Video: Donors do not want to ‘paper over cracks’ in uni funding, says Brooks

UNIVERSITIES facing the new funding regime are seeking to attract more cash from rich donors, but they must not use this money to “paper over the cracks” in their budgets.

That’s the view of Rory Brooks, a venture capitalist who has endowed the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester with £3m over the past six years.

Speaking to TheBusinessDesk.com Mr Brooks, a founding partner of London-based MML Capital Partners, said philanthropic giving will form a major part of institutions’ stategies, but donors want to see their cash make an impact, particularly in the fields of research and access to higher education by people from lower incomes.

“Donors want to see their giving has had an impact and the receiving institution must have a strategic plan so the donor knows where the gift fits,” said Mr Brooks.

“What they do not want is to paper over the cracks and gaps in university funding because they [the institutions] haven’t got their sums right. Deficit funding will be a very hard sell to donors, donors want impact.”

According to the Ross Case report into voluntary giving in higher education, donor money accounts for around 2% of university revenues but forms a more significant part of their discretionary spend. Mr Brooks says over half of £1m gifts go to higher education institutions and they receive £500m in donations at present.

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From September 2012 the Government will pull funding from all courses outside science, technology, engineering and mathematics/medicine (STEM). Universities will cover this by increasing tuition fees, but there is anxiety over whether the maximum charge of £9,000 will cover their costs, and how the new fees will affect student numbers.

Mr Brooks, originally from North Wales, was the first in his family to pursue higher education, winning a place at the University of Manchester. While working in the US in his 20s he saw how connected his friends still were to their former universities which made him re-establish contact with Manchester when he returned.

As MML prospered Mr Brooks and his wife Elizabeth looked at ways they could “do something and make a further contribution to life and society”. The couple set up the Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Foundation and supported some social inclusion projects but decided to get heavily involved with the University of Manchester when the former vice chancellor Alan Gilbert launched his 2015 agenda to promote excellence in education, research and social responsibility.

“The vision says universities are going to be the principle agents and engines by which mankind is going to figure out the issues and opportunities it has to address in the 21st century. If you look at the really big issues global poverty is clearly one of them. It’s not difficult to see that worldwide poverty is the last and greatest of the outstanding human inequalities. It’s unacceptable in the civilised and wealthy world that there’s a billion plus people living on less than a dollar a day.”

“What the institute is trying to do is generate really good knowledge, effective and practical knowledge for poverty practitioners. Good research leads to good knowledge which leads to better informed policy makers which leads to better programmes and ultimately improved outcomes of people’s lives.”

He added: “We could have taken our resources and fed 100 mouths that needed feeding and improved the welfare of a modest number of people. First of all there are an awful lot of people suffering in that way. Our resources are quite modest and we didn’t know how we would pick them and implement that.

“By supporting the university we hope and think we’re doing something for the world’s poor, but we also know we’re supporting one of the great academic research institutions. I’m supporting my alma mater and trying to do something in the world.”

Brooks stresses that the university is still the main funder of the institute which carries his name, but his money covers the running costs which allows the university to tell other funders that their contributions will be spent entirely on research. “We are doing the hard bit so the university can go out with partners to raise specific funds for research. In that sense we’ve achieved tremendous leverage.”