Achieving financial sustainability and agility

Currently we are overspending on our UEF allocation, and are in a negative RAM position. We have not been able to expand our student numbers, which would be expected to generate a moderate surplus once reaching a new steady-state of student numbers should we receive the full share of income from them. This has been worsened by changes in the University’s overall financial position, including increasing central costs, and moving to an annual uplift in chest allocations to Schools that is well below inflation. We have been very careful to control expenditure, and to seek efficiencies wherever possible, but the direct and indirect impacts of COVID on our business plan means we are currently sustaining significant financial deficits. We do not consider that there is significant room for decreasing core expenditure without major consequences for our ability to deliver the veterinary course. However, as detailed in the Clinical Papers there are opportunities to improve and enhance clinical learning and assessment through focussed initiatives to develop our own primary care practice (alongside our collaborations with the RSPCA in the first instance) at materially improved financial performance and which will integrate with our existing hospital infrastructure.  We are also exploring opportunities to collaborate with external partners to enhance aspects of large animal learning and assessment whilst also reducing fiscal exposures.

Industry

The Cambridge commercial environment offers a wealth of collaborative opportunities with industry both with pharmaceutical companies (especially AZ, Abcam, GSK, Zoetis), as well as more widely with the local Bioparks (notably Babraham).  The Department wishes to build further on its approach of facilitating collaborative links that are complementary to their academic programmes and help deliver impactful outcomes to innovative academic science.  Our close location with Cambridge Enterprise, along with opportunities on the Biomedical campus (CATS and the Milner Institute) are vital components of the infrastructure to support collaboration with industry and has excellent potential to catalyse larger programmes through initial projects.  We already host a number of small Biotech companies and we will continue to do this to further support our revenue return.

Fundraising

Professional fundraising support is vital for the Department.  Our educational and clinical equipment needs are supported by a small educational charity, CamVet, which plays a vital role in helping us educate our students. In most research-intensive universities, however, worldwide philanthropic giving is recognised as a vital source of income and resourced accordingly.  Although our history of strategic philanthropy is short (even relative to other programmatic areas within the University), we have achieved considerable success in attracting six figure gifts for education and research (from the Alborada Trust and Marks and Spencer).  This was the direct result of the full commitment of senior academics, the Head of Department and the Research Director working closely with CUDAR.  Our collective challenge over the next two to three years will be four-fold:

i) To begin to build out a wider fundraising programme, involving large-scale cross-departmental and cross-School initiatives, while also encompassing strategic fundraising for postgraduate students and posts;

ii) To significantly expand our pool of relationships with alumni, non-alumni and institutional donors, in order to service the requirements of both capital projects and programmatic fundraising;

iii) To grow our front-facing fundraising team sufficiently to meet the immediate resourcing requirements of these projects, while also laying the groundwork for giving over the three to five year+ horizon;

iv) To manage a highly capital-intensive fundraising portfolio, with significant fundraising ambitions associated with building a new Veterinary School to replace our ageing infrastructure

Grant income

The Department’s Principal Investigators have consistently increased their grant income year on year.  There are, however, a number of challenges.  The Wellcome Trust’s restructuring of its support, in particular for mid-career Fellowships and the loss of support for veterinary research, continues to impact the Department financially and the attractiveness of what we can offer compared with competitor Universities.  The requirement to offer a post subsequent to Fellowships for all funders can only be achieved by using the SRA/PRA/DoR route rather than academic positions given the nature of, and consequent commitments required for Established academic posts to the retiring age.