Abstract

"Building Global Networks of Philanthropy: The International Activities of the Wellcome Trust, 1950-1994"

Thomas Buckley, University of Sussex (tombuckley88@gmail.com), Chay Brooks, Sheffield University (chay.brooks@bristol.ac.uk)

This paper examines the international activities of the Wellcome Trust, a pioneering British philanthropic organisation that operated, and continues to operate, in the critical domain of health research and knowledge production. Although the Wellcome Trust was created in 1936 by the will of the pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Sir Henry Wellcome, it was not until the early 1950s that the Wellcome Trust was able to start focusing on its philanthropic purpose and develop a programme for supporting medical research. From the very beginning the development of this programme involved looking outside of the UK to philanthropic organisations in other countries so that it could understand better its relationship with the Wellcome Foundation Ltd., a pharmaceutical multinational, whose entire share capital the Trust owned. The Carlsberg Foundation, owner of the Carlsberg breweries, was a particularly important reference point for the Trust at this time, but there were differences as well as similarities between the two organisations which informed the Trust’s thinking about how it related to the profit generating Wellcome Foundation Ltd. Over time, as the Wellcome Trust grew in scale and resources, so too did its international programme of research funding. Having inherited existing schemes that Henry Wellcome had himself funded during his lifetime, the Trust continued to be guided by his precedent: devoting resources to the funding of research in tropical medicine. This was a subject Wellcome himself had invested in, and that his will specified should continue to be provided for, but whose scope was extended and expanded by the Trust. The Trust also began to undertake new initiatives and branch off into new areas of international activity, not envisioned by Wellcome. This paper thus presents a new perspective on the interaction between philanthropy, business and health: one that seeks to develop understanding of the dimensions of philanthropy across borders.