Striving to make the links between donating your preloved items at one of our nine charity shops and how this helps to provide hospice care is key to increasing our service provision and working with the general public. Improving this connection at Nottinghamshire Hospice has been the focus for our retail and care teams. Retail staff and shop volunteers have a greater insight into the services our hospice provides by each shop taking on one of the services and dedicating their support to it.

Our shops are a focal point of local communities, they generate a presence for spreading the word about the work the hospice does. We cover a huge geographical area and our primary services are delivering Hospice in your Home nursing care, shops are central to promoting work which is going on in their locality, often behind closed doors in people’s homes nearby at the very end of life.

Retail managers have embraced the opportunity to learn more about their chosen service through shadowing, visits and training. The aim being that donors to the shops, the staff and volunteers get to promote with confidence specific elements of the care we provide and see how their donations and time given make a difference in real terms (i.e. income generation).

Shops have provided fantastic window displays detailing the service they are supporting as well as leaflets and advice. In turn shop profits will be turned into care costs – for example the shop supporting Hospice at Home will be able to display the number of hours of care they have funded or the number of people supported by their generosity. This will provide a greater effective resource into the community across Nottinghamshire and will be reviewed and evaluated every six months when each shop will choose a new service to support.