Fundraising
The Oxford Mindfulness Foundation works to secure the Centre’s core mission to prevent depression, promote resilience and realise human potential across the lifespan through mindfulness. It is committed to vision of a world without the devastating effects of depression, where people can live with greater understanding and compassion.
Our Development Board supports the work of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre with the remit of providing specialist expertise in fund raising and operations. It reports to the Board of Trustees and is led by a Chair and Vice-Chair, Margo Miller and Sir Tim Boughton. A 5-year fundraising strategy aims to raise £5million to secure the sustainability and future of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre and further its charitable aims through a balanced fundraising portfolio. This includes working with potential large donors, as well as through ongoing smaller donations from alumni and friends. We also host an annual fundraising dinner in one of the Oxford Colleges, which is an opportunity to meet members of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, hear a keynote speaker and network. Click on the button below to secure the future of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre’s work. You will be given the option to give a recurring donation or a single donation.
Our fund raising supports the overall mission of the Centre, ensuring its sustainability and impact. However, it also supports a number of specific projects across the range from smaller projects through the possibility to make a long-term endowment that would secure the Oxford Mindfulness Centre’s long-term future.
Accessibility Funds
We have made available £25,000 per year to support applications for training, activities or initiatives which widen access to, and participation in, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and practices. In addition, we have offered training pro bono or at greatly reduced rates in countries and/or sectors with limited resources. Our grants are given on the expectation of clear impact, outcomes and/or key learnings, and we evaluate impact and/or outcomes. Read about the projects which received funding in previous years, working with prison workers and inmates, parents, communities in areas of deprivation, young people in care, people with dementia and their carers, and refugees.
The University of Oxford Mindfulness Centre into the Future
Mindfulness has shown its greatest benefit to contemporary society within a healthcare context. This has brought great advantages, particularly in the research focus necessary to prove beyond doubt the efficacy of the MBCT approach for recurrent depression. It is now time to build on that foundation. Mindfulness has immense potential in education, in the criminal justice system, in the workplace and in the community. We have shown in numerous large scale randomised controlled trials that it helps people with depression learn skills to stay well. We have started to look at preventing depression in adolescence, working with people with long-term health conditions, the suicidal, as well as parents in the peri-natal period. Our work has expanded to the general population with mindfulness programmes that are accessible more broadly, and we’re evaluating their effectiveness. Potential cases for research support include projects addressing these questions:
- What supports sustained recovery from depression beyond MBCT?
- Is a stepped and sequenced model a way to enhance the accessibility and scalability of MBCT? Can we introduce MBCT with highly scaleable low intensity interventions, processing only this who might benefit to 8 week face-to-face MBCT courses? And beyond the 8 week course, how can we move from 50% recovery rates over two years to 80% recovery rates over the rest of a person’s lifetime?
- Depression is characterised by inter-generational transmission of vulnerability and resilience. What role can MBCT have in the peri-natal period, through early childhood and into early school years to promote resilience?
- What role can MBCT have in later life, from the transition into retirement and later stages of the lifespan, to support health ageing, living with chronic illness and palliative care.
- Can mindfulness play a role in reducing mental health stigma?
Taking action now will guarantee the future of mindfulness research and training as a major force for good in addressing depression and enhancing human potential. It will enable sustained research and dissemination, and allow teachers from all over the world to train in this important practice and take high quality MBCT to where it is most needed.
Oxford is well placed to take this forward. We have a strong tradition of breaking new ground in psychological treatment research. Since the University’s first Professor of Psychiatry was appointed in 1969, our extraordinary research teams have gone on to transform the world of psychological treatment for serious mental health conditions. The prospects for those suffering from such previously intractable problems as eating disorders, panic disorder, social phobia, agoraphobia, post-traumatic stress disorder and recurrent depression have changed out of all recognition due to this sustained research and the critical mass of expertise in which Oxford has invested over many years.
There are now many places in the world where mindfulness-based interventions are offered, but many fewer in a mental health context that also carry out education, training and research. This is what makes the Oxford Mindfulness Centre exceptional.
How Do I Become a Donor?
Click on the DONATE button below to help to secure the future of the OMC’s work. You will be given the option to give a recurring donation or a single donation. If you wish to donate towards a specific project please get in touch with us directly. This can be to support research studentships, the cost of research projects or costs towards maximising the impact of our research.