What Does Your Donation Actually Buy?
Most of us have hovered over a donation button at some point and wondered where the money actually goes. It’s a fair question. You give £20, it disappears into a bank transfer, and you hear nothing more about it.
So let’s answer it properly. Here’s what your donations bought during our last appeal. Not vague percentages or pie charts – real things, sitting in real hospices, being used by real people.
What does £20 buy?
Twenty supporters each gave £20. Together, they bought a set of WendyLett sheets.
These aren’t bed linen. They’re sliding sheets: low-friction fabric that goes underneath someone so they can be repositioned in bed without being dragged across the mattress.
That sounds technical until you think about what it replaces. Someone who can’t move themselves needs turning regularly, and without the right equipment, that means a firm grip and a manoeuvre that pulls at skin already thin and sore. It hurts. It’s undignified. And it’s hard on the backs of the people doing it, several times a day, every day.
A sliding sheet turns that drag into a glide. The same move takes less force, so there’s less pull on fragile skin and less strain on the staff. Nobody writes a fundraising appeal about sliding sheets, because they don’t photograph well and they need explaining. But they’re used constantly, they wear out, and they change how it feels to be cared for.
What does £50 buy?
Fifteen supporters gave £50 each. That bought a syringe driver.
A syringe driver is a small battery-powered pump, light enough to sit in a pouch or a pocket, that delivers pain relief steadily through the day rather than in peaks and troughs. For someone with a terminal illness, it’s the difference between waiting for the next dose and simply not having to think about it.
It also means a person can be at home, or in a hospice bed, without being tethered to a drip stand or waiting for a nurse to arrive with an injection. It’s small, portable, and it removes one of the most exhausting parts of being seriously ill: the clock-watching.
What does £100 buy?
Ten supporters gave £100 each, and that bought an Airflow pressure-relieving mattress.
If you’ve never had reason to learn about pressure sores, count yourself fortunate. They develop when someone stays in one position too long, and they are painful, slow to heal, and largely preventable. An Airflow mattress works by gently shifting the pressure across different points of the body, so no single area takes the strain for long.
Preventing a pressure sore is kinder. It also saves weeks of treatment, and it means a person’s last months aren’t spent dealing with a problem that never needed to happen.
Why do hospices need us at all?
This is the part that surprises people. Hospices are not fully funded by the NHS. Most rely on charitable income for a substantial share of what they spend, and that gap has been widening. Costs have risen across the board, from wages to heating to the price of the equipment above, without a matching rise in statutory funding.
That means a hospice can find itself in the position of needing a replacement mattress, or jackets to keep its community nurses dry through a winter of home visits, or a room refurbished so a family can sit with someone in comfort, and having no obvious place to find the money.
That’s where we come in. We’re not trying to fund an entire hospice. We’re trying to be the charity that answers the phone when a hospice needs something specific, practical and urgent, and can get it to them quickly.
If you’re able to support our work, don’t forget to tick the Gift Aid box ✅
What else has this paid for?
Over the past year, alongside the appeal items above, supporters have funded:
- A cuddle blanket for a hospice in North Yorkshire, £4,400
- A gazebo for a hospice in Norfolk, £2,000
- A year of complementary therapy services for a hospice at home team in Pembrokeshire, £2,000
- Protective workwear jackets for a hospice in Warwickshire, £1,160
- A prescribing course for a member of staff at a Liverpool hospice, £1,000
- £1,710 towards the refurbishment of three patient bedrooms at a hospice in Chester
- £750 towards memory candles for a children’s hospice in Middlesex
Some of these are medical. Some are not. That gazebo isn’t a clinical item at all. But it means families can sit outside with someone they love, in the fresh air, rather than around a bed.
What next?
If you’ve read this far, you already care more than most. The next bit is simple.
A one-off £20 is a set of sheets. A regular £20 a month is a set of sheets, twelve times over, and it lets us tell a hospice yes when they ring in March rather than making them wait until the next appeal.
Whatever you can manage, it turns into something real.
At Hospice Aid UK, we’ve spent over two decades making sure hospices can be there when families need them. With your fabulous help, we can keep going.
If you’d like to know more about our work, explore our website or get in touch at info@hospiceaid.org.uk.
Find out more about our partnerships for businesses of all sizes and how to choose Hospice Aid UK as your Charity of the Year