Oxford, Bristol and Manchester among universities to offer new postgraduate course
A membership body has launched a three-year graduate trainee programme designed to increase the number of fundraising professionals who work in the higher education sector.
The Council for Advancement and Support of Higher Education Europe's one-year course will be run by 12 universities in the UK, including the universities of Bristol, Oxford, Manchester, Newcastle and Loughborough.
The course will teach trainees about donor relations, effective donor recruitment channels and how to secure financial support.
The programme is part of a government-backed matched-funding scheme run by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, set up to increase voluntary giving to higher education providers. It was launched in August last year and runs until 2011.
A spokesman for Case Europe said: "It is only recently that university philanthropy has come under the spotlight in the UK. There is not much of a culture of giving to higher education providers and most rely on government funding. It is a different story in the US, with higher education institutions successfully fundraising for new research and courses, and we can learn from that."
Case Europe will provide 50 per cent of funding for trainee places in the first year of the programme.
