The £155m donation to the University of Oxford by Vietnamese business woman Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao which will lead to the renaming of the University’s Linacre College in her honour places a spotlight on how many of the leading universities fundraise. This one was bound to cause a stir. Oxford is the jewel in the crown and the renaming of one its colleges – a rare event but not without precedence – would beg questions about the role of overseas money in influencing British higher education and fundamentally changing the character of one of the nation’s great institutions.
Read MoreSilicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) is the United States’ biggest community foundation – by far. Established in 2007, it is also one of the youngest community foundations and that, perhaps, is equally as important in the context of our latest research as its financial firepower. SVCF disburses huge sums of money and its importance is down to the fact it represents a wide group of philanthropists – often internationally by background or instinct – who have chosen to channel their philanthropy through the Foundation.
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