LSE is proud to have a long history of partnership with charitable organisations around the world and, since our foundation in 1895; these partnerships have helped facilitate some of our most innovative work. For example the creation of a globally focused Department of Social Policy was supported with a grant in 1912 from the Tata family, while the period from the 1920s through to the 1940s saw LSE receive multiple grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, helping secure our position as a laboratory of the social sciences with a distinctive mission to relate academic excellence to real world impact.
A selection of recent examples is highlighted below to provide an insight into the range and breadth of projects that are designed and delivered with philanthropic partners. Please get in touch with the team to discuss potential partnerships with your organisation or, if you are member of LSE staff, to discuss your existing or potential links.
John Templeton Foundation
Having previously provided generous support for the work of Professor Nancy Cartwright on a project that investigated the theological implications of modern images of nature, the John Templeton Foundation generously awarded £1.1million in 2015 for a three-year project, led by Professor Lord Richard Layard, focusing on the drivers of pro-social living.
The LSE team, working within the Centre for Economic Performance, is analysing cohort data from over ten years of research to produce a quantitative model of what determines an individual’s enjoyment of life. The project will include a number of interventions which focus on the application of these models, for both policy-makers and individuals. One series, Exploring What Matters, launched by the Dalai Lama, will become a worldwide vehicle for public education, while the Healthy Minds initiative will focus on the 11-14 age groups, examining social and emotional learning, mental health, parenting, and mindfulness.
CAF
LSE’s Global South Unit in the Department of International Relations, led by Professor Chris Alden, is now in its third year of collaboration with the Corporacion Andina de Fomento, Development Bank of Latin America (CAF). With grants now totaling over £400,000, the South-South Cooperation project is examining the changing role of the global south in international affairs, and the implications of a new architecture of global order. The project centres on a joint annual conference in January, a scholarship for a student from a CAF-member country studying an MSc in International Relations or International Political Economy, and a Research Fellowship for an academic from a CAF-member country. The Fellow joins an annual global cohort of researchers from Africa, India, and China working on related issues. CAF President, Enrique Garcia, is also a Professor in Practice at LSE, with his role involving the delivery of workshops and lectures for LSE students.
Emirates Foundation
The Emirates Foundation provided extensive support for LSE to launch the Middle East Centre, including funding of £2.5million for a Chair in contemporary Middle East Studies, held by Professor Fawaz Gerges, and £3.7 million for academic collaboration between LSE and Arab universities.
The Foundation also supported the development of the New Academic Building which LSE moved into in 2008, generously giving £2.5 million for the naming of the Sheikh Zayed Lecture Theatre on the lower ground floor. As well as this essential infrastructure support, the Foundation also underpins two programmes that support students: one aimed at final year PhD students at LSE who are researching the Middle East region, and the other provides scholarships for Arab nationals who wish to pursue Master's studies at LSE.
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has long been a key partner for LSE academics, providing particular support for the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion and their Social Policy in A Cold Climate programme, designed to examine the effects of the major economic and political changes in the UK since 2007 on the distribution of wealth, poverty, inequality and social mobility.
The Foundation also provided rapid funding as part of a consortium that supported the Reading The Riots project. Led by Professor Tim Newburn of the Department of Social Policy, this initiative analysed the motivations and modes of those participating in the England Riots of 2011.
Most recently, the Foundation has awarded £565,000 to the new LSE International Inequalities Institute to develop interdisciplinary research on the causes and consequences of inequalities globally, as well as for a three-year programme to investigate the links between poverty and inequalities. Dr Aaron Reeves joined the Institute in April 2016 to lead this project.
The Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences
In 2007, the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) funded a £5.7 million ten-year research programme in development, governance, and globalisation in the Gulf States. The programme is based in the Middle East Centre and is directed by Professor Toby Dodge, who is also the holder of the endowed Kuwait Chair, also supported by the grant. Over the past nine years, LSE academics and global partners have developed innovative research collaborations, working papers, workshops, and academic conferences, covering key topics including resource-rich economic development, health care and social welfare provision, urban form, geography, and sustainability.
Nathan Cummings Foundation
The New York-based Nathan Cummings Foundation has supported innovative global work on approaches to climate change policy and action, led by former LSE Professor, Gwythian Prins of the Mackinder Centre.
The Foundation supported several cycles of research, starting with the production of 'The Hartwell Paper', an international report that was delivered through three months' of intensive work by a group of 14 authors from Asia, Europe and North America. The report argues that that the 1992 United Nations international climate policy framework has failed to produce any discernible real world reductions in greenhouse gases, and as a result climate change policy makers needed a radical change of approach. The project has since supported innovative research around the world that has resulted in policy recommendations.
Pears Foundation
The Pears Foundation recently awarded £30,000 to the LSE Faith Centre, which funded an opportunity for LSE students to visit the Holy Lands of Israel and Palestine in January 2016.
Led by the LSE Chaplain Rev Dr James Walters, who is also Senior Lecturer in Practice at LSE’s new Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship, a group of 18 students from a range of religious backgrounds travelled together to visit the main religious sites of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and to meet local people working for peace across religious divides. The objective of the interfaith trip was to improve participants’ understanding of the complexities of the Israel/Palestine conflict, while also encouraging students to consider how their religious commitments could be a resource for peacemaking and conflict resolution. Participants variously described the trip as ‘challenging’, ‘transformative’, and ‘rewarding’.
Open Society Foundations
LSE is delighted to work with the Open Society Foundations on a range of projects, covering media policy, international drug control, and media revolutions following the Arab spring, civil society and new movements. After initially supporting the publication of a special report that argued that the global war on drugs had failed and was in many ways worsening global problems of human security and socioeconomic development, the Open Society Foundations has further supported LSE Ideas’ International Drug Policy Project, which sets out a framework for the future of international drug policy based on the Sustainable Development Goals; more information can be found here.
Open Society has also supported the Media Policy Project, led by Director Dr Damian Tambini, Programme Director: MSc Media & Communications (Governance) The LSE Media Policy Project- inspired in part due to a major surge in interest in media and communication policy issues on the part of industry, policy makers, regulators, media practitioners and civil society organisations in the UK, the European Union and internationally- helped to provide a platform for voices not often heard in policy debates, allowing them to voice their positions and share new research and ideas through publications, events and its blog, supported by an Open Society grant. The Project engages with civil society and advocacy groups, as well as other stakeholders, in discourse on current policy issues, such as the Communications Review or continued fallout from the phone hacking scandal in the UK, ongoing Internet governance discussions, or the EC’s Digital Agenda Europe initiatives for a single telecoms market and the revisions of data protection and audiovisual media services directives.
The Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation has renewed its longstanding philanthropic support of LSE through a gift of $900,000 towards the International Growth Centre (IGC), supporting the Centre’s collaboration with the government of Sierra Leone in revising their national strategic plan for a community health workforce. This is an integral part of their efforts to build resilience within the country’s health system in the wake of the Ebola crisis.
The Rockefeller Foundation’s philanthropic association with the School stretches back as far as the 1920s, with the first in a series of gifts spanning the next two decades. Between 1923 and 1937, Rockefeller’s giving to LSE totaled $2m, or £500,000 – the significance of the sum made apparent by the fact that the School’s total revenue expenditure during the whole of these 14 years amounted to just under £1.5m. This latest gift to the IGC is a continuation of an invaluable relationship to LSE.
Stiftung Mercator
LSE has recently received a third round of funding, amounting to just over £900,000, from Stiftung Mercator, one of the leading German charitable foundations supporting research institutions. This support enabled the 2016 Dahrendorf Symposium, the third of its kind, in Berlin in May 2016 and is focused on the relationship between Europe and the rest of the world – particularly regarding its border zones, including Russia and Ukraine, Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa, and the core regions of the world economy, China and North America.
The funding will also support associated research groups, comprising post-doctoral fellows, visiting academics, and practitioner fellowships. The project is coordinated at the School by Dr Robert Falkner, Academic Co-Director of the Dahrendorf Project, and is based within LSE IDEAS.
Sutton Trust
The Sutton Trust has long been a key partner for LSE due to our mutual commitment to Widening Participation and understanding the inequalities in education and professional trajectories. With support totaling over £900,000, the Trust has established award-winning Widening Participation programmes at LSE, including LSE CHOICE, an enrichment programme aimed at identifying the most talented young people from London state schools and colleges and giving them the tools they need to successfully apply to LSE and other competitive universities.
In addition, Pathways to Law was set up in 2006 by the Sutton Trust and the College of Law (now the Legal Education Foundation) to widen access to the legal profession. Its purpose is to recruit students with a demonstrated interest in a career in law to participate in LSE’s Widening Participation programme, and delivers a varied programme of lectures, seminars, advice and guidance sessions, and skills development workshops, as well as offering interaction with undergraduate students and professionals through e-mentoring and legal work placements. Students join Pathways to Law in year 12 and continue through to the end of year 13, and are invited to attend LSE based academic sessions on legal issues and other topics including choosing and applying to university, CV and interview techniques, subject-specific revision sessions, and workshops on different areas of the law. Participants are also given the opportunity to visit the Supreme Court, Inner Temple, and the Royal Courts of Justice.
The Trust has also been a strong supporter of LSE research, particularly the Centre for Economic Performance’s examination of educational inequalities, and LSE Housing’s research into social inequalities.