What is the Alumni Fund?
Purely and simply, the Alumni Fund helps to create opportunities for students that wouldn´t otherwise be possible. It supports projects and areas that most directly affect our students´ University experience, and that helps them to achieve their full potential.
Your gift to the Alumni Fund will help current students through projects such as:
- Creating Alumni Fund Scholarships, of £3,000 each, for talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds who might not otherwise be able to afford to study at the University. We receive over 200 applications every year for these awards but are currently only able to help 30 students per year. This year our aim is to be able to help at least 50 students so we are aiming to raise £150,000 for this crucial area of support.
- Building and enhancing student facilities. This year our award-winning Students’ Union is receiving a new extension, which will dramatically improve access to its many excellent services, and which will give it a physical appearance to match its nationally-renowned status. Our goal is to raise £75,000 towards this important project that will benefit all students.
- Providing Alumni Foundation grants to student clubs and societies for sport, drama, music, welfare and community projects. As you may remember, the huge range and quality of extra-curricular activities is one of the things that makes the Sheffield experience so special. Many people meet their closest friends here, and develop useful skills and experience that will serve them long after graduation. We aim to provide £25,000 per year in Alumni Foundation grants to support these important activities.
• Creating Alumni Fund Scholarships for talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds who might not otherwise be able to afford to study at the University. Your gifts have created over 400 undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships to date, but there are still many more deserving students who need that little bit of extra financial support to help them fulfil their potential – we receive over 200 applications for around 30 awards every year.
Click below to hear some of our current scholarship students talk about how much these awards have helped them whilst at University:
Scholarship profiles and videos
• Building and enhancing academic facilities, and providing an inspiring learning and teaching environment, through grants of £5,000 - £25,000.
Click below to hear about how alumni donations to a student Engineering project have helped our Engineering students gain invaluable in-depth practical knowledge of their discipline:
• Providing Alumni Foundation grants to student clubs and societies for sport, drama, music, welfare and community projects. As you may remember, the huge range and quality of extra-curricular activities is one of the things that makes the Sheffield experience so special. Many people meet their closest friends here, and develop useful skills and experience that will serve them long after graduation. We aim to provide £25,000 per year in Alumni Foundation grants to support these important activities.
More than 4,500 alumni and friends have made donations to the Alumni Fund since it began in 2003, raising over £1.2 million. Their generosity has helped a new generation of bright students to access a Sheffield education, and a whole range of life skills and opportunities that they would otherwise have been denied.
Please join our regular donors to the Alumni Fund, and help today´s students at Sheffield to receive the same great education and opportunities as we hope you did. To donate online, click on the right-hand side.
To find out more, please visit "What has the Alumni Fund achieved so far?" below.