University of Edinburgh Estates Team

Did you know that as well as developing and maintaining a sustainable estate, colleagues working in our Estates Department are also helping to prevent dementia?

Name	Estates Department Charities Group
Cause fundraised for	Centre for Dementia Prevention and Chris's House
Method of fundraising	Bake Sale, Five-a-Side Football Tournament and Quiz Night

Why did you decide to fundraise for your chosen cause?

The group decided to focus on a charity based in Scotland and shortlisted seven worthy causes. They arranged a poll across the 1,000 Estates staff who voted for the Centre for Dementia Prevention as the primary charity for 2018 and Chris's House as a secondary charity.

The Centre for Dementia Prevention (CDP) is a University of Edinburgh charity that carries out cross-discipline research to understand and tackle risk factors associated with dementia and is a cause many of Estates have personal connection to.

Chris’s House provides support for people at risk of suicide and their families; it is the first 24 hour, non-medical crisis centre in Scotland offering integrated support. Chris’s House is a charity very close to home as it was founded by one of our colleagues.

The Charities Group aimed to run three events across the year, and staff in the Department were encouraged to support the charity if they were taking part in other events either as a team or individual. Colleagues from the Estates team also took part in The Kiltwalk, Ride to the Sun and the Edinburgh Marathon Festival.

How did you raise money?

We organised the following three events:

1. Bake Sale

We organised Bake Sales for each of our campuses. Though organised by Estates staff, we were delighted to welcome the staff and students who use our buildings to come and buy cakes!

2. Football Tournament

We held a five-a-side football tournament at Peffermill Pitches. Staff from various areas of the University took part; including colleagues from the Centre for Dementia Prevention and colleagues from across the university including Sport & Exercise, Finance and Procurement took part.

3. Quiz Night

We hosted an evening quiz at Levels Café, which staff and students attended along with their friends and family.

£5,500

At the football and quiz night, we also ran raffles to raise additional funds. At both events, we exceeded the amount of prizes we expected to receive, thanks to the generosity of staff and their work to secure top prizes from local businesses.

At the beginning of the year our aim was to raise £1,500, we beat this target with our first event at the end of March - our Big Bake Sale raised £2,079! By the end of the year, we had raised a fantastic £5,500 for dementia prevention and £582 for Chris’s House.

Fundraising wisdom

Don’t under estimate the generosity of others. We were overwhelmed with donations for our bake sale and raffles, our colleagues in Estates went above and beyond. We planned a variety of events in order to engage as many people as possible throughout the year.