On Friday the 11th of September KPMG staff took to Athol Street to finish their charity fundraising year with a bang! For the financial year 2014-15 KPMG have been supporting Alzheimer’s Society, and the Big Coin Challenge was a final push to raise fund for a deserving cause.

Leading the fight against dementia, Alzheimer’s Society is a UK care and research charity which provides support to people living with dementia and their carers, and has been operating in the Isle of Man since 2013. Established in 1979, it is a membership organisation which improves the quality of life for dementia types which include Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, frontotemporal dementia, Korsakoff's syndrome, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, HIV related cognitive impairment, mild cognitive impairment, and other rarer causes of dementia. The charity currently provides a network of over 2000 services in over 230 areas across England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man.

The challenge involved laying a continuous trail of coins from one end of Athol Street to the other and back again, then collecting them all up, and counting them. The task obviously required a phenomenal amount of change, and in the weeks leading up to the event KPMG staff donated generously and spent time contacting other local partners to do the same. Other Athol Street based businesses were happy to get involved, donating to the worthy cause and covering the street outside their offices in coins, and standing guard with the KPMG staff on hand.

The challenge, along with a cake stand and a raffle outside of the KPMG office raised a total of ?1,872.53, bringing the total raised for The Alzheimer’s Society to ?27,019.60. Justine Howard, a Senior Manager from KPMG said: “We are overjoyed that we have been able to raise so much money for such a great cause. Our staff chose the charity because many of them have been touched in some way by dementia. It is a terrible disease, and we are proud to support the life changing research and support that Alzheimer’s Society does on the Isle of Man and in the wider UK.”

Photo - KPMG begin laying coins along Athol Street.