Lisa Denison has been part of Saint Francis Hospice's fundraising team for almost three years. She reveals the challenge of raising money for the charity in the Covid-19 pandemic.

I work with wonderful people in our local community, supporting them whilst they raise vital funds for their hospice.

As I am sure you can imagine, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has hit our charity hard.

Our usual fundraising events have all been cancelled and trying to find new ways for our community to raise money has been incredibly difficult.

But we have some amazing supporters who did not let a pandemic get in their way and raised money for us throughout.

Being a fundraiser isn’t easy at the best of times, but through this pandemic it’s been incredibly hard.

We know full well that we have the responsibility of finding the funds that will allow our hospice to look after so many vulnerable people with life-limiting conditions and their families.

I am also a strong advocate of supporting all things mental health and am proud to be a hospice mental health first aider.

This allows me to support my colleagues at the hospice, reminding all of them to talk if they need to and, when working from home, the importance of communicating with each other and being able to offload when they need to.

I feel incredibly proud of our hospice, it’s a wonderful place to work and watching our healthcare professionals work so incredibly hard every day is inspiring.

Listening to the families who have used our services and how grateful they are pushes me to make sure that we do everything we possibly can to be able to continue providing the vital care that so many people desperately need.

We are always looking for new and exciting ways to get our community involved with fundraising.

We welcome ideas and the creativity from hospice supporters, so please get in touch if you want to share some ideas with us – I would love to hear from anyone who thinks they might have the next, best fundraising idea. The stranger, the better!

To contact the charity, call 01708 723593 or email fundraising@sfh.org.uk.