Giving Circles
Those alumni who are part of our Giving Circles are at the heart Wadham's academic mission
Make a meaningful mark – join Wadham's Nicholas or Dorothy Giving Circles today
For more than 400 years, Wadham College’s culture of innovation, excellence and openness has inspired generations of students and scholars.
Everything we stand for and achieve as an institution can be traced back to a remarkable act of generosity, vision, and determination from our co-founders, and it is in recognition of this that our two Giving Circles are named in their honour – the Nicholas Circle for gifts in excess of £1k/annum, and the Dorothy Circle for gifts in excess of £5k/annum.
For UK taxpayers, monthly gifts starting from £67, with Gift Aid, would qualify for the Nicholas Circle; and monthly gifts from £335, with Gift Aid, would qualify for our Dorothy Circle.
As we continue to evolve as an institution – responding to and helping to shape the world around it – our success depends, now more than ever, on the philanthropic support of the Wadham community. If you are in a position to do so, we hope you will consider joining one of our Giving Circles. Members enjoy a range of unique benefits, including bespoke annual events – but more than anything they share the vision of Wadham as an open and innovative institution that began with Nicolas and Dorothy.
Two alumni explain below what motivated them to join our Giving Circles. If you would like to support Wadham as a Nicholas or Dorothy Giving Circle memeber, we would be happy to answer any questions you may have – email us or call on +44(0)1865 277570.
Ian Dawson (Modern History, 1981)
Alumnus Ian Dawson and his wife, Kate
Why I support Wadham: we are all custodians of the future
I largely lost touch with the College for 20 years or so. Somehow my ‘time at Wadham’ became separated from the ‘community and institution of Wadham’. I was connected but also disconnected.
I attended the occasional event and 10 or so years ago I was invited, by a friend and fellow Wadham historian, to a dinner with Melvyn Bragg. It was to fundraise for the subject. I remember feeling deeply impressed by how much the Alumni (Melvyn and others), the Faculty (Jane Garnett attended) and the Fundraising team (also present) cared and were freely giving to secure the future of a small part of the College.
My wife, Kate, and I decided we could probably do a bit more!
Our giving has developed from being quite simple to something more involved and sustainable. I see three main challenges that Wadham faces:
- Ensuring a strong endowment – in the UK, public funding of university education will inevitably be cannibalised by competing priorities (eg, health, demographics, climate). Institutions like Wadham (and its hinterland of Alumni) will either adapt financially or have to substantially change their modus vivendi.
- Supporting the tutorial system – the economics of the Oxford approach to teaching young people is unsustainable without bridging a large, and widening, ‘funding gap’. Wadham has little chance of closing the gap without support from those who have benefitted from the tutorial system in the past.
- Maintaining its historic character for the future – the green transition will be costly and the central funding received will not be enough to bring our extraordinary College environment into a sustainable balance.
I believe that I am a 'Custodian' of this remarkable institution. Wadham can only thrive in the future to the extent that those who are able to do so, support it today. My life has been enriched by the experience of studying at Wadham, and I believe that others will benefit today, and in the future. Those of us who benefitted, and have the means, are clearly those who have a responsibility to give back.
If those of us with the opportunity today to help secure the next 400 years equivocate, then I believe ‘managed decline’ is the only realistic, alternative outcome. Inaction risks condemning our ‘Wadham of the future’ to becoming a relic of a previous age. If we, as individual alumni, don’t step up today to do what we can to help secure the future of the College, then, truly, who do we think will?
Alumna Sam Rowe
Why I support Wadham: incumbent on those of us who can afford it
It is no overstatement to say that Wadham changed my life. State school students from Derby don’t become equity partners in New York law firms, and Wadham is a major reason why I managed to break the mold.
An Oxford degree changed how the world saw me. It is a brand that is recognised throughout the world for excellence, and when people look at an Oxford graduate, they see someone who is capable and intelligent. Wadham—and the tutorial system in particular—was enormously valuable for me. After an intimidating start (Jeffrey Hackney and Roman law!), I now realise that it sets you up in the best possible way for life after Oxford. It accelerated my learning and ultimately gave me confidence in my ability to absorb information, communicate ideas and think on my feet. It instils a way of thinking and working that has been enormously helpful in terms of what I do now on a day-to-day basis. I truly believe that any success I’ve had can be traced directly back to Oxford.
That is a very powerful reason for giving back, especially when I think about the de minimus amounts I paid to attend university in the early Noughties. I got much more from Wadham and Oxford than I paid for and, now that I’m in a position to help the college financially, it is important to me that I do that.
I also spent about 10 years in the US, and picked up the philanthropic ethos that exists there. I think we are somewhat behind the US in this regard because, historically, we are used to relying on the government for financial support in the UK. But, given the rollbacks that we’ve seen over the last two decades in particular, we need a change of approach from the private sector, including individual graduates.
It is incumbent on people who can afford it to step in and help where they can. Wadham was life-changing for me, and the fact that others from a similar socio-economic background can no longer access that opportunity for financial reasons is a powerful motivator to give back.