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The University of Nottingham’s biggest ever fundraising campaign has raised £100m in just two years and is now more than two thirds of the way towards its target.
Impact: The Nottingham Campaign was launched in October 2011. It is supporting a vibrant range of projects which are already changing people’s lives, shaping the future and having a global impact. This inspirational video showcases some of the major achievements so far.
Generous Campaign gifts from all over the world are being contributed on a regular basis adding to major gifts including our largest ever corporate gift and our largest ever single gift from an alumnus. The £100m announcement was made at the launch of a major new exhibition, Pop Art to Britart, at the Djanogly Art Gallery. The exhibition is of late twentieth century and contemporary art from the private collection of alumnus David Ross, who is also Co-Chair of the fundraising campaign.
Remarkable achievement
University of Nottingham Vice-Chancellor, Professor David Greenaway, said: "It is a remarkable achievement to have come so far, so soon in the Campaign’s life and it gives me immense pride to see tangible evidence of its impact on communities locally, nationally and internationally.
"Impact is funding our world leading research on critical global issues; enabling students to fulfil their potential in the broadest sense by supporting the arts, sport and community projects; and continually widening access to a Nottingham education.
"Our supporters should feel pride in what they have helped us to achieve and I thank everyone whose contributions, whether through donations or support, have got us to this point.
"Although this means we are well on course to reach our £150 million target I am well aware that we still have a third of the way to go and raising the last £50 million will be a big challenge. I hope even more people will be inspired by Impact and will join with us to reach our ambitious goal.”
Visible impact
The Campaign has already had a visible impact:
• Crucial advances into childhood brain tumours, reducing the time it takes to diagnose tumours from 9.1 to 6.9 weeks;
• 2,000 of Nottingham’s most disadvantaged children to enjoy a focused programme of support to inspire them to attain and achieve more;
• More support for palliative care research, stroke rehabilitation research and wider educational aspiration and attainment in the City, thanks to the Vice-Chancellor’s three UK-wide Life Cycles;
• More than 500 new student scholarships, bursaries and prizes rewarding excellence and including an extra £100,000 to help students from lower income backgrounds while they study with us;
• Two gold, two silver and a bronze medal won at the 2012 London Olympics, won by student and alumni sports bursary recipients
• Five new professorial chairs at the University;
• 600 staff regularly donating loose change from their wages.
Many donations from University alumni and friends support Cascade — a fund which has already supported more than 150 student projects enhancing the lives both of the students themselves and many people around the world. Recent grants helped set up a small business loans scheme to help some of the poorest communities in rural Ghana, part-funded architecture students to design and build a pre-school to replace a dilapidated shack for South African township children and set up an award-winning student farmers’ market at Sutton Bonington.
Meanwhile on the University’s Innovation Park Construction has begun on one of the Campaign’s landmark projects, the new £20million GlaxoSmithKline Carbon Neutral Laboratory for Sustainable Chemistry, a unique building which is set to become a global centre of excellence shaping the future of drug discovery.
For more information about the Campaign please go to the Impact website.
Inspiring stories
What they say about Impact: The Nottingham Campaign...
Third-year English undergraduate Kirsty Meakin from Mansfield might never have got the chance to study at The University of Nottingham had it not been for the University’s Widening Participation and Scholarships and Bursaries programme, supported by Impact. And now she’s inspiring others.
“I first came to the University when I was in Year 9 on an Aim Higher residential. I really enjoyed the experience and from then on always had the University in mind. Then I was accepted on to a Summer School programme and that definitely made me want to come and study at Nottingham. A lot of my friends from sixth form went on to University, but I’m the only one that went on to study at a Russell Group University. If I hadn’t been on the Summer School programme then I don’t think I would be here, so I must say a big thank you to the donors who help to fund this part of the University’s work.
“As a Summer School ambassador I’ve been able to inspire other children from Nottinghamshire to come here and it’s been great being able to see school pupils that I have mentored through the programme now here studying at the University.”
David Walker is Professor of Paediatric Oncology and Co-Director of the Children’s Brain Tumour Research centre at The University of Nottingham.
“It’s a very powerful process to give money and it has a big impact on the person giving, the organisation receiving it, the researchers and the children who benefit from the research as a result of it being translated into practice. We couldn’t have done the Children’s Brain Tumour Centre development without the donors. Their impact has got our plane to take off which will hopefully meet their long term needs of making us travel in a very positive way to a better future with this particular group of diseases.”
Nick Stevenson is President of Nottingham New Theatre, a 100% student-run venture which regularly wins awards at the National Student Drama Festival and Edinburgh Fringe.
“The Impact Campaign has completely transformed the interior of our building. As a student-run theatre we do absolutely everything ourselves but the Campaign has made a big difference with new seating, flexible staging, two brand new studio spaces and new technical equipment which all means we’re able to do a lot more with our productions.
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Our academics can now be interviewed for broadcast via our new Globelynx fixed camera facility at the University. For further information please contact a member of the Communications team on +44 (0)115 951 5798, email mediahub@nottingham.ac.uk or see the Globelynx website for how to register for this service.
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Notes to editors: The University of Nottinghamhas 43,000 students and is ‘the nearest Britain has to a truly global university, with campuses in China and Malaysia modelled on a headquarters that is among the most attractive in Britain’ (Times Good University Guide 2014). It is also the most popular university among graduate employers, the world’s greenest university, and winner of the Times Higher Education Award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Sustainable Development’. It is ranked in the World's Top 75 universities by the QS World University Rankings.
Impact: The Nottingham Campaign, its biggest-ever fundraising campaign, is delivering the University’s vision to change lives, tackle global issues and shape the future. More news…