Awards special
Community Services Awards for Small to Medium Sized Lenders
December 2007
Small to medium sized lenders are renowned for getting heavily involved in their local communities. Our three short listed lenders this year are all local/regional building societies, which are proud to help the communities in which they live and work.
Taking first place in the Community Services Awards for Small to Medium Sized Lender is Darlington Building Society for its involvement with the four main hospices in its region - St Teresa’s in Darlington, Teeside Hospice based in Middlesbrough, Butterwick Hospice Care in Stockton on Tees and Hartlepool and District Hospice.
The society runs numerous fundraising activities and has a hospice supporter affinity savings account launched in 2003. This account received a boost in earlier this year when the society closed the affinity account with Hartlepool United Football Club and transferred most of the balances into the Hospices Supporter Account.
This year Darlington also developed an affinity mortgage where once a year for five years a bonus of 0.25 per cent of the outstanding mortgage balance is donated to the hospices.
In addition, for every vote at Darlington’s annual general meeting, 35p is donated to the hospices and this year £4,000 was raised. This has happened for a number of years and the initiative will be carried on at future AGMs.
The society also became one of the first patrons of Hartlepool Hospice donating at least £3,000 a year for three years. And It is involved in St Teresa’s Hospice’s “Half a Million Hugs” campaign launched in April to raise funds to build a new counselling and complementary therapies centre. Darlington produced 10,000 savings boxes for homes and workplaces to collect loose change towards the campaign.
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