Investment & Strategy

Development of the Smith School

A founding grant from the Smith Family Educational Foundation is funding our core costs through the start-up years. Our reasearch areas now offer a range of unique opportunities for individuals, companies, charitable trusts and foundations and other organisations to partner with us, supporting the pioneering work of the School which is now a major feature of  the University of Oxford’s broader research programme.

Vision for the Smith School

By the middle of this decade, the Smith School will operate from a state of the art, zero-carbon building to be built in central Oxford. Under the leadership of the Director there will be a team of Chairs and Lectureships covering the main environmental fields relevant to enterprise, supported by an efficient administrative team managing the logistics, communications, events and fundraising for the School – strategically planned and executed in line with annually-set priorities.

The school is seeking one-off, regular and endowment funding partners to pay for the core research and support teams.

We are aiming to create an endowment fund of £100m. In part, this fund would support a core team of 13 Professorial Chairs and Lectureships, each with a team of grant-funded researchers and administrators, in the following fields:

• Environmental Science
• Environmental Governance & Regulation
• Environmental Economics
• Sustainable Risk Management
• Private Sector Transformation
• Climate & Development
• Low Carbon Mobility
• Sustainable Finance
• Sustainable Energy & Water
• Sustainable Consumption
• Ecosystems & Health
• Environmental Education
• Futures Research

The School is seeking funders for the full range of our activities. Contributions of any size can contribute to our core costs or individual posts.

With every potential funder we want to establish an optimal partnership that delivers value in every way possible.