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The public launch of The University of Nottingham’s biggest ever fundraising campaign marks its first anniversary today (October 17th) more than half way towards its £150m target.
Impact: The Nottingham Campaign has so far raised £81m. The five-year campaign was launched in October 2011 to raise money across five strategic themes — The Nottingham Experience, Health and Well-being, Nurturing Talent, Ingenuity and Sustainable Futures.
The aim is to change lives, to tackle global challenges and shape the future. From individuals to multi-nationals, alumni, staff, students and friends of the University —
support for the Impact Campaign has been global and local.
An incredible start
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor David Greenaway, said: “This is an incredible start and I want to thank everyone who continues to support us either financially or in-kind. We have reached this point with some very significant corporate commitments, such as the recent gift from GlaxoSmithKline as well as major gifts from alumni like Campaign Co-Chair, David Ross (Law 1987).
“But I am also very grateful to the many alumni who make a financial commitment to the University every month. Regular gifts from our alumni and friends maintain a long-standing tradition which goes way back to the time when we relocated from the city to our wonderful University Park Campus back in 1928.”
The Vice-Chancellor has led the Campaign from the front having completed two Life Cycle rides end-to-end across the UK which raised almost £500,000 for two Campaign projects, Nottingham Potential and the Sue Ryder Care Centre for the Study of Supportive, Palliative and End of Life Care, based at the University.
University staff too have played a significant role with more than 400 signing up to donate the loose change from their pay each month, so far raising more than £1,000 for the Heartlight project. More than 130 of the University’s student telephone fundraisers have also donated an hour of their pay to help provide scholarships and bursaries for future Nottingham students.
Enhancing lives
Many donations from University alumni and friends support Cascade — a fund which supports student projects enhancing the lives both of the students themselves and many people around the world. Recent grants helped medical students and clinicians distribute second-hand orthotic equipment to Uganda for free whilst another helped students at the University’s Sutton Bonington Campus set up a farmers’ market, which is now a finalist in the BBC Radio Four Food Awards.
The Campaign’s impact has been immediate.
The first Nottingham Potential Learning Centre opened on the city's Broxtowe Estate thanks, in part, to a £2.1m gift from the David Ross Foundation. The Centre is supporting some of the city’s brightest and most promising school children to help them realise their full potential regardless of their socio-economic background. Many children have already benefited.
Five former recipients of University sports bursaries brought home two gold, two silver and a bronze medal from the London 2012 Olympic Games and one of the world’s largest banks, Santander, supported the Campaign with a £260,000 package of scholarships and awards for students and staff as part of the University’s regular bursary awards, which total more than £7.5m annually.
Earlier this year, the University won The Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for its research on global food security (included under the Campaign theme of Sustainable Futures), which takes place in Nottingham and on our pioneering international campuses in China and Malaysia. And a £1m gift from major benefactors Sir Harry and Lady Djanogly enabled the University to appoint its first Professor in Sustainable Energy Technologies, Gavin Walker.
The Campaign is going global, with the University currently establishing two charitable foundations to support the work of the China and Malaysia campuses. The aim is to help talented students — particularly those in financial need — to develop young academic talent and to grow the University’s research priorities across the world.
For more information about the Impact Campaign please go to: www.nottingham.ac.uk/impactcampaign
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Notes to editors: The University of Nottingham, described by The Sunday Times University Guide 2011 as ‘the embodiment of the modern international university’, has 40,000 students at award-winning campuses in the United Kingdom, China and Malaysia. It is ranked in the UK's Top 10 and the World's Top 75 universities by the Shanghai Jiao Tong (SJTU) and the QS World University Rankings. It was named ‘the world’s greenest university’ in the UI GreenMetric World University Ranking 2011.
More than 90 per cent of research at The University of Nottingham is of international quality, according to the most recent Research Assessment Exercise. The University’s vision is to be recognised around the world for its signature contributions, especially in global food security, energy & sustainability, and health. The University won a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2011, for its research into global food security.
Impact: The Nottingham Campaign, its biggest ever fund-raising campaign, will deliver the University’s vision to change lives, tackle global issues and shape the future. More news