The University of Barcelona’s Faculty of Economics and Business has decided to open up new funding streams to continue supporting projects related to research, teaching excellence and internationalization. The joint initiative is being carried out by the Faculty and the University’s Board of Trustees with the collaboration of UB Alumni, the University of Barcelona’s official alumni association. The aim is for alumni to get individually involved in supporting research projects that do not receive public funding – projects that have a social impact or seek to improve teaching or promote internationalization, and that could not be carried out without this support. The University of Barcelona has 50,000 alumni who are graduates of economics and business programmes, many of whom hold positions of responsibility in the business world. Courses in Economic and Business Sciences were introduced in 1954, and as far back as the nineteenth century the University of Barcelona trained students in commercial and business studies programs.
The new university fundraising initiative was presented today by Dean Elisenda Paluzie, who was accompanied by three alumni of the Faculty: Salvador Alemany, chairman of Abertis and of the University of Barcelona’s Board of Trustees; Joan Hortalà, president of the Barcelona Stock Exchange; and Roser Fernández, secretary general of the Catalan Ministry of Health (2010–2015). According to the dean, the project is a response to government funding constraints, which in the worst years of the economic downturn led to a cut of 20% in university funding and 36% in support for research in Catalonia. In Paluzie’s view, “Looking beyond the financial crisis, if in the future we want to improve the quality of the public service we offer at the University, continue making advances in research, and be a model for other institutions, then we need to develop supplementary sources of funding and sponsorship.”
Stanford and Harvard are the prestigious American universities that receive the most donations from alumni, private individuals and companies. This way of raising funds is very common in the United States and is used by some UK universities. In Spain, however, universities have done little to develop this funding stream.
The Alumni Wall
As in North America, individual donations to fund Faculty projects will be recognised in a symbolic manner by displaying the names of those who have helped make projects possible on the Alumni Wall. The Wall will be located in the lobby of the Faculty of Economics and Business, next to the entrance from Carrer de John M. Keynes, where there is a spacious exposed brick wall on which small plaques bearing the names of donors will be placed. Walls of this kind can be found at many universities, including Eastern Washington University, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Alberta (one of Canada’s largest), and Adelphi University in New York.
Of course, private donations are intended to supplement, not replace, public funding of university research and other projects, and this funding will have no influence on the methodology or results of research projects.
First experience with Verkami
The first initiative linked to the Alumni Wall is a research project on the social determinants of obesity in Spain. The project, which does not receive funding from any other source, is being carried out by Athina Raftopoulou, a student enrolled in the Faculty’s doctoral programme in Economics. The aim is to analyse determinants of individual obesity risk based on an approach that considers the socio-economic context as well as personal factors. The results may prove very useful for improving policies aimed at preventing obesity and reducing its impact and the incidence of related disease. To raise the €5,000 needed to carry out the project, the Faculty will use the Verkami crowdfunding platform (http://vkm.is/ubtesi). Of the nearly 4,000 doctoral students enrolled at the University of Barcelona, only 518 have some type of official predoctoral grant. In the future, when the Wall has been set up, the same approach could be used to fund other Faculty initiatives.