in November we celebrated over 55 donors who have given £1m+ at an exclusive Circle of Benefactors event.  Being able to mark their generosity and say thank you to so many people was a real privilege. We intend to create a lasting legacy of philanthropy at UCL, our new donor recognition wall in the Wilkins Terrace will ensure that future generations of students, staff and alumni will know who UCL’s benefactors are. We are also very excited to be choosing a bespoke design for this project from a competition that was open to Slade and Bartlett students.

Keeping the UCL-donor relationship strong

Ultimately, OVPD is here to ensure that philanthropic giving to UCL is growing. That we fulfil our potential to secure funds, that due diligence around donations is carried out, that donations are processed and managed effectively, and that the relationship with each donor is stewarded consistently and to a high standard.

Working hand in hand with the academic community I am proud of the relationships we have built up together. The partnership of staff across UCL is crucial as a donor can have multiple entry points into UCL. In many cases my team identifies people or organisations who are likely to be interested in funding a specific area that UCL excels in, or in supporting UCL itself, and works to take that relationship forward. In other cases, a potential donor develops a relationship with an individual or department and expresses an interest in supporting their work in some way. For example, a patient treated by one of our leading academic clinicians, an alumnus who becomes engaged with a particular piece of work being carried out by their old department, or even someone who visits an event or sees a report in the media and becomes fired up by what UCL is doing.

Contact us early

My main message is – bring my team in early when you become aware that someone may be interested in giving. The process of developing a proposal that will meet the needs of both the donor and the recipient can have hidden complexities. It needs to be compelling, realistic and fully rounded, so that the donation does not incur hidden costs, and we need to be confident we can fulfil the donors’ wishes.

Managing your donation

Lord and Lady Bearsted meet with students at the scholarships and bursaries reception; an event to highlight the important and significant impact of philanthropy at UCL.

The process of accepting a philanthropic gift can also have multiple layers; UCL policy states that gifts over £10,000 must be processed through OVPD and has a gift agreement in place. We are also happy to process or advise on gifts below that. I want to stress that OVPD does not take or redirect any slice of this funding – the entirety of the donation is passed through to you. There are a number of ways to ensure that a donation makes the most difference, such as GiftAid in the UK. There are also tax efficient giving opportunities in place in the US, Canada and Hong Kong too, see our giving page for more information.

Engaging with alumni

Developing and strengthening our worldwide community of alumni is also a highly important part of what OVPD does. Again, partnership with people and departments across UCL is crucial. An engaged alumni community is one of the most valuable assets a university can have.

The range of events and opportunities we offer alumni is varied and their number growing. I was with Susan Collins, Slade Professor and Director of the Slade School of Fine Art at an alumni event in New York this week to celebrate the opening of an exhibition at the Met Breuer Museum.  The exhibition features the auto-icon of Jeremy Bentham at its heart and was a wonderful opportunity to meet alumni old and new, and some of the volunteers of the UCL Friends and Alumni Association.

So far we have secured over 90,000 alumni volunteer hours towards the Campaign target of 250,000 hours.  UCL alumni can find inspiring volunteering opportunities and access professional development resources on our Alumni Online Community portal. These brilliant individuals may well want to give financially, but there are many other ways in which they can support us – by acting as advocates, supporting current students and recent graduates with mentoring and internships, volunteering within alumni clubs in their area, and many more. Many faculties and departments at UCL have fabulous alumni programmes in place; if you would like to explore how you can start or develop alumni activity in your area, please do contact us.

Sign up for regular updates

My office now produces a regular newsletter, sharing highlights of our activities and Campaign updates as well as tips and learnings from successful fundraising projects. We’d love to keep in touch with you and let you know how you can get involved with the Campaign, so please do email campaign@ucl.ac.uk with your full name, job title and UPI (on the bottom left hand corner of your staff card).

Philanthropy is exciting because it can do things and reach places that other funding streams simply can’t manage. UCL is increasingly on the radar of the world’s great global philanthropists who are looking for partners with whom they can pursue their ethos of “change not charity”. By working together we can offer them not just an unbeatable opportunity to make transformational change in the world but also an unbeatable donor experience; the two combined will position UCL as one of the preeminent partners for philanthropy on the international stage.

You can see more information about how to work with us on our website.

“What better return on an investment is there than knowing you have made a difference that will contribute to greater knowledge and understanding, and the development of academic excellence?”

I love this comment by Richard Jenkins, one of UCL’s wonderful supporters, because it encapsulates both what philanthropy achieves and what motivates people to give.

Richard along with his partner Maureen Amar fund a range of scholarships and have their own particular reasons for focusing their philanthropy there. But that generous impulse to drive change and improve lives is one that anyone who has worked in fundraising will recognise.

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