OXFORD University has appointed Britain's most successful arts fundraiser as the head of a worldwide appeal for hundreds of millions of pounds from wealthy alumni and donors. Over the past 25 years Dame Vivien Duffield's wealth and personal connections have been credited with stabilising the finances of national institutions ranging from the Royal Opera House to the Tate.
She is estimated to have raised £130m for the arts, in addition to her personal donations, believed to be the highest by any private individual. Oxford believes Duffield's skills will help it to rival Cambridge's £1 billion appeal and cement its place as one of the world's leading universities. Duffield said the money was vital to ensure the university could attract the leading academics in the world by raising the salaries on offer. "It's a huge challenge," she said. "Oxford must ensure it gets and keeps the best staff. We must compete to stay ahead."
Duffield, 61, was chosen by John Hood, Oxford's vice-chancellor, and Jon Dellandrea, the pro-vice-chancellor, on the advice of Lord Patten, the former Tory cabinet minister who is now chancellor of the university. Oxford decided to turn to one of its own alumni - Duffield read modern languages at Lady Margaret Hall where she is now an honorary fellow - to maintain and enhance its worldwide standing. In two recent international rankings of academic quality, Oxford has been placed third and tenth behind Harvard and other American universities. The dominance of American universities is partly a reflection of their financial muscle. Harvard has an endowment of £14.6 billion, while Yale, Texas, Stanford and Princeton all have more than £6 billion. Oxford, by contrast, has £2.9 billion. Of this, only £717m belongs to the university centrally - the rest is controlled by individual colleges.
There is no specific target yet for Oxford's appeal, which will be launched next year, but last autumn Cambridge set a target of raising £1 billion by 2012. Oxford is likely to seek a similar amount. Duffield will head the central fundraising effort of the university - colleges have their own separate appeals. The appeal will fund improvement of the science and medical facilities and provide bursaries to students from poor families. Duffield inherited her fortune in 1979 on the death of her father Sir Charles Clore, a retail and property tycoon and owner of the Selfridges department store in Oxford Street, London.*
Despite her skills, Duffield - who for 30 years was the girlfriend of Sir Jocelyn Stevens, former chairman of English Heritage - has sometimes been controversial. Critics have claimed that she has a short temper and can appear distant to those who do not mix in her circles. When she was deputy chairman of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, she fell out with Sir Colin Southgate, the chairman. On leaving the board in 2001, she said: "He undertook a gradual erosion of everything I'd been doing." Duffield was particularly upset at the row because of her central role in the raising of tens of millions of pounds from the lottery and private donors for the rebuilding of Covent Garden in the late 1990s.
Her other arts causes have included the Southbank centre in London, the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in London. She has also worked on behalf of Great Ormond Street children's hospital. Three years ago she was asked to co-chair the fundraising for the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank and immediately put up £5m of her own money. The hall, which reopens next weekend, is still £6m short of its target. Fundraising has been difficult, partly because of a public perception that it is government-funded. Oxford is a year behind Cambridge in its fundraising appeal. Cambridge has two joint chairmen of its appeal - Sir David Walker, chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Bill Janeway, vice-chairman of Warburg-Pincus in New York. Other universities emulating the long-established professional fundraising techniques of American institutions include Edinburgh, University College London and the London School of Economics. Bristol has this month set up a campaign board chaired by Roger Holmes, former managing director of Marks & Spencer.
* Akme note. Infamous tax-avoider Clore made his main fortune in the 1950s selling cheap shoes via his shop-chain Bata. Click for his (rather spare) Wikipedia entry.