An important update about our fundraising plans

An important update about our fundraising plans from our Executive Management Team on Monday 10th March 2025

Dear all,

Today, we want to share with you an update on some changes within our fundraising team.  You may be aware that Oli Hoare, our Head of Fundraising has announced that he’ll be leaving the charity at the end of this month. He does so with our very best wishes for the future and we’ll have opportunity to wish him farewell in the coming weeks.  An advertisement for a Head of Fundraising and Engagement has now gone live.

Oli’s decision was shared with us earlier in the year and as is best practice whenever a role becomes vacant, we’ve reviewed our organisational needs to ensure we meet the challenging financial times in which we operate.

As a result of this we entered in to a consultation with our fundraising colleagues. Our aim was to ensure that we had the capacity to allow us to engage as widely as possible with our Cornish community, building awareness of our mission to provide essential hospice care to all who need it.  This consultation has now concluded and we want to tell you what this means for our team and for our supporters.

Volunteers are at that heart of our charity and of our ability to raise the vital funds needed to underpin our work.  We’ll therefore be expanding the role of our Volunteer Engagement team to allow them to better support the 1,300 volunteers who already give us their generous gift of time. This will include a particular focus on how to better offer volunteering roles within our income generation activities.

We’re delighted to announce that Amanda Addo has accepted the role of Community Engagement Partner, to lead this vital work. Amanda’s expanded team will be known as Ambassadors, promoting the hospice cause and supporting the community in the many and wonderful ways in which they so kindly raise monies for the charity.

Our reviewed fundraising structure will include three Community Engagement Ambassador roles, two of which will be filled by Kelly Tregaskes and Holly McGroary (formerly our Community Fundraisers) and two Volunteer Engagement Ambassadors, one of which will be Tamsin Beresford who’s currently in a similar role based at St Julia’s Hospice.

Angela Flamank has decided not to take up a Community Ambassador role and is retiring after a long and successful career with the charity, most recently as Fundraising Groups Coordinator. We’d like to thank her for her extraordinary dedication to our charity over 25 years that also included time as a Shop Manager.  Annie Cummings, Volunteer Services Administrator, is also retiring and we thank her for her hard work and commitment. You’ll therefore see advertised job vacancies for a Community Engagement Ambassador role and a Volunteer Engagement Ambassador.

We’ve also said goodbye to Caroline Harris, Individual Giving Manager, whose role was unfortunately made redundant as part of this process. We thank her for all her hard work and send her our very best wishes for the future.

In 2025, as we celebrate 45 years since the opening of Mount Edgcumbe Hospice, we face the same challenges as those incredible volunteers who set about establishing hospice care in Cornwall in the 1970’s.  When the hospice opened in 1980, £450,000 paid for the building and one year’s running costs; in 2025/26, the impact of recent changes to National Insurance coupled with inflationary increases, means £450,000 is the amount of additional money we need to simply maintain services at their current level.

We know that together we can all ensure that our charity continues to be here for the next 45 years.

Best wishes,

Paul, Gina, Frazer and Will