Press office
"Everyone can leave the world a better place"
4th January 2007

Cambridgeshire charity backs a national campaign for a New Year's resolution worth keeping

Shelford-based national charity, the Alzheimer's Research Trust (ART) is urging people to make a New Year's resolution worth keeping, by remembering a charity in their Will.

The UK's leading dementia research charity, kicked off 2007 in style by signing up to join Remember A Charity - the biggest-ever public awareness campaign promoting the simple idea that we can all leave the world a better place by including a charity in our will.

Many charitable activities would not exist without money left in wills. Yet only 5% of people actually provide for them in this way. The tragedy is that while the number of people making charitable wills remains low, the number of people relying on them continues to increase. The result is that funds available from legacies are being split between ever more charities. The aim of Remember A Charity is to explain how easy it is to help your favourite charity through a donation in your will.

The UK population is one of the most charitable in the world. During our lifetime, over 67%* of us support charities with cash, time and dedication but few of us think of charities when we write our wills. Yet taking the time to donate in your will can literally mean the difference between life and death for many charities. Not only that, it can also bring you tax benefits if your estate is worth more than the inheritance tax threshold of £275,000.

At present donations in wills generate £1.3 billion** each year and are the largest source of voluntary income for charities. If every household caught by IHT each year were to pledge £3,000 in their will, this would rise to nearly £100 million in additional income which could transform the services charities are able to provide.

"We want people to know that remembering a charity in their will can make an enormous difference to their favourite cause and can quite literally mean the difference between life and death," said Chief Executive Rebecca Wood.

"Remember A Charity hopes to make leaving a charitable donation the automatic thing for all of us to do when writing a will."

"This campaign really hits home for charities such as ourselves which deal with ‘unglamorous' issues that are often under funded by the government but which have a devastating impact on people's lives.

"Currently, the cost of care for Alzheimer's in the UK is more than that for cancer, heart disease and stroke combined, and the number of people with the disease will double within the next twenty years if no cure or treatment can be found. Yet while the number of people with Alzheimer's is almost identical to the number of cancer patients in the UK, just £11 of dementia research per patient is funded each year in the UK compared to £289 for every person with cancer.

"As our New Year's resolution we would dearly like to get Cambridge residents to help us to change that."

Jonathan Parris, Director of Remember A Charity said: "We'd like to welcome the Alzheimer's Research Trust as a member of our Campaign. Remember A Charity is a consortium of over 140 charities, working cost-effectively together to encourage more people to include their favourite charity or charities in their wills."

Because of the strength of research in Cambridge the city is home to the highest number of Alzheimer's Research Trust projects in the country - with 13 out of 91 grants awarded to local researchers - worth £2.4 million. The local fund-raising group CAMART and many other supporters often specify that they want their donations to go to the city and ART is happy to direct funds to projects that most interest their donors.

Here are some of the projects ART is currently supporting in Cambridge, many of which have been funded partly or entirely by gifts from people's wills:

• Dr Kim Graham is using a £685,000 grant to developing sensitive, accurate, easy-to-use memory tests for diagnosing the different forms of dementia
• Dr Michael Coleman is investigating a newly-discovered gene that seems to have the potential to protect nerve cells. Having developed a new method of imaging nerve cells, his group is now studying the functions of this gene in detail to see what implications it might have for future treatment, using a £250,000 grant.
• The charity is also helping fund the scientists of tomorrow, through four PhD and research fellowships based in the city.

For more information, photos or to arrange an interview, please contact the Alzheimer's Research Trust Press Office at 01223 843304 or visit our online newsroom at www.alzheimers-research.org.uk/news/

Notes for Editors
• Remember A Charity is the biggest ever public awareness campaign to promote the simple idea that we can all leave the world a better place by including a charity in our will. Over 140 charities have joined forces to create the campaign which is supported by over 600 professional advisors and countless charity supporters. Call 0800 1 80 20 80 now.
• *Source: CAF NCVO 2002 **Source: Legacy Market Audit, June 2004
• The Alzheimer's Research Trust provides free information to the public on Alzheimer's and the treatments currently available: phone 01223 843899; www.alzheimers-research.org.uk
• Alzheimer's disease is not a normal, unavoidable part of getting older, but a fatal and incurable brain disease.
• Founded in 1992, the Alzheimer's Research Trust is the UK's leading research charity for Alzheimer's and related causes of dementia. It relies on donations from the public to fund its vital research.