Lord Ashcroft is the founder and chairman of Crimestoppers. On 12 October 2009, Lord Ashcroft pledged NZ$50,000 for the safe return of two-year-old toddler Aisling Symes. Aisling had gone missing a week earlier in West Auckland, New Zealand. In 2022, Ashcroft issued a £100,000 reward in the search for the gunman who killed Olivia Pratt-Korbel in Liverpool. Education Ashcroft was the Chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University from November 2001 to January 2021. He donated £5 million in 1999 for the university's business school at Chelmsford, formerly called Lord Ashcroft International Business School, and another £5 million gift in 2009 to create a new business school building in Cambridge. Lord Ashcroft Building in Chelmsford was inaugurated in 2003 and Lord Ashcroft Building in Cambridge was opened in 2011. Both business school buildings carry his name. However, the business school was renamed to Faculty of Business and Law at Anglia Ruskin University. He is the sponsor of Ashcroft Technology Academy in Wandsworth, a state secondary school within the English academy programme. He became the main backer, along with Stephan Shakespeare (CEO and co-Founder of YouGov) of Flooved, an education technology startup. He has provided a copy of Britain's Treasure Islands to every secondary school in the UK and its overseas territories. Ashcroft is also an Ambassador for the education and veterans charity SkillForce which, under Chief Executive, Ben Slade, devised and developed the Prince William Award – the only award of its kind in William's name. Environmentalist Ashcroft is a whale spotter, through which interest he has financially supported various environmental groups and campaigns. He financially supported the Environmental Investigation Agency, who persuaded him to back a television campaign in six Caribbean countries, aimed at coaxing them to withdraw their support for whaling. The countries had received $16 million (£8 million) a year in fisheries aid from Japan. The campaign coincided with the 2006 International Whaling Commission conference in St Kitts. Military Ashcroft has also supported military causes; in September 2011 he hosted a reception at the House of Lords for the launch of the Felix Fund, the charity for bomb disposal experts and their families. Ashcroft pledged to donate all of the author's royalties from his book Special Forces Heroes to the Help for Heroes charity, and from his book, George Cross Heroes to the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association. He donated £1 million of the £7 million cost of