Posted on 24th June 2010
A £1.5m gift by businessman and philanthropist Dr Leonard Polonsky to the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford will support library digitisation initiatives. The donation marks an important contribution to the £78m redevelopment of the New Bodleian Library which will transform it into a major research centre and a significant new cultural centre. Upon reopening, the library will be known as the Weston Library in honour of the £25m donation given in March 2008 to its redevelopment by the Garfield Weston Foundation.
Dr Polonsky said of his donation: “Our inherited notions of ‘library’ – its architecture, scale, content and services – will undergo quite extraordinary change over the coming years as digitisation extends its impact. Being able to assist in this evolution at Oxford and to encourage international collaboration in this enterprise is exhilarating. I am really delighted to share in this adventure with the Bodleian.”
Dr Polonsky grew up in New York City, and undertook postgraduate studies at Lincoln College, Oxford and the Sorbonne in Paris. He taught languages in Heidelberg for several years before embarking upon his business career in financial services. A UK citizen, he is currently executive chairman of Hansard Global plc, an international financial services institution listed on the London Stock Exchange.
He is also a trustee of the Polonsky Foundation in London, which supports charities primarily in the UK, US and Israel, with a focus on education and the arts, as well as a trustee of the Polonsky Brothers Foundation in the US which focuses on higher education for the urban poor.
This gift is a significant contribution to Oxford Thinking: The Campaign for the University of Oxford, the largest fundraising campaign in European university history with a target of £1.25bn. It will be used to support world-class research, teaching and facilities for the university and its colleges. Less than six years since its launch, the campaign has already raised over £875m.
Last month, Philanthropy UK reported on a £5m gift to the campaign by Hong Kong-based Chinese billionaire businessman and K.B.E. Sir Ka-shing Li.
The campaign also passed a major landmark in May, when the $50m (£33m) pledged by Dr James Martin, one of the world’s leading computer scientists, to the James Martin 21st Century School he set up at Oxford University, was matched by other donors just a year later. The full $100m (£66m) includes contributions from donors like George Soros and Adrian Beecroft, former chief investment officer at Apax Partners, a global private equity advisory firm.
The University of Cambridge has just [10th June] announced that it is the first university outside the US to raise £1bn in a fundraising campaign. The 800th Anniversary Campaign “Transforming Tomorrow” was launched in 2005 and has just surpassed £1bn, two years ahead of schedule. This total does not include more than £250m of pledged bequests. To date more than 45,000 alumni, a quarter of the total, have made at least one gift to their college or to the university during the campaign, with many making regular donations.
UK universities received £511m in philanthropic cash income in 2008/09, up from £430m the previous year, according to the latest edition of the annual Ross-CASE survey, which also reveals the elite Russell Group of universities receives a major share of these donations. Universities also saw a rise in the numbers of major cash gifts worth £500,000 or more – 165 in total up from 119 two years ago. This includes 22 institutions that received a cash donation of £1m or more, and four that received gifts of over £4m each.
