The University’s biggest ever fundraising campaign has raised £100m in just two years and is now more than two thirds of the way towards its target.

Impact: The Nottingham Campaign was launched in October 2011. It is supporting a vibrant range of projects which are already changing people’s lives, shaping the future and having a global impact.

Generous gifts from all over the world are being regularly contributed, adding to major gifts including our largest ever corporate gift and our largest ever single gift from an alumnus.

The £100m announcement was made at the launch of the Pop Art to Britart exhibition at Lakeside. The exhibition is from the private collection of alumnus David Ross, who is Co-Chair of the fundraising campaign.

Vice-Chancellor Professor David Greenaway said: “It is a remarkable achievement to have come so far, so soon in the Campaign’s life and it gives me immense pride to see tangible evidence of its impact on communities locally, nationally and internationally.

“Impact is funding our world-leading research on critical global issues; enabling students to fulfil their potential in the broadest sense by supporting the arts, sport and community projects; and continually widening access to a Nottingham education.

“Our supporters should feel pride in what they have helped us to achieve and I thank everyone whose contributions, whether through donations or support, have got us to this point.

“Although this means we are well on course to reach our £150m target I am well aware that we still have a third of the way to go and raising the last £50m will be a big challenge. I hope even more people will be inspired by Impact and will join with us to reach our ambitious goal.”

The Campaign has already had a visible impact:

• Crucial advances into childhood brain tumours, reducing the time it takes to diagnose tumours from 9.1 to 6.9 weeks

• 2,000 of Nottingham’s most disadvantaged children to enjoy a programme of educational support

• More support for palliative care research, stroke rehabilitation research and wider educational aspiration and attainment in the City, thanks to the three UK-wide Life Cycles

• More than 500 new student scholarships, bursaries and prizes rewarding excellence and including an extra £100,000 to help students from lower income backgrounds

• Two gold, two silver and a bronze medal won at the 2012 London Olympics, won by student and alumni sports bursary recipients

• Five new professorial chairs

• 600 staff regularly donating loose change from their wages. Many donations from University alumni and friends support Cascade, a fund which has already supported more than 150 student projects enhancing the lives both of the students themselves and many people around the world.

Recent grants helped some of the poorest communities in Ghana and South Africa, and supported a farmers’ market at Sutton Bonington. Meanwhile on the University’s Innovation Park, construction has begun on one of the Campaign’s landmark projects, the £20m GlaxoSmithKline Carbon Neutral Laboratory for Sustainable Chemistry, which is set to become a global centre of excellence shaping the future of drug discovery.