FAQs

Yes! Please contact hello@WSHospitalsCharity.org to let us know about your planned fundraising activity well before it happens. We want to help you to take photos and use social media to promote all of the amazing fundraising taking place across our hospitals, and across our local community. This way we will raise awareness, raise more money and be able to invest more into projects for our patients and staff teams.

We would not be able to provide funds for you to run a fundraising activity – this is the same for everyone who fundraises for us. However, the best fundraising activities are simple and don’t need much money to set them up, for example a cake sale or fancy dress activity.  Please check with your ward or department manager if you would like to organise a fundraising event on your ward, but we will also be organising a number of Trust-wide fundraising activities that you will be able to join in with throughout the year.

We have made it easy for you to fundraise, with fundraising materials and resources that contain all of the details you need to fundraise on behalf of the charity.   These materials also make it clear that you are fundraising ‘in aid of’ the charity, and that this is not an official Trust event – this is very important as it protects you as a Trust employee and it also protects the Trust. Official charity events, such as a sponsored walk for example, will require risk assessments, insurances, approval and planning meetings with the local council – these type of events will be organised centrally by the charity, and you can just enjoy the fun of taking part without any of the stress of organising!

This is very important – if you notice an organisation advertising that they are looking for a charity to support, please email hello@WSHospitalsCharity.org or call the charity team on 0151 290 4400, and let us know. Any applications of this kind must be made on behalf of the entire charity so that all the wards and departments can benefit. If you wish to approach a local sports club, business or shopping centre for example to ask for help with your fundraising, please email us first and let us know, this is because the charity might already be in contact with the organisation you wish to approach. We must be careful that we don’t make multiple requests to the same organisation.

We want our charity to be a great success because we want to be able to raise as much money as possible to distribute across our wards and departments. To achieve this we are asking for your help to fundraise for our own hospital charity, especially on our hospital sites where we want to raise the profile of our own charity as much as possible. As a trust, we will of course continue to support some key national fundraising events which we know our staff teams love taking part in, and which benefit our wider communities.

We have issued all wards and department with donation envelopes and/or collection tins. All donated money should either be collected in a completed donation envelope, or via a collection tin. Donation envelopes should be taken directly to the general once at either Whiston or St Helens Hospital. We have launched these new donation envelopes to be able to properly collect Gift Aid, which means we can claim an additional 25p on every £1 donated from the HMRC.

The charity’s funds are to further improve patient care, experience and wellbeing it can also fund new equipment, staff training and enablement.

The charity is ultimately governed by the Department of Health and the Charity Commission for England and Wales – these organisations dictate by law what we can and cannot use donations to fund. The charity is subsequently governed by the Trust Board as ‘Corporate Trustees’. Our Trust has a Charity Committee which meets regularly to consider funding requests. The Committee would like to fund every project that meets the criteria, but we can only fund what the money in the bank allows us to, and sometimes we will have to favour projects which will bring the most benefit to patients at that time – this means that your help to fundraise is vital.

We also want to ensure that the charity is helping the Trust to drive innovation in healthcare – to support this we will be looking to improve the quality of funding applications, by looking for project proposals, for example. We will be issuing updated information over the coming months, making it quicker and easier for you to secure funds for your project.

The charity’s funds are to further improve patient care, experience and wellbeing it can also fund new equipment, staff training and enablement.

The charity is ultimately governed by the Department of Health and the Charity Commission for England and Wales – these organisations dictate by law what we can and cannot use donations to fund. The charity is subsequently governed by the Trust Board as ‘Corporate Trustees’. Our Trust has a Charity Committee which meets regularly to consider funding requests. The Committee would like to fund every project that meets the criteria, but we can only fund what the money in the bank allows us to, and sometimes we will have to favour projects which will bring the most benefit to patients at that time – this means that your help to fundraise is vital.

We also want to ensure that the charity is helping the Trust to drive innovation in healthcare – to support this we will be looking to improve the quality of funding applications, by looking for project proposals, for example.  We will be issuing updated information over the coming months, making it quicker and easier for you to secure funds for your project.