Covid-19 funding opportunities: The philanthropists ready to help universities

Besides the sheer human endeavour we have witnessed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic – especially among medical professionals, carers and frontline public servants – the other powerful demonstration of our global society is the collective generosity as people give what they can to help others.  This includes philanthropic foundations, corporations and high net worth philanthropists.

There is a lot of general reporting of big sums of money that have been donated for good causes and civil society affected by the pandemic.  However, there has been relatively little granular information about how different sectors can benefit – and from whom.

This month we have reviewed some of the funding which has been committed in response to Covid-19, with the purpose of identifying what is most relevant to universities and higher education institutions as they come to terms with the fallout of the pandemic. According to our research, there is at least $2.75bn worth of pledged funding for which universities appear to be eligible.

Before we come to the funders we think are most relevant for universities looking for emergency funding, let’s put the issue into context.

 A number of papers have been written recently that have talked about the issues that now confront universities.  The situation looks perilous: declining numbers of students, diminished state funding, lack of access to online / distant learning as well as the social and economic impacts forcing students to give up education is presenting universities in all geographies – north and south significant challenges.  The pain is likely to be most acute in the developing world.  Two excellent articles published on the World Bank website spell out the issues.

As we now accept that the economic fallout is likely to be long and sustained, the African University Association has already reported that among the 700 universities operating in Sub-Saharan Africa, very few are well prepared and sufficiently equipped to respond.                                                    

Ultimately this is a matter of financing.  In a useful paper published by the European Universities Association, parallels were made with the 2008 economic crisis. It highlights the dilemma of institutions both needing to diversify funding, but challenged by the fact that money is likely to decline from both corporate partnerships and philanthropy. 

In our view it is the case that philanthropy globally will be hit by Covid-19. But it is also the case that the philanthropic scene in 2020 is notably different from 12 years ago.  The past decade has seen an extraordinary and unprecedented boom in high net worth wealth, which is fuelling philanthropy.  Global philanthropy – and the high net worth people that sit behind much of it – will be hit.  Of course they are not immune. But philanthropy starts from a position of relative strength compared to 12 years ago.  Remember, 75% of today’s foundations and trusts were established in the last 25 years.  Not all will survive, but there are many more of them than 12 years ago. Moreover, a study published by UBS in July 2020 suggests that the very wealthy have improved their financial position as a result of the pandemic. We also know that of the wealthiest 500 billionaires, more than 400 publicly engage in philanthropy to varying degrees. The same research tells us that education is the preferred area of giving for the ultra wealthy.

So it was heartening to discover in our research how much funding has been pledged to the societal impacts as a result of the pandemic, and it was revealing to us how much appears to be eligible for universities and higher education to access.

We identified a large number of funds but have identified 15 very significant funds which have been made available and which is likely to be supportive to the higher education community.  Much of that funding appears to come from tech firms and / or their founders.  That makes complete sense since technology will be the solution as universities try to adapt to a new way of operating and teaching.

According to our study, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, TikTok owner ByteDance and Google are just some of the actors that appear to be making very significant commitments to help universities and the higher education sector.  

For more information on our research, and the major donors whose Covid-19 emergency philanthropy is relevant to universities, can be found here