Exponential Potential

The world’s oldest and most prestigious scholarship is launching a £200 million campaign to expand academic opportunity across the globe.

The campaign attracts the global elite—in academics, politics, business, and science—to not only support the world’s best and brightest in their academic pursuits, but to ignite the power that comes from bringing these scholars together.

While acknowledging a challenging history, the Exponential Potential campaign communicates the value of collaboration and invites donors to support the most international of scholarships and the solutions that only globally minded leaders can make.

The campaign theme of Exponential Potential is explosive and radiant, showing the unique impact that happens when convening un-like-minded but like-hearted scholars. The campaign communicates how the impact of the Rhodes Trust is completely unparalleled over the past 120 years—and the next 120 years to come.

One of the challenges of the campaign is to authentically acknowledge the legacy of Cecil Rhodes, while also showing how future investments will benefit the world, especially those in the Global South.

As a colonizer in southern Africa, Cecil Rhodes extracted wealth from the land while enslaving a people. The Trust is built on that fortune, and the case for support wrestles with that legacy, while making a strong argument to recommit funds to the scholars who will fight the world’s fight and lead toward a more just future.

As the campaign states, “That is our history. We cannot undo it. But we can and will continue to elevate the people of the world with all the power Cecil Rhodes appropriated.”

The campaign will attract donors from around the globe and solidify the Trust’s role in connecting the future leaders of the world. As these scholars come together, their potential is exponential.

Creative direction by Rod Lemaire at Mission Minded.

Strategy & writing by Zach Kushner

Visual design by Shum Prats