If you are interested in giving us a donation, or leaving us a gift in your will, we would love to hear from you. Enquiries can be made in confidence to the Director, Dr David Shankland on
david.shankland@therai.org.uk
+44 (0)20 7387 0455
50 Fitzroy Street
London
W1T 5BT.
How to give to the RAI
What could your gift achieve?
Your donation or legacy could contribute to the charitable work of the Institute in various ways.
A gift of £50 could purchase a book for the Anthropology Library held at the British Museum. The Anthropology Library is free and open to members of the public for reference. RAI Fellows can borrow books. The library is one of the largest and broadest collections of anthropological reference materials in the world.
A gift of £200 could purchase a day of an archivist’s time to help assist the Royal Anthropological Institute with the important task of archiving and digitalising our extensive collections. This is an area where support is always appreciated and can make a significant difference. We have several important collections in need of archiving, as well as thousands of rare photographs in need of digitisation. These collections are not just of importance in terms of historical record, but can have direct contemporary relevance, for example we are currently revisiting the work of our blood group research committee from the 1950s (Mourant).
Donations allow us to expand the proportion of collections easily accessible to researchers. For example, an endowment trust is currently paying for an archivist to catalogue and make available to the public the collections of W.B. Fagg in the Fagg Library held on the premises.
A gift of £500 could enable us to offer a travel bursary for a filmmaker to attend our biennial RAI Film Festival.
A gift of £1000 could enable us to buy much needed equipment to assist the work of the archivist, for example specialist equipment to process larger scale items such as ethnographic drawings and maps.
A gift of £3000 could sponsor a dedicated seminar series, or themed film screening series.
A gift of £5000 could sponsor a small research grant, enabling a researcher to conduct a piece of contemporary and relevant fieldwork that they are unable to finance by other means. For example, a gift is currently allowing us to sponsor an exploratory research trip to the Caucasus, Armenia by an anthropologist working in collaboration with the World Land Trust, to explore the impact of conservation programmes on local communities.
A gift of £25,000 could provide an Urgent Anthropology Fellowship, which focuses on research on disappearing indigenous cultures, languages, and ecologies. This unique scheme, privately funded by anthropologists (founding sponsor: Dr George Appell) has been running since 1995. For a list of past Urgent Anthropology Fellows and their work, see link below.
A gift of £200,000 would enable us to offer a new initiative of a fully costed post-doc Fellowship for three years, based at the Institute. With opportunities for full time paid academic positions increasingly restricted for PhD graduates, a contribution to this scheme could make a real difference. The RAI has an emphasis on facilitating publicly engaged anthropology and applications to the scheme would be required to demonstrate the contemporary relevance and importance of their project.
A gift of £2,000,000 could create an endowed fund for anthropological research. Endowed funds are when the capital of the gift is invested and produces an annual income for a specific activity. Endowed funds have been essential to the ongoing existence and work of the Institute. Notable endowments include the Radcliffe Brown Trust, Emslie Horniman Anthropological Trust, and the Esperanza Trust which support anthropological fieldwork and research at various levels. For more information about our research grants here.
A gift of £10,000,000 would enable us to create a new RAI Research centre. This is part of a long-term vision of the Royal Anthropological Institute to create an independent space to allow for cutting-edge, publicly relevant and timely research.
