St Mary’s Hospice has teamed up with Barrow Raiders to launch an exciting new fundraising appeal. The Hospice looks after people in every town and village across Furness, South Lakes and all the way up the Duddon Valley to Millom. It costs more than £3.5m to provide the services they deliver — with just 20% of that coming from government.
So, we’re launching a new campaign to ask local supporters to make an affordable monthly donation — the equivalent of a cup of coffee or pint of beer each week — to help with running costs.
And we’ve teamed up with Barrow Raiders to launch the appeal at their televised game on Bank Holiday Monday. Our nursing staff will accompany the players onto the field ahead of their game with York City Knights.
Head of Fundraising Helen Carlson said: “Barrow Raiders are just like us — routed in the heart of the local community and loved by the public — they’re the perfect partners for us and we’re really grateful to Steve Neale and the board of directors for embracing this opportunity.
“Our nurses are out and about in helping people in every town and village across the region, providing care for people with life limiting illness in their own homes, 365-days-a-year, as well as looking after over 100 patients a year from across the region at the Hospice itself, in Ulverston.
“We believe there must be 500 local people who care enough about what we do to sign up and Sponsor a nurse. We’re hoping that by launching the appeal in partnership with Raiders we’ll reach a new audience who might not know about what we do, or realise that our nurses provide things like the local hospice at home service. If you’ve had a relative or neighbour who has died at home the chances are it’ll have been our staff who nursed them in their final days.”
Adele Neale, Raiders’ Commercial Manager, said: “We’re really looking forward to working with St Mary’s — it’ll be great to welcome the nursing team to the game on Monday night. We’ve made them our charity of the year and wish them every success with the Sponsor a Nurse appeal.”
St Mary’s Hospices’ Integrated Teams’ Sister Lauren McKenny said: “Patients and their families often call us heroes — of course we’d never call ourselves that, we see it as an honour and a privilege to be able to do the work we do, caring for people.
“So to us the real heroes will be the people who sign up as sponsors, because they’re providing the money that means we can go on providing the care in homes and to families right across Furness and South Lakes.”
You can sign up online in seconds, just follow this link.