Oxford Gets a Crash Course in Fundraising

For almost 1,000 years the leaders of the University of Oxford sought financial aid in medieval courts and cathedrals. In April, Andrew Hamilton, Oxford’s vice-chancellor, found a new venue: the mansion of a Silicon Valley billionaire. Over artichoke soup and halibut at the San Francisco home of Oxford alumnus Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist and early Google investor, Hamilton told 50-odd technology entrepreneurs that the oldest university in the English-speaking world needed their support.

Oxford faces an estimated 78 percent, or £47 million ($75 million), cut in annual government funding for teaching in 2012. So Hamilton is trolling for money around the globe. The former provost of Yale University is importing American techniques for fundraising and heads a record-setting £1.25 billion capital campaign. Among his priorities is creating the kind of lifelong alumni loyalty—and giving—common at prestigious U.S. universities. “There are twice the number of alumni of Oxford than at Yale,” Hamilton says. “Our undergraduate body is twice the size of Harvard’s, twice the size of Yale’s, twice the size of Stanford’s. The potential for Oxford is enormous.”