Canada's university fundraising culture is 20 years ahead of the similarly minded UK system, making our top universities an ideal fundraising case study, according to an article in the Guardian.
Writer Andrew Derrington is the executive pro vice-chancellor of humanities and social sciences at the University of Liverpool. He recently toured numerous Canadian universities as part of the annual CASE fundraising study tour, which takes academic leaders from the UK to Canada to study fundraising practices at notable institutions. McMaster University, the University of Waterloo, the University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University participated.
The tour capped off with a visit to UoT's Mississauga campus where Derrington says he learned about the university's $2 billion Boundless campaign from Gillian Morrison at the central campaigns office. "The biggest in Canadian university history, this campaign is directly linked with academic mission, and shows that smaller universities can have no excuse for lack of coherence in their campaigns," Derrington wrote.
At McMaster in Hamilton, Derrington learned about the "three main actors: development professionals, donors and academic leaders." Touring the schools and chatting with key academic figures prompted Derrington to conclude that the UK could learn a lot from Canadian universities--both from our successes and our mistakes.
He predicts that if the UK were to adopt some of our practices, "An average sized, middle-ranking British university should be able to get to a point where they are raising £5-10 million per year from philanthropy within five to 10 years."
Read the full story about Derrington's tour
here.
Original source: The Guardian