Meet our new Social Impact Manager

Aidan Tracey is our new Social Impact Manager, and will be helping to deliver positive change in local communities.

Aidan Tracey, Social Impact Manager, SRS
Aidan Tracey, Social Impact Manager, SRS

Hello, I'm Aidan Tracey. With a background in community development and a passion for social impact, I am excited to join the University of Edinburgh as Social Impact Manager.

I have always had a desire to work with and support people and communities. The past 14 years have seen me working in several sustainability roles at Barnardo’s, Changeworks and, most recently, as Students as Change Agents Programme Manager here at the University of Edinburgh. 

Fundamental to all of these roles has been collaborating, engaging and working with communities, partners and stakeholders.   

What is most important to me is ensuring that any positive impact is realised within the communities we engage, whether that be social, environmental or economic.   

Delivering the Community Plan 

Positive impact for the University of Edinburgh means supporting social impact, sharing knowledge and experience, building close connections, providing services to our community and opening our estate. 

You can find out much more about this within our 2020 – 2025 community plan and most recent 2023 report.   

My role within this has three key areas. I will be responsible for the project management of our community grants scheme and community access to rooms programme, and I will be working with colleagues to support the embedding of greater social impact within University of Edinburgh procurement activities.  

1. Community grants  

Over the past five years, the community grants scheme has provided over £660,000 to more than 200 community-led initiatives across South East Scotland. 

It’s been wonderful to understand some of the work taking place in my first few weeks and you can find out more in our case studies.    

2. Free room hire for communities

Our community to access to rooms programme offers local community groups and organisations the opportunity to use University rooms free-of-charge.  At the time of writing, the University is on track to have provided around 100 local community organisations with more than 2,000 hours of space.  

It is fantastic to see the breadth of groups using our spaces and we’re keen to see this grow and expand its reach.   

3. Community benefits through procurement

Naturally, as a University, procurement is significant and we aim to meet the needs for goods, services and capital works as a truly global university, and achieve value for money on a whole life basis. 

Through procurement, it is very important that we generate benefits not only to the University, but make a significant, sustainable and socially responsible contribution.  This is very much where my role will come in in embedding this into our procurement work.   

Find out more

If you have any questions or want to learn more about our programmes, please get in touch or visit our webpages:

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