University launches IMAGINE campaign
Wednesday, 08 June 2016
The University has launched its first national fundraising and volunteer campaign.
The IMAGINE campaign is designed to support projects which enhance the University’s teaching and enable vital research to help tackle the world’s biggest problems – with the public phase of the campaign aiming to generate £150 million over a 10-year period from 2010 to 2020.
The campaign has been inspired by the words of the first Vice Chancellor of the University, W.M. Childs:
Universities are living things: they feel, think and do. They are centres of intelligence, they are concerned with ideas; they have outposts upon the frontiers of knowledge; they sometimes do beautiful and remarkable things; they dream and imagine.
Fundraising for IMAGINE will target individuals; major donors; businesses; charities; philanthropic trusts and foundations and over 270,000 alumni across the world. The campaign aims to generate new investment for key research and teaching priorities across seven themes:
- Educating for 21st Century lives: committing to supporting the best students to come here to realise their potential.
- Environment: conducting world-leading research tackling the challenges of environmental change.
- Food: working with industry and government to change how we produce and consume food – in particular, where food, health, wellbeing and environmental needs overlap.
- Health: actively tackling the demands of complex and chronic health conditions.
- Prosperity & Resilience: looking at the relationships and practices that enable us to create and sustain prosperity while enabling resilient development.
- Heritage & Creativity: exploring contemporary challenges through the experiences of others.
- Shaping the Future of Business: looking to bring business into schools, develop global citizens and support ethical business and diverse talents.
Through the campaign, the University also aims to inspire its alumni and supporters to volunteer and donate over 60,000 hours of their time to support the activities of the University and Campaign initiatives – from industry experts on our advisory panels; to student mentors; to internships and placements.
Vice-Chancellor Sir David Bell said: “Reading is one of the UK’s leading research intensive universities – with an outstanding academic heritage over the last 90 years which, today, involves tackling the biggest issues facing the world. We already generate more than £30m a year from publicly-funded Research Councils but this campaign will enable us to generate new private, charitable and donor income for our planned research programme. In addition, we will use the campaign to provide further opportunities for students, both present and future”.
To help reach the ambitious fundraising target of £150m over ten years, the University has set up a Campaign Board to support the fundraising and volunteering activities of the IMAGINE campaign. The Campaign Board will be chaired by Lord Crisp, (Nigel Crisp), former Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Chief Executive of the NHS.
Other members of the IMAGINE Campaign Board include:
- Dame Alison Carnwath, Chair of Land Securities, Independent director at Zurich Insurance Company Ltd, and graduate of the University of Reading.
- Mr Earnest Brown, Chairman for NovaQuest Capital Management, a private equity firm specialising in biopharmaceutical investment.
- Mr See Lian Ong, former President of RICS, and graduate of the University of Reading.
Income secured so far has already been helpful in supporting the Charlie Waller Institute, the Institute for Cardiovascular Metabolic Research and Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Programme, among other projects.
More information on IMAGINE can be found here.