In early 2020, Lord Leverhulme’s Charitable Trust (“the Trust”) pledged support for LSTM’s 125th anniversary appeal. Here, we talk with Anthony Hannay, an alumnus of The University of Liverpool, good friend of LSTM and a trustee of the Trust.
Anthony, can you say something more about the Trust’s interest in LSTM?
The Leverhulme family connection with LSTM goes back almost to the beginning. The first Viscount (then still “Mr Lever”), through his international businesses especially in West Africa, became interested in the field of tropical disease and, in 1910, gave a substantial endowment to the School of Tropical Medicine and became its second chairman. A century on, we are delighted to maintain the connection.
What is the Trust’s approach to grant-making?
Our grants readily fall into 3 main categories. First, but very rarely, we pick up on a charitable need which falls within our criteria and we seek to make a grant without having been asked. Secondly, the greatest number of our grants go to charities which apply either for capital projects or running costs just to “make ends meet”. Thirdly, there is a handful of charities with whom, like LSTM, the Trust and the trustees have a regular relationship. This last group tends to receive our larger grants. We have a preference for making grants to meet capital rather than revenue costs believing that this enables a charity to do something which it could not otherwise achieve.
Can you say how you apply this?
Talking with charities, not just those whom I have met through the Trust, I learn that many donors wish to exercise control over the spending of their gift. In contrast, charities prefer to receive unrestricted funds without strings attached. Personally, I prefer as light a touch as possible, trusting the charity (about which we will have enquired) to make the best use of the funds. Thus, particularly with charities such as LSTM, we like to give annual support on an unrestricted basis so that they may use our grants for what they deem to be their area of most need – and we believe that these charities are best placed to make these decisions. Similarly, if a charity comes to us with a “once-in-a-generation” capital project or an anniversary such as LSTM’s 125th, we are generally pleased to help with a substantial grant.
In your opinion, what is the most important work that we do?
The early supporters of LSTM realised the importance of dealing with diseases with which Europeans were unfamiliar and which, through trading, came to our shores. We know that LSTM has some of the best minds working and learning at the institution both here in Liverpool and across the world, to save lives wherever at risk by discovery of cures for some of the world’s most terrible diseases. COVID-19 may not strictly have begun “in the tropics” but it and Ebola have reminded us that geography cannot make us safe and that, in the 21st century, transmission is very high-speed.