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Oxford passes its £1.25bn fundraising goal1

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 16 Mar 2012

Oxford University has raised nearly £1.3bn in an eight-year fundraising campaign, the fastest campaign of its size for any European university.

The university has this week announced that it has surpassed the original £1.25bn target it set in May 2004, which it made official in May 2008 at the formal launch of the campaign. The university had raised £575m by the time of the official launch and had reached £1bn by October 2010. The final £299.5m has been raised in less than a year and a half.

Exceptionally high-value gifts helped propel the university towards its target. The institution received $150m in total from alumnus James Martin, a £75m gift from Len Blavatnik and £26m from Mic Ertegun (also ex-students) over the course of the campaign. The university, and its colleges, received a total of more than 500 gifts worth over £250,000.

It was not only ex-students who contributed to the campaign, although one in three alumni did give at some point. While 36 per cent of total raised came from alumni, other supporters accounted for 23 per cent of income. Foundations brought in just under a quarter of the sum, while income from legacy pledges and corporations both came in at under 6 per cent of the total each.  

Overseas donors contributed marginally more than UK-based ones, with a split of 51 per cent to 49 per cent. Half of the money came in for the central university, with a further 40 per cent going to the colleges and 1 per cent for the Rhodes trust.

Vice-chancellor Prof Andrew Hamilton said: “When we embarked upon the planning for the campaign in 2004, our aim of raising £1.25bn seemed ambitious, and perhaps a little daunting. The fact that we have been able to pass this target in only seven-and-a-half years is testament to the strength of support for Oxford University around the world.”

The fundraising effort, while a European record, still lags significantly behind the US. It leaves Oxford with an endowment of £3.8bn – impressive, but overshadowed by the £20bn (approximately) held by Harvard in endowment.

Oxford University is now in the stages of planning the next phase of the campaign.