The Footsteps Fund

The Footsteps Fund

The Footsteps Fund was founded on the principle that all outstanding students should have the opportunity to benefit from, and make the most of, their experience at Leeds, regardless of their background.

Supported by alumni and friends of the University, the fund supports initiatives that enhance the student experience and provides scholarships to hundreds of students annually to enable them to take up their hard earned place.

Since 2004, more than 14,000 people have donated a total of over £5 million through Footsteps Fund appeals and during telephone calls with current students on campus.

Donations to the Footsteps Fund have an invaluable impact on our current students and the wider community:

• Centenary Alumni Scholarships are funded by alumni donations to the Footsteps Fund. These scholarships are worth £3,000 each year for students with 3 As at A level, who might not have been able to take up their place without financial support. Footsteps Fund donations also provide support for students who fall into financial difficulties while they’re at Leeds.
• Leeds Masters Scholarships are worth £5,000 and enable students whose financial circumstances would otherwise prevent them from studying at a postgraduate level. Alumni donations enable students to equip themselves to excel in an economy that is becoming progressively more competitive, and able to take advantage of potential career opportunities.
• The Leeds for Life programme equips students with the skills they need for life beyond Leeds. But for some students, taking part in extra-curricular and voluntary activities requires money they just don’t have. The Leeds for Life grants level the playing field for those students; even though they may not have the financial support available to them, they can still undertake projects which will be developmental for them and beneficial to the community.

Footsteps Fund donations also support campus development to ensure current and future Leeds students have the best facilities available:

• In 2015 the Laidlaw Library opened; designed for the needs of 21^st century learning, includes a wall of thanks representing over 2,300 supporters.
• Currently the Footsteps Fund is supporting the Union Upgrade which will give Leeds students the facilities and necessary space to continue developing into excellent graduates.

The fund also helps our world-class researchers take the next vital steps towards extraordinary discoveries:

• Footsteps Fund donations have supported new approaches towards the link between Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes, and have helped to appoint a new PhD student who will investigate this potentially deadly combination of diseases.
• Donations have also supported pioneering Brain Cancer research, investigating the use of an oncolytic virus which can be injected into patients to target and kill brain cancer cells.

The fund also makes grants to students, to help them bring their imaginative projects to life, such as the Writing Back programme, which connected lonely and elderly people with penpals.

Legacies

By including a gift to the University in your Will, you could help us to nurture the people, generate the ideas and make the discoveries that will change our world for the better. To find out more about this very special way of supporting the University’s work, click here.

Donors’ words of wisdom

Take a look at the Words of Wisdom which fellow Leeds alumni left for current and future students. These messages formed part of the Footsteps Fund’s annual scholarships fundraising appeal in 2016 and were placed around campus for students to benefit from the knowledge of our alumni.