By committing your support now and for the future, you can give the brightest students the best opportunities - the ones that you remember.
Tom Quad started out as the Great Quadrangle, the centrepiece of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s plan for the greatest and largest quadrangle in Oxford. The awe-inspiring and unified quad we know today took more than another century to complete (with thanks to Sir Christopher Wren for the tower) and another twenty years before its namesake, Great Tom, rang out for the first time.
Today we want to recognise another significant vision. The support of our regular donors means that we are able to offer exceptionally bright young people access to the best opportunities. We have already done so much, thanks to the support of our alumni. But there is more to be done.
With the launch of TOM, our new regular giving society, we want to recognise our committed donors, who are at the heart of Christ Church, just like Tom Quad. Regular monthly and annual donations provide the margin of excellence for today and tomorrow’s students, and allow us to commit support and budget for long term sustainable projects which make a huge difference to the House.
Membership comes with a minimum commitment of £10 per month, and will give you access to an exclusive event and allow you to receive regular updates on the impact you’re having on the Christ Church students of today and tomorrow. You'll receive one of our TOM pin badges of Mercury in the post.
Become a member of TOM here or read about our fundraising priorities below. You will see that our projects all share the common principle of ‘openness’: opening doors, books and minds to ensure Christ Church continues to be the unique scholarly community you remember, but you can give to any aspect of college.
Open Doors
Christ Church is committed to seeking out and inspiring talented young people in the pursuit of academic excellence.
Our students feel strongly that their community should be full of independent academic minds, which challenge them with a diversity of background and opinion. We are proud of our work with under-represented groups. But we want to reach more exceptional potential through our ambitious outreach activities, and we need your help. We also strongly believe that, once here, every student should be able to access the full Christ Church experience, no matter their background. This means our financial support for students has to be strong and reliable.
Christ Church Horizons
The Christ Church Horizons programme, run by our Schools Liaison Officer with the support of Fellows and JRFs, develops skills which students will need when applying to and succeeding at university. Following a successful pilot year we want to open Christ Church Horizons to more talented young students. You can read more about the success of Christ Church Horizons in 2018 here.
We are very thankful for the support of our alumni, who make our access programmes possible. Christ Church Horizons, our programme in North London, has expanded and is now in its fourth year. Last year we also launched a sustained contact access programme in the North East of England, in collaboration with St Anne’s College: Aim for Oxford. Through these programmes we aim to broaden the pupils’ academic experience, to enable them to explore beyond the school curriculum, and to support them in developing the skills they will be needing both to make strong university applications, and later, at university. We are delighted that this year we have two Christ Church offer holders who took part in our access programmes: a future Modern Linguist from Horizons and a Psychology and Philosophy offer holder from Aim for Oxford.
Over 80% of Christ Church Horizons 2021 participants are from BAME backgrounds and nearly 50% of Aim for Oxford 2020 participants have been eligible for free school meals or the 16-19 bursary.
‘I received an offer to study English! I genuinely don’t think I would have even applied to Oxford had I not taken part in Aim for Oxford. Thank you!’ (Aim for Oxford participant, 2020)
‘I have gained so much from this valuable experience, from learning to think more critically about unknown subjects to developing study skills that I can apply to my university application - I really appreciate all the effort and help that you and the presenters have given. I’m now much more confident about applying to Oxford to study Medicine, and I’m definitely going to apply and give it a go.’ (Christ Church Horizons participant, 2020)
Target Oxbridge
Target Oxbridge is a highly successful free programme which supports talented Black African and Caribbean students to make a compelling Oxbridge application. Students have the opportunity to take part in a series of critical theory discussions, visits to both universities, and interview practice and test preparation sessions. Over 70 Target Oxbridge students have received offers from Oxford and Cambridge this year.
Student Support
It is a priority for Christ Church to admit the best and brightest, without financial barriers to study. This means that with recent changes to fees and government funding, we need to be able to offer financial support to those students who can benefit from it the most. We are now subsidizing the costs of accommodation and the termly dinner card at either 50% or 25% for lower and middle income students respectively, as well as offering summer internship bursaries and other grants.
Join TOM to help us open doors for the brightest students.
Open Minds
We believe that the tutorial is the best way to challenge, stimulate and educate our students. The traditional tutoring of Oxford undergraduates has been put at risk by the recent decline in government funding. We are determined to preserve this method of teaching for future generations of talented undergraduates.
We also need to invest in the development of the next generation of academics and their ground-breaking research.
Open Books
The Library embodies what is special - but also financially demanding - about Christ Church. It holds a wealth of precious knowledge, providing books, journals and reports for our students and academics. In addition, our ambitions for increased accessibility mean a continuous process of digitising our rare collections, making all that wisdom more available to scholars, and helping to conserve our treasures for the future.
