From the Nominator

“It’s All Academic,” UCL’s biggest ever philanthropy and engagement campaign, launched to the public in September 2016 (with a momentum-building phase from 2011) with a target to raise £600m and inspire 250,000 volunteer hours. Its ambition was to drive long-term sustainable philanthropic growth to underpin UCL’s ability to discover the undiscovered, explore the unexplored, and translate new knowledge into real world impact.

We closed the campaign in July 2020–a year early–raising £624m, and achieving 263,000 volunteering hours. Bringing a fresh, distinctly UCL approach to campaign fundraising, our campaign is pioneering radical approaches to challenges like neurodegenerative disease, climate change, and social inequality. It’s shaping global thought-leadership in economics, policy, and global health. It’s ensuring UCL’s doors are open to brilliant minds of all kinds, and equipping UCL changemakers with future-focused knowledge and skills. It’s enabling UCL to be agile to emerging opportunities such as AI, and fast-moving in the face of unexpected challenges such as COVID-19. Thanks to the confidence provided by a growing philanthropic pipeline and engaged alumni, UCL is now primed to mobilise its cross-disciplinary expertise to face the challenges of the future, at the pace and scale that our world demands.

“It’s All Academic” has been sector-leading, award-winning, and influential. Through activation of UCL’s diverse community, channeling UCL’s distinctive ethos of purposeful disruption, a visionary commitment from leadership, and substantial institutional buy-in and investment, the campaign is proof that truly remarkable things happen when multidisciplinary universities, philanthropists, alumni, and advocates work together.