It is with great excitement that we announce St John’s second Giving Day, due to be held on February 19–20, 2025, in aid of the Dobson Free Places Fund and LMBC Bicentenary Appeal. To those who contributed to or engaged with our first Giving Day in 2022, please accept our heartfelt thanks for your generosity and involvement. Students are already being welcomed to St John’s via the Free Places Fund, and we look forward to sharing some of their stories over the coming weeks. To those it passed by, fear not. In this blog, I aim to convey what a Giving Day is, the difference 2022 made and why a second is a great thing for all of us associated with St John’s.
The premise of a Giving Day is to create a moment in time to inspire collective, community action towards a shared goal. This facilitates dramatic progress and provides the opportunity to celebrate and share in a feeling of real difference having been made. At St John’s, we do this by giving first-hand accounts of the life-changing impact that financial support has on our students, broadcasting to our entire community over a 36-hour window.
By encouraging support and maximising the impact of every gift, we aim to provide the conditions for a shared victory in aid of our students. Currently, all donations to Free Places are matched by a charitable foundation, up to £2 million per year. All early donations to Free Places on Giving Day are quadrupled up to £50,000, through the generosity of the Joan Hill Foundation, and all donations to the LMBC Bicentenary Appeal are matched up to £100,000 through the generosity of Aubrey Adams (1967). Additional ‘challenge’ funds, totalling £50,000, have also been made available by the Joan Hill Foundation and will be released into the main total when certain numbers of supporters pledge a gift.
Exceptional progress has been made towards realising our vision for Free Places. In 2024, we surpassed the halfway mark to our goal of £25 million, and our total now sits above £17 million. This will be used to endow 40 fully funded places for talented UK undergraduates from low-income households in perpetuity. This remarkable achievement is made possible solely through the generosity of our supporters. The Dobson Free Places Fund has now launched on a pilot basis, and the first six beneficiaries have been welcomed to St John’s, some of whom would otherwise not have been able to consider a university education. To be so far along in our Free Places journey is in no small part thanks to Giving Day 2022, during which the generosity of more than 630 supporters—and the involvement of hundreds more who helped broadcast our message via email and social media—helped raise more than £710,000.
In 2025, we will sustain our focus on improving access and opportunity at St John’s through Free Places while seeking additional support for the LMBC Bicentenary Appeal. As one of the most active and historic rowing clubs on the River Cam, the LMBC is at the heart of St John’s sporting community, with around 100 students taking part in rowing each year. The boathouse was last renovated 25 years ago, and in recent years the LMBC has faced increasing pressure on its facilities, which now fall below the standard required for a Cambridge rowing club competing at the highest levels.
By supporting the Bicentenary Appeal, you can help transform the boathouse, allowing us to adapt the LMBC’s facilities to the demands of modern rowing while respecting our iconic heritage. A proposal to redevelop the boathouse, created in consultation with current members, coaches, College staff, and alumni, will provide expanded erg space, improved lighting and ventilation and optimised weight training facilities, amongst other benefits.
There are many other ways you can help—for example, by following us on social media using #JohnsGives and by sharing our Giving Day posts, emails and website with your Johnian network. You can visit our Giving Day website to find out more, watch our launch film on February 19 and track the progress of the event. Over February 19–20, we’ll be in touch with more emails and social media than usual, but business will resume as usual from February 21.
If you’re a Johnian, friend or Fellow of St John’s, please consider making a gift—however small or large. Practically every donation is eligible for matched funding and challenge funding, meaning that your gift will have at least double the impact, and potentially far more, on the lives of students benefiting from Free Places and the Bicentenary Appeal.
Thank you, in advance, for your involvement this Giving Day. Together we can secure world-class education, opportunities and means-tested support for generations of Johnians to come.
For more information, please visit johnsgives.joh.cam.ac.uk or contact Will Romeu-Evans, Senior Development Officer, at w.romeu-evans@joh.cam.ac.uk or on 01223 760988.