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 talented individuals, regardless of background, have access to life-changing education at LSE, enabling them to become the thought leaders of tomorrow. Last year, thanks to the generosity of our alumni and friends, we were able to provide scholarships to more than 180 students, but this was only 12% of the scholarship applications we received. Gifts to the Scholarship Fund will enable us to grow our scholarship provision and directly support students, particularly those from lower socio-economic backgrounds and minority groups, throughout their degree. 

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. Demand increased by over 70% in the last year alone, and we expect the need for emergency support to continue to grow. Gifts to our Hardship Fund will ensure we can respond to the increase in demand and directly support our most vulnerable students, ensuring they can continue and complete their studies.

Technology is changing the future of work, and regardless of which degree programme our students choose to study, we are committed to supporting them to gain the skills they need for life. Gifts to our Student Futures Fund will enable us to provide transformational life and work experiences, including financial assistance to undertake short internships, providing data skills training and research internships for our students to contribute to LSE’s research-rich culture, ensuring they are equipped with the skills needed to succeed in their chosen fields and remain amongst the most employable graduates in the world. 

Our social sciences expertise is needed now more than ever to bring about the global change required to create a more sustainable world. Our research and applied policy work, through the Grantham Research Institute and the International Growth Centre (IGC), is bringing together international expertise to shape the global response to climate change. In 20-21 alone, 36 IGC projects saw specific policy change or decisions made by partner countries that was directly based on our research and engagement with policymakers. Gifts to our Sustainability Impact Fund support the people, research and initiatives that will bring about direct global change to build a secure and sustainable world.

We know the world needs socially responsible leaders and innovators and we are committed to supporting the LSE community to be the people whose big ideas will shape the world. Through LSE Generate we are supporting entrepreneurial students and alumni to build socially responsible businesses by offering them funding opportunities, the infrastructure to build and scale ideas and providing courses to support them through their journey. This year we have also launched the Marshall Impact Accelerator, a first-of-its-kind social venture accelerator that will leverage LSE’s existing expertise to support great ideas tackling global challenges in key areas such as health, climate change, social inequality, public policy and developmental economics. Gifts to our Social Entrepreneurship Impact Fund support and empower the LSE community to be the entrepreneurs whose big ideas will create positive change in society. 

Over half of our departments and institutes are involved in research and shaping policy related to global health, and our Global Health Initiative provides a hub to bring together these diverse activities on one platform. Our work includes collaborative partnerships, such as the African Health Observatory, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps countries learn from each other to foster better policies and action for improved health and wellbeing. Gifts to our Global Health & Wellbeing Impact Fund support the people and research finding new ways to create a healthier society and improve the health and wellbeing of people across the globe.

Data science is transforming industries, from healthcare to finance, but these advances have outpaced societal thinking and traditional forms of education, creating an urgent need to bring together expertise in social and data sciences to address challenges and seize opportunities for global prosperity. In 2020, we responded to this global need by establishing the interdisciplinary Data Science Institute, transforming LSE by embedding data science across the School, enabling more insightful research, expanding our educational provision and better equipping our students for future careers. Gifts to our Data Science Impact Fund support the people, research and equipment needed to understand how social and data sciences can unite to pioneer new solutions to the world’s biggest challenges.

The Inclusion Initiative was launched in 2020 to bring together teaching, research, and practice to answer the question of how we can build fairer, more inclusive work environments. Our researchers are looking at topics such as how we can use artificial intelligence to remove bias in recruitment, which leadership styles promote the most diversity and why labour force outcomes vary across different groups of society. This research is enabling us to create guides and material that can be used by firms to help them become more inclusive and diverse work environments. Gifts to the Inclusion Initiative support the people and research that will directly enable work environments to become more inclusive and diverse.

Core to our 2030 strategy is creating a world-class campus for our community to educate, share knowledge and encourage debate in London and across the globe. 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 New Academic Building, the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre, the Centre Building. 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.

As well as creating a world-class campus in London, we are committed to providing a world-class digital environment. By developing our digital infrastructure and data science capabilities, we are creating an education for the digital age, ensuring our digital courses and online events mean everyone can benefit from being part of LSE, and harnessing new opportunities for global debate. Gifts to our Digital Futures Fund will help us bring the LSE community together to debate, discuss and learn through funding our public lectures, teaching, and campus facilities, wherever they are in the world.

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.