Bringing educational fundraising back to Great Britain: A comparison with the United States

Abstract

As a solution to dwindling government revenue, higher education in Great Britain has recently begun to increase fundraising. While it looks to the United States' higher education sector as a model, there are significant legal, historical and cultural differences between the two nations that could limit the British higher education sector's capacity to increase voluntary support, at least in the short term. Although the British higher education sector was developed in large part by voluntary support, this tradition waned in the twentieth century. Today, Britain has stricter privacy laws, fewer tax incentives for giving, a belief that charitable giving usurps what ought to be a government role, a lack of experienced fundraisers, different attitudes about proper motives for giving, and little tradition of active alumni loyalty to alma mater.