Mobilising For a Pandemic Response
The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is renowned for its world-leading research, postgraduate studies and continuing education in public and global health. With over 3,000 staff conducting research in more than 100 countries, it is at the forefront of tackling threats such as pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, a rising tide of chronic diseases, as well as emerging threats to human health such as the impact of climate change.
Having played a decisive role during outbreaks of diseases such as SARS and Ebola, LSHTM was in a unique position to again mobilise to combat COVID-19. With strengths in mathematical modelling, epidemiology and social response, experts were quickly at the forefront of efforts to map the progression of the pandemic, advise governments and global health bodies, and advance understanding of the virus. On the ground, we continue to support the NHS, provide rapid response in fragile environments, and, in sub-Saharan Africa, undertake testing, treatment and strengthen diagnostics. LSHTM is also focusing on engaging the public, producing podcasts with leading academics to combat misinformation, and launching a MOOC with over 200,000 participants.
From the start, we knew that philanthropy would be critical to ensuring LSHTM could effectively support the global response to COVID-19. We were also keenly aware that many of our 30,000 strong alumni community would be at the frontline. We needed to develop a fundraising plan reflecting our unique role, creating impactful ways for our current supporters to give, and raising our profile to reach those who wished to support our mission.
Mobilising our base
A first step was to distil our fundraising message into a simple call to action for our current supporters. We launched a COVID-19 Response Fund through which to deploy unrestricted donations to the initiatives which needed most urgent support. With the pandemic constantly changing our priorities, the Fund was designed to quickly pump prime projects, initiatives and ideas that might not otherwise get off the ground.
The focus of the Response Fund was on projects that raised awareness of COVID-19 in low resource settings, scaled up our public engagement work and made learning accessible to a wider audience. In this way, small donations could have a significant and immediate impact. We were also able to quickly produce stewardship content to demonstrate the power of our donor community. Our team worked to spread the word to alumni, particularly with Chapter leads and other influencers.
Direct approaches were made to those who had donated previously, and we reached out to regular donors, both to encourage dual giving at a time of crisis and to personally check in on them during the pandemic. Many of these alumni had vivid personal stories and were invited to blog about their experience and work at the forefront of the global response.
Engaging audiences
Our researchers were quickly becoming household names through appearances on TV and print media. Through the early spring, we received a substantial number of requests for them to participate in speaking engagements, panel discussions, and advisory roles with companies needing guidance on how to respond to the growing crisis. By closely coordinating these requests, we were able to maintain a balance on core research needs and corporate engagement activity. We worked with many of our existing partners and forged new relationships beyond our regular networks. Before the UK lockdown, many of these companies contributed to our Response Fund and offered gift-in-kind support to help us in our work. In addition, they opened doors to their networks, sharing information with their clients and made introductions to CSR teams to facilitate larger donations.
In the initial weeks of the outbreak, LSHTM received unprecedented press attention and was producing research across the breadth of its expertise. To rationalise this information, we curated our press releases, video clips, media articles and research resources in an online platform to share with major donors, corporate contacts and charitable trusts. With daily updates, this live view of our priorities gave our supporters an instant overview of our work and its global impact. The material was easily shareable and spread to senior volunteers, Council members and influencers to disseminate to their networks. Through this medium we were also able to balance urgent news with longer thought pieces on long term impact, the response in low- and middle-income countries, and wider issues of fake news, discrimination and vaccine confidence. Alumni and supporters could also sign up to weekly COVID-19 e-news updates, bringing news of research priorities, recent podcasts, promotion of our fundraising initiatives and opportunities to volunteer.
Maintaining momentum
Our alumni, staff and students volunteered to shore up our fundraising and alumni engagement work, crunching our data, writing articles and expanding our prospect base. With this momentum, we can now focus on progressing conversations with principal gift prospects, many of whom are new to LSHTM’s work. The pandemic still has the potential to overwhelm less developed health systems around the world. LSHTM is working intensely to help these communities prepare. We are keeping our fundraising message fluid so we can continue to connect donors to our work.
We have seen how the immediate and urgent research gaps posed by COVID-19 have the potential to accelerate the normal cultivation period when soliciting major gifts and we are looking to continue to build on this momentum to encourage potential donors to make an immediate contribution. Beyond fundraising, over 1,500 alumni and staff have volunteered to tackle global data analysis for our research groups, using skills they gained at LSHTM, so we can maintain critical insight into COVID-19.
Back in 2016, LSHTM was named University of the Year by Times Higher Education for the way it mobilised in response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Once again, our community of students, alumni, staff and donors have come together, with philanthropy and volunteering at the core, to face this new global challenge.
Joe McAleer, Head of Operations for Development and Alumni Relations, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
