We wish to make our research findings and the expertise of our graduates available to society as effectively as possible. Embarking on a partnership with us will provide you with new ideas, boost your business operations and ensure top-level expertise for your business.
By donating to research, you will help the University of Helsinki’s efforts to contribute to the future through education and scholarship. You can donate to a research field of your choice to support research and learning. Join us in making the world a better place!
All graduates, exchange students and staff of the University of Helsinki are considered University alumni. Together we comprise Finland’s largest network of experts. There are already more than 35,000 of us. Join us! By joining forces, we can increase the impact of our University, continue to improve the quality of teaching, and conduct research in a variety of fields.
The support provided by foundations is of great importance to the University. Thanks to foundations, research is secured through significant sums and personal grants enable the work of hundreds of scholars at the University of Helsinki. The donations of foundations have also helped to establish, for example, dozens of professorships based on donation funds.
Donations from foundations to the University of Helsinki make new innovations and multidisciplinary research possible. For example, professorships established with funding donated by foundations can attract ground-breaking experts in their field and bring new generations of scholars and students to the research area. A permanent professorship can be established with a 3.4 million-euro donation, and a fixed-term five-year professorship with a 600,000-euro donation. For permanent professorships, the University establishes a fund with the donation and uses the annual profits from the fund to finance the professor’s work.
Donations from foundations may also be earmarked for research or students in a particular field, or used to fund international visiting programmes, for example.
Read more on making a donation.
Foundations grant several million euros to the University of Helsinki in research funding. The research funding is primarily allocated to University units, researchers and research groups through the foundations' own application procedures.
The University of Helsinki believes that a researcher’s career should be protected by an employment contract. Foundations can support researchers at different stages of their careers by endowing dedicated employment positions. An endowed position is better suited to full-time research than a grant and provides the researcher with employment benefits, such as occupational health care and parental leave.
Foundations can continue to fund dissertations and other research by offering grants directly to applicants. Information about grant applications at the national database Aurora.
Foundations can also support students directly. They can, for example, make a donation to one of the University’s donation funds supporting students, or grant funding to students through the foundation’s own application procedure.
The University of Helsinki and foundations work together a lot and organise a lot of events together. The university also aims to invite foundations that support different fields to visit the university regularly to learn about current research and discuss topics of common interest.
We ask foundations to announce any funding application rounds for researchers and students through the national Aurora database.
The University of Helsinki does not maintain separate lists or databases of ongoing application periods of foundations. If the foundation only grants funding for a specific field, contact the PR & press officer of the unit or discipline in question for supplementary communication channels.