About our funds

LSE was founded on the generosity of benefactors, and philanthropy continues to transform the School and increase its global impact more than 125 years later. Right now, the world needs new ideas and new leaders like never before. Our Shaping the World Campaign is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to safeguard LSE’s future as an inclusive community of world-class teaching, research, and ideas for global impact. Gifts to our Shaping the World Fund support the area of greatest need across the School, including investing in talented students from all backgrounds, supporting our world-leading research and creating a vibrant academic environment in London, online and around the world. 

We are committed to ensuring that LSE is open to talented students, regardless of their background, and that the School remains the diverse and global community it always has been. Crucial to this goal is our ability to offer scholarships to talented students, and for every scholarship application received, there are many more who inspire us, but whom we cannot support. In the 2023/24 academic year, we were only able to offer scholarships to 14 per cent of those who applied for undergraduate funding, and demand is growing. Every gift to LSE’s Scholarship Fund goes directly to providing a scholarship for a talented student, who will otherwise find it difficult to join LSE.

The past few years have been a turbulent time for many: the ripple effects of the pandemic, the profound impact of conflict and wars, and growing global inequality compounded by sharp increases in the cost of living mean that our ability to provide emergency financial support to our students has never been more important. Every student deserves the opportunity to focus on their studies and extra-curricular activities, without having to worry about unforeseen financial difficulties. Every gift to LSE’s Hardship Fund goes directly to supporting students in their time of need, and ensuring no student has to abandon their studies due to financial hardship. 

LSE is creating a world-class campus for our community to educate, share knowledge and encourage debate in London and across the globe. Over the past decade and more, our campus has already seen a large amount of transformation with the creation of a central plaza, to foster a greater sense of community, by re-shaping Houghton Street and Clare Market, and the addition of award-winning state-of-the-art teaching, learning, and social spaces such as the recently-opened Marshall Building which complements the Cheng Kin Ku Building, the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre, the Centre Building. In 2027, we will open our final major redevelopment on Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Firoz Lalji Global Hub.

Gifts to the Campus Life Fund will help the School continue to create a world-class campus in London that will bring people together to debate, create, discuss and learn.

For over 125 years, we have remained committed to the original vision of LSE as “a community of people and ideas, founded to know the causes of things, for the betterment of society."  Our departments, institutes and research centres are key to maintaining the success of the School as one of the leading social sciences universities in the world. In the 2021 Research Excellent Framework, LSE came top in the UK for the proportion of research classified as ‘world-leading’, with the departments of Economics, Anthropology, Social Policy, Health Policy and Media and Communications all coming top within the UK. Gifts to departments, institutes and research centres support the people and research across the School who are shaping the world now and in the future.