The Big Week is the University of Sheffield’s first ever global fundraising week, in aid of Parkinson’s disease research. We are aiming to raise £50,000 through a variety of exciting activities. You can get involved in our moving challenge, fundraise-a-thon and virtual meet-ups throughout the week.

The Big Week is a way of bringing together the Sheffield community in aid of Parkinson’s disease research. We are calling on you to take action - create your challenge, decide your distance, and start your fundraising to support our fantastic research.

This is open to anyone! You can be from the University of Sheffield community, whether you’re alumni, a student or staff. You can also be a member of the public passionate about supporting Parkinson’s disease research and wanting to take on a fantastic challenge.

The Big Week will take place between 3rd - 7th May 2021. You can sign up for our moving challenge today. Pledge how far you’ll run, walk, cycle or swim and how much you’ll raise. You can start fundraising straightaway, and we’ll be able to track your movement activity from Saturday 1st May.

No, our challenge is flexible to allow you to move and challenge yourself in a way that suits you, between 1st and 7th May. This can be anything from tracking a 5km walk on one day, to tracking a cycle on the weekend and a couple of short walks in the week. You can also complete your target distance throughout the week by any mix of walking, running, swimming or cycling.

No, the event is free for everyone. All we ask is that you pledge to raise at least £50 for Parkinson’s disease research at the University of Sheffield.

After creating your page, we ask that you fill in our short form. We’ll be in touch within 5 working days to confirm that you’re officially registered in the challenge.

Yes definitely! Once your own JustGiving page is ready, you can create a JustGiving Team page. Your friends and family can choose to join your team after they have created their pages.

Yes. When you set up a Team page, you are the Team Leader. So you can invite anyone to join when they set up their own page.

There is no age restriction. We have created the moving challenge with enough flexibility to allow anyone to get involved.

Definitely not. The flexibility of our moving challenge allows you to create your own targets based on what’s a challenge for you. For example, you could set yourself a target of walking 3km a day for 3 days, or you could aim for a few 10km runs throughout the week.

You can track your distance through Strava and link this to your JustGiving page. This really nifty feature ensures your distance is automatically recorded and added to your JustGiving page. You can also join our Big Week Strava Club here. If you don’t use Strava or forget to track some activity, you have the option to manually add your distance to your page later. You can also use the ‘timeline’ function on Google Maps, your smartphone’s Health app, or there are plenty of other simple apps you can use to measure your distance.

Go to our homepage and click on the ‘Find a Friend’ tab, and type in the name of the person you’re looking for.

If you have any questions relating to the moving challenge, or any other part of the The Big Week, please email the fundraising team at communityfundraising@sheffield.ac.uk

We ask that you pledge to raise at least £50. We are aiming overall to raise £50,000 for Parkinson’s disease research at the University, so the more you can raise, the better!

Treatments for Parkinson’s disease have not changed for over 50 years. Researchers at Sheffield are changing this, developing treatments which tackle causes of the disease for different patients. These treatments are personalised based on the causes, providing a new way forward for patients. Your fundraising will help our research team to develop, enabling access to the equipment they need.

JustGiving is an online platform which you can easily use to collect your donations and track your distance. This way, we can track our progress to raising £50,000 and reaching 50,000km! Donations are paid directly to the University of Sheffield weekly, and we make sure that all you raise goes to our Parkinson’s Disease research.

We have a limited number of Parkinson’s fundraising t-shirts. These will be available for the first 100 people to receive a donation on their JustGiving page. In order to receive a t-shirt, you must also fill in our short form, otherwise we can’t guarantee this. You can start fundraising as soon as you set up your JustGiving page, so sign up today and get started.

• Personalise your JustGiving fundraising page as much as possible. Including photos is a great way to do this. This way your supporters will feel more connected to you and your journey.
• Set your targets. This includes your distance target and your fundraising target. Then tell everyone what these are, that’s one way to be accountable!
• Tell your supporters why you are taking part. On your page explain why you’re doing this challenge. Are you doing it to keep fit? Do you know someone who has been affected by Parkinson’s disease? Fundraisers with a bio on their Just Giving page raise up to 75% more than those who don’t write a personalised story.
• Share, share share! Put information about your challenge in your email signature, email round your contacts, shout about it on social media, any way that you can reach your friends and family.
• Keep everyone updated. Link your Strava to your JustGiving page, and your activity will automatically sync to your page. Your total will automatically go up and your supporters will be able to see your progress. If you don’t have Strava, it’s not a problem. You can manually upload your distance, and your supporters will still be able to see your progress.
• If it’s going well, don’t be afraid to raise your target. This may feel a little daunting, but your supporters are behind you on this. If you are close to or over your fundraising goal, people will tend to donate less. So don’t hesitate to raise your target if you’re close.
• Celebrate when it’s over, it’ll be worth it! 1 in 5 donations come in after the challenge is finished. So when you’ve completed your challenge, reach out to your supporters one last time, proudly show that you have conquered your challenge and share any ups (or downs!) from your week of action.
• Don’t forget to thank your supporters. We know you will be incredibly grateful for their support, so don’t forget to let them know just how much you appreciate it.
• Tag us in all your social media activity using @sheffieldalumni, and use the hashtag #TUOSBigWeek to show us what you're up to.

Gift Aid allows us to claim 25p on every £1 raised for our causes. It does not cost your supporters any extra and makes each donation worth an extra 25% to us.

• You can pay this money into your personal JustGiving page, but you can’t claim any Gift Aid on this.
• You can pay it online: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/giving/donate/online . Please also mention your The Big Week challenge in the ‘leave a comment’ box.
• You can pay by cheque: Send a cheque made payable to The University of Sheffield to: University of Sheffield, Campaigns and Alumni Relations, 40 Victoria Street, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK. Please include a note with your name, contact details and mention the Sheffield Week of Action challenge.

The University of Sheffield is an exempt charity, and our charity number is X1089.