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Launching The Ownership Project 2.0

Published

£1.5 million for new Oxford research initiative on private capital owners and impact.

The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford is launching The Ownership Project 2.0, a new research initiative with £1.5 million founding support from NextWorld Philanthropies. The initiative will develop actionable, research-based insights into how private capital owners can leverage their wealth to address the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Amidst mounting calls to deploy private capital for positive social and environmental impact, a growing number of family wealth-holders are seeking to use their financial resources to address systemic global challenges. The agility of this unique ownership demographic creates significant potential for catalysing positive change at scale.

NextWorld Philanthropies specialises in accelerating impactful, expertise driven, partnerships that find systemic solutions to complex problems. We are thrilled to be partnering with the Skoll Centre to develop important and necessary research.

Sebastien Lepinard

NextWorld & NextWorld Philanthropies Co-founder

The initiative builds on the original work of Saïd Business School’s Ownership Project (2017-2022) and its Family Advisory Council which established deep existing relationships with private capital owners across the world, their member networks, family offices, foundations, and private client service providers.

The Ownership Project 2.0 is co-led by Dr. Marya Besharov, Professor of Organisations and Impact and Academic Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, and Dr. Bridget Kustin, Senior Research Fellow.

NextWorld Philanthropies’ generous commitment will enable the Skoll Centre to become the leading source of best practices for private capital owners to achieve impact.

Dr. Marya Besharov

Principal Investigator of the Ownership Project 2.0

The lead funder of the Ownership Project 2.0, NextWorld Philanthropies, is a partner organisation of NextWorld, a global organisation combining investments and philanthropic activities under one brand, with a common purpose to leverage their capital to create value for society. The project will systematically map the field of private capital owners and associated intermediaries, develop in-depth qualitative case studies to identify best practices and innovations, and analyse alternative investment strategies for generating impact.

The initiative will be led by the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, which is embedded within Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. The initiative will leverage the Skoll Centre’s convening power, network, and capacity to translate and disseminate research findings to a broad public audience. Partnerships with Skoll Centre Visiting Fellows and globally distributed membership organisations will ensure that the research base is truly global and that the insights it generates will likewise have global reach.

As an economic anthropologist, I'm thrilled with this investment in robust, global knowledge-building regarding family wealth-holders and family owners.

Dr. Bridget Kustin

Director of the Ownership Project 2.0

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United Kingdom