Dear World,
You sent us Newton. We sent you gravity.
You sent us Darwin. We sent you evolution. You sent us William and Samuel. We sent you Wordsworth and Coleridge. What will we send next? A postal test for depression? A swallowable test for cancer? A theory of everything? For eight centuries, our impact on the world has been huge. But to impact all our futures, we need your support. Yours, Cambridge.

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Yours, Cambridge

Our ideas and innovations have shaped the world.
Our campaign, 'Dear World... Yours, Cambridge', will raise £2 billion
to help us shape all our futures.

 

 
 
 
 
 
Students climbing a spiral staircase in a College

Our ambition

For 800 years, the world has invested in Cambridge and Cambridge has delivered. We gave you gravity, evolution, computers and pulsars. Next we could deliver clean energy sources, longer lives, quantum computers and parallel universes. But first we need to ask more from the world.
Read more about our ambition
 
 
 
 
 
The fundraising campaign had raised £849m by end April 2017

Why Cambridge?

Our Dear World, Yours Cambridge campaign for the University and Colleges was launched in October 2015 and aims to raise £2bn for research, posts and facilities. Following Cambridge’s most successful fundraising year ever, raising more than £210m, the campaign total now stands at £849m.
Read more about the impact of giving to Cambridge
 
 
 
 
 
College scarves

A Collegiate University

Cambridge is a unique community of 31 Colleges, and home to more than 18,000 students. The Colleges are the home of our signature supervision system, where students are mentored by some of the world’s leading thinkers. Our 9,000 staff are spread across six schools and more than 150 departments, faculties and institutes.
Read more about our community

Focus on our aspirations

For eight centuries, Cambridge has welcomed brilliant minds, set them free to collaborate and create, sending world-changing ideas in return. But we can never say: 'our work is done'. Help us ensure that our impact on the future will be as vital as our impact on the past.

Sir David Attenborough (image by Cate Gillon)

Saving our planet's biodiversity, for the world

Creating transformational solutions to environmental challenges: a partnership between international nature conservation organisations and University researchers.
Students in front of one of our Colleges

Global talent to shape our global future: supporting graduate students

There are thousands of students out there who could make their mark on the world.
A College supervision session

World-class teaching and mentoring: supporting undergraduate students

Teaching the next generation of leaders how to think, not what to think. Here, teaching is a two-way process, revolving around an exchange of thinking and understanding.
Family check-up

Anticipating and preventing disease

New approaches to the world's most debilitating health conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
A Cambridge-Africa Programme workshop in Tanzania

Closing the research gap between Africa and the rest of the world

Supporting a new generation of outstanding researchers to create an African research culture.
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Combining efforts to fight cardiovascular and respiratory diseases

Creating Europe's largest concentration of scientists and clinicians fighting chronic diseases.
A doctor giving a patient a CT scan

Creative collaborations curing disease

As threats to health become more complex and interconnected, so too will the solutions we develop to combat them.
Super conductor

Energy: the next big discovery

Making possible a new generation of discoveries that provide affordable, clean energy for everyone on the planet for generations to come.

View all aspirations

Gift announcements

Cambridge owes its world-leading excellence in research and teaching to the generosity of its supporters. Our history is synonymous with a history of far-sighted benefaction, and the same is as true today as it has ever been.

Gift announcement

Cambridge to launch Polish Studies programme

Polish language, literature and culture will be a permanent feature of the University of Cambridge’s research and teaching following the signing, today, of an agreement with the University of Warsaw.
San rock art, Drakensberg
Gift announcement

Gift will provide a new understanding of Africa’s past

A deeper understanding of Africa’s past will be enabled through a new Professorship of the Deep History and Archaeology of Africa in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology.

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Impact of giving

Philanthropic giving is at the heart of the success of the Collegiate University, enabling us to make discoveries that change the world and to ensure that our students receive an unrivalled education.

A scientist conducts a chemical test
Philanthropic impact story

Location, location, location: enabling research in high-tech surroundings

Catalysis plays a vital industrial and economic role in enabling us to turn relatively inexpensive materials into high value products.
Anonymous crowd in New York City.
Philanthropic impact story

Philanthropy that brings together public health partners

In order to continue providing world-class education and to conduct world-class research with the potential for global impact, Cambridge needs to attract outstanding academic staff. Here are two examples of how philanthropy is central to all that we have yet to achieve in the field of public health.

Read more impact stories