Northants Hospice say donations in wills are around 20% of funding
Cransley Hospice in Kettering are part of a new national campaign of 143 hospices to raise awareness of leaving a gift in your will.
Last updated 25th Feb 2025
A hospice in Northamptonshire says gifts in wills are “vital” to the future of care in the sector, as it's revealed today that 30,000 people per year wouldn’t receive hospice care without them.
Hospice UK has brought together 143 hospices from across the country to highlight the critical role of gifts in Wills, through its national campaign ‘This is Hospice Care’.
The campaign has joined forced with two hospices from Northamptonshire: Cynthia Spencer and Cransley Hospice.
"Almost 20% funding"
Jenine Rees is the Head of Fundraising and Marketing at Cransley, based in Kettering, and says staff always do whatever they can to help patients achieve their dreams.
She wants people to know that a hospice is very different from people's perceived ideas, and they are about living and making memories:
"We get a lot of patients who come in or before they come in are terrified, and they imagine that it's somewhere that old people go to die and it's actually same, you know, that does happen, but that 50% of patients actually go home again and a Hospice is is very different to what people imagine. It's it's very different to a hospital in it's that it's much more homely.
"There's much more individual care, and that care is very much centred around the person and their family or carers, so it takes into the heart to account the whole sort of holistic care of that person."
Jenine Rees tells us how these donations in wills work:
"The good thing I think about legacy fundraising is it doesn't have to cost somebody anything today. You can do it in a way that your family is taken care of and it doesn't have to impact what you you leave for them, inheritance tax. You don't have to pay tax on it on the money that the gift that you leave."
She says it's just one of the many ways they fundraise for the Hospice.
“Choice, dignity, and help families create lasting memories”
Despite the number of people leaving a gift in their Will is growing across the charity sector, Hospice UK says this income for hospices is declining whilst the demand for hospice care is on the rise.
Catherine Bosworth, Director of Income Generation and Grants at Hospice UK, says: "Hospices support people at the most vulnerable time of their lives, easing the physical and emotional pain of death and dying, letting people focus on living right until the end.
“They provide choice, dignity, and help families create lasting memories. They make life’s most difficult moments less scary – but they can only do this with enough funding.
“While the injection of government funds has provided much-needed support for the sector, hospices rely on gifts in Wills to continue offering the exceptional care people need. Leaving a gift in your Will is a powerful and heartfelt way to recognise your chosen hospice for all that they do."