About trust funds

A trust is a legal relationship created when assets – for example land, money, buildings, shares or antiques – are placed under the control and legal ownership of a trustee, who must manage them for the benefit of a beneficiary or for a specified purpose. The trustees are responsible for managing the trust in accordance with its terms. The terms of the trust will usually be the conditions specified by the person who has put the assets into trust at the time they did so.

The University of Oxford

The University holds a large amount of funds on trust to be applied for specific purposes narrower than the University’s general purposes of teaching and research – for example for professorial chairs, lecturership posts, scholarship schemes, student bursaries, and academic prizes.

There are around 750 trust funds at present, valued at approximately £800 million. These funds have accumulated over many years, and have arisen largely from donations received from University benefactors. Many, though not all, of these trusts are set out in the form of Trust Regulations or, for certain older or amended trusts, in the Schedule to the University’s Statutes.

As trustee, the University, acting through its Council, has ultimate responsibility for the trust funds and their administration. On a day-to-day basis, that administration has been delegated to individual Boards of Management, often at a Divisional or Departmental level. The Trust Regulations and Schedule to the Statutes record who these boards of management are, together with the purposes and administrative provisions of the trusts created.

N.B. Plans are afoot to provide online access to the Trust Regulations by early 2013. Until then details of all Trust Regulations can be obtained from the Trusts Administrator or, for the more recent ones, by searching the online Gazette. Details of those trusts set out in the Schedule to the Statutes can be found here.

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