Severn Hospice asks supporters to use GiftAid and help raise more money for care
A county charity is asking its supporters to be aware of Gift Aid which could help it raise hundreds of thousands more a year.
Severn Hospice has 29 shops in Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin and Mid Wales which bring in more than £1 million a year towards funding the care and support the hospice provides for local people.
The charity has now launched a Gift Aid awareness campaign aimed at getting more of its loyal supporters to sign up in store, allowing it to claim an additional 25 per cent from the Government for the sale of donated goods. The Government-backed scheme does not cost the donor anything.
Since last June, the hospice’s shops have received nearly 120,000 bags of items – of these, nearly half were Gift Aided, meaning the other half were not.
Ross Henderson, Severn Hospice’s head of retail, said: “If 100 per cent of the goods donated to our shops were Gift Aided, we could potentially receive an additional £240,913 in revenue each year.
“As shown by the number of donations we receive, we have such generous supporters who donate a huge amount of quality items to us which we can then sell in our shops.
“If more people Gift Aided, then we would be able to claim thousands of pounds from the Government and who wouldn’t want to do that?
“It is so easy to sign up, just go into one of our shops with your donations, drop your bag at the till and one of our staff members or volunteers will do the rest. It only takes a couple of minutes and will make an enormous difference to us.
"Then you just download the Severn Hospice app where all your information is logged and next time you visit, whoever is on the till will scan your phone and it is done. It’s simple and so effective.
“We were hit hard by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns – our shops had to close which did have a serious impact on our finances.
“Since the lifting of lockdown restrictions, our supporters really have risen to the challenge. They are so incredibly generous; in fact, we had more stock donated than we could handle – which is why we held several pop-up events and kilo sales to help us shift stock. These were extremely popular, and we are looking at the possibility of holding more in the future.
“We will shortly be opening a new shop in Ludlow. We have taken over an empty shop where a travel agents used to be – just across the road from our current shop and will be relocating into this more spacious space. We are really looking forward to this and can’t wait to welcome in old and new customers. 2022 is promising to be a great year for us in retail.”
