Funding TO UNIVERSITIES by the Lego Foundation

Introduction

The Lego Foundation is headquartered in Billund, Denmark and is synonymous with the children’s play product. With office locations in Boston, Mexico City, Johannesburg and Kiev it has global reach. It funds three core areas: humanitarian relief; early childhood development (with a focus on play and creativity); and childhood education. Its focus geographies are the same as where their Foundation offices are located, although its activity and funding stretches well beyond these countries.

As with many European foundations, it has not provided full transparency about the grants that it awards. We understand from information Lego discloses on its website that it has funded the following universities in recent years:

  • University of Sheffield, UK & University of Cape Town, South Africa (2019: Unknown)

  • University Colleges, Denmark (2019: €2.8m)

  • University Colleges, Denmark (2018: €6.6m)

  • University of Belize (2018: Unknown)

  • Tsinghua University, China (2016: Unknown)

  • Aarhus University, Denmark (2016: €1.4m)

  • Cambridge University, UK (2015: €5m)

Other beneficiaries where funding is not disclosed include Georgetown, Harvard and Tufts universities in the US. However, in 2020 Lego decided to share information about the €152m funding it awarded that year, including the recipients and the sums. For the first time, we have a picture of Lego’s university funding. The main elements of funding were:

  • Covid-19 Response €47m

  • Other Charter activities €23.6m

  • Humanitarian Assistance €36.8m

  • Global Programmes €18.2m

  • Focus Geographies €9.1m

  • Experiences €4.3m

Image courtesy of Sen / UnSplash.com

Around 7% of its funding went to universities (€9.9m). 94% of funding went to universities in the US and Europe. The University recipients were as follows:

  • University College Copenhagen, Denmark €3.5m

  • Harvard University, US €1.2m

  • Boston College, US €1.1m

  • M.I.T., US €959,000

  • University of Oxford, UK €848,000

  • Cambridge University, UK €680,000

  • University of South Denmark, €447,000