Annual Fund - How your donations have helped
Funds from the telephone campaigns (2005 and 2009) have been used to:
Alumni Awards
In 2011 the Development office announced the introduction of a new RVC Alumni Award. This is funded via generous donations from alumni to the Annual Fund.
This award is aimed at students who can demonstrate significant endeavour in one of the following areas: Personal Achievement, Sporting Achievement, Community or Cultural Achievement. Applications are open to all current second year students. The timing of the award is designed to coincide with the commencement of final years of study, or the commencement of clinical years in the case of Veterinary Medicine students.
These awards are not based on academic merit, but seek to recognise other areas of achievement that enrich College life in an attempt to make the awards as open to as many students as possible. Each year there will be five awards of £1,000 each made to UK/EU students and two awards of £1,000 each to International students. In September 2011, three students received the first awards.
Set up a pilot scheme within the Learning Resource Centre
At times when the curriculum creates peak demand for particular texts the loan periods are reduced from 7-days to 1-day. Textbooks are enormously expensive and students (especially those of more modest means) rely heavily on the learning resource centre to take out books on loan. Whilst we monitor reservations to try and ensure that we have an adequate supply of books to meet these peak demand periods, students have requested that we should extend the peak-time loan period to 2 days. By trialling this in the pilot scheme, this will mean that students do not have to come in the day after taking the book out with the potential disruption to their study that this might involve. It also provides us with a means to help all students where it generally hurts – by relieving the pressure on their threadbare pockets. We used the alumni funds for this because:
- it provides a very immediate way of helping students and will tend to particularly help those that cannot afford the critical texts
- prominent plates in the books will credit the Annual Fund and alumni– helping students appreciate that the alumni are certainly doing their bit to help them (these are the most used books in the library)
Fund a Summer Studentship for the LIVE Centre
Elisabeth Bachynsky undertook this six week position, which gave her an opportunity to participate in the work and research of veterinary education conducted by the LIVE Centre. She worked with LIVE’s researchers and contributed to their current projects. Elisabeth has written about some of the projects which she particpated in and you can read more about these by clicking here.
Enable more students to watch operations in the QMH
Annual Fund donations, alongside gifts in memory of the late Professor Leslie Vaughan, enabled the College to purchase a plasma screen and a laptop for one of the seminar rooms in the QMH. The QMH's new operating theatres were installed with cameras to link them to the seminar room and the plasma screen and laptop will allow more of our students (than are allowed in the theatres) to watch operations as they are taking place.
Match fund student fundraising efforts
At the beginning of August 2008 the Development Office and Animal Care Trust launched the promotion of its Student Challenge Funds. The challenge fund is used to match funds raised for any SU activity (or that of a club or society) and £10,000 was allocated to this pilot project from funds raised from alumni for the Annual Fund.
Students could apply for grants of up to £1,500 to raise funds for their chosen Clubs and Societies. The Student Challenge Fund proved so successful that the ACT trustees awarded a further £15,000 to replenish it for 2009-2012 terms. The ACT, RVC and Student Union Society are grateful to the Alumni for their support.
So far, the following grants have already been awarded:
• Women’s Football Club – managed to raise £942.00 from a ‘Cocktails through the Ages’ 
evening at a local bar. The team persuaded their guests to pay an entry fee and buy raffle tickets. A fun night was had by all and the money was put towards new kits.
• Badminton Club – raised £309.40 from the sale of cakes to staff and students over a number of days at the Hawkshead Campus. The funds raised will help the team pay for additional court hire to help develop the team as the RVC has no badminton facilities.
• Rowing Club – raised a total of £1192.68 from a couple of fundraising events held over the autumn and spring terms. They held a Boat Club Fundraising Fun Run which was an 8K run in fancy dress around Potters Bar and also a fundraising Christmas Social Night at Tiger Tiger in London. The club need to raise a total of £16,000 to buy two new rowing boats but the money raised from these events will go towards repairing their old boats whilst they continue to raise funds for the new ones .
• Men’s Rugby Club – have raised funds on behalf of themselves and other SU clubs and societies to provide portable floodlights for the sports field. Currently teams playing sports cannot use the field in the winter months and have to train elsewhere as there is no lighting. We have awarded the maximum grant of £1,500. This is what they have been doing to raise funds:
• Old Boys 2008 Day
The RVC Rugby Club welcomed back its esteemed alumni for the annual Student vs. Old Boys rugby match. A delightful brunch in the Maypole pub included a few beers to hydrate well before the upcoming exertions and a healthy amount of banter. The match itself was a close run affair with the Old Boys keeping their noses in front until the last play of the match when a mistake by the fullback allowed the students to get a last gasp try, with the conversion levelling things up. After such an entertaining feast of rugby the day moved on to drinks in the Buttery and dinner at Verulamians RFC. Several generous donations by Old Boys present on the day and those who were unfortunately absent, 
kick-started the Rugby Club’s floodlight fundraising.
• Refreshers Fayre
With help from the RFU the Rugby Club held a kicking and passing competition and ran a guess the weight of the forward/pack competition. Prizes included a signed Leicester Tigers rugby shirt, a Rugby Club hoody and some liquid refreshments.
• Camden vs. Hawkshead Match
The annual intercampus rugby match provided the opportunity to make the final push towards their £1,500 target for the year. A BBQ and raffle pushed them closer to the target with a social i
n Luthers cocktail bar held by the netball team (see below) getting them to that magic number!
• RVC Netball Club –on the 13th May 2009, the netball club hosted their AGM followed by a fundraising event at Luthers Bar, to raise money to contribute to the purchasing of floodlights for the RVC sports field. Approximately one hundred RVC students attended the party which included a sailor and pirate fancy dress theme, karaoke and DJ. We are happy to announce that they raised £189. They would like to thank all those who attended and contributed, and also Luthers Bar for their help and the alumni for their generosity.
• Undergraduate Research Team 2009 – the URT team went to Zanzibar in August 2009 to study East Coast Fever. A team of nine 3rd and 4th year BVetMed students collected blood, ticks and lymph node aspirates from cattle on small holdings across the island before returning to the RVC laboratories to analyse the genetic variation in the parasite pathogen. 
The team raised funds for 12 months through grant applications, commercial and personal sponsorship and events within the College, including the first ever RVC male beauty contest through which they raised almost £3,000. They worked with the Development Office in order to raise funds from alumni in order to secure the last £5,000. In July, we were able to award the URT the maximum grant of £1,500 which will match their funds achieved via events and donations from alumni. This award enabled them to reach their fundraising target of £16,000.
Click here to read the research teams blog and see what they have achieved with the help of alumni donations.
Overall the Student Challenge Fund has encouraged clubs and societies to raise as much money as they can to help enhance the student experience whilst at College and has enabled them to develop as teams. We hope to continue to award these grants and carry on supporting student development.
Other Awards
As well as awarding small grants for the student challenge funds, the Animal Care Trust awarded the Students Union a grant of £3,000 towards the costs of a new minibus.
We will also be awarding the Annual Fund money for the social area at Camden, to include a bar area, to be refurbished. This project is currently being priced.
Finally...
We are continuing to look at ways in which we can relieve some of the financial pressures that students face. Currently we are working with registry to implement student bursaries that will enable your donations to help students who receive little support through the Government Maintenance Scheme. You will be able to find more information on these bursaries at the RVC4Life website, as and when they are finalised and up and running.
We are extremely grateful to all those alumni who donate to the Annual Fund. To find out how to donate to the Annual Fund or one of its sub-funds, visit our donation page.