Today, Sunday 13th September, is the last day of the national campaign Remember a Charity Week 2026 which has been featured across a wide variety of media over the last seven days by The Gatehouse and many others, but Gifting goes on. The option to leave a Gift in your Will remains open all year round, and charities like the Gatehouse remain reliant on your generosity in order to achieve long term stability. Find out more on our Gifts in Wills page.
We’d like to leave you with Sybil’s story, which shows the significant impact that a single Gift can have in helping a charity to achieve its long-term aims.
A few years ago the Gatehouse received a significant legacy of over £60,000 from Sybil, a long-time supporter of the charity. At that time these funds were the equivalent of around one third of total annual expenditure, so this had a massive impact, and enabled a wide range of service improvements to be fast tracked whilst maintaining overall financial stability.
The Gatehouse’s trustees assigned these funds to be spent over a three-year period, during which they funded a service development programme alongside the recruitment of three new, part-time staff members. Overall, this approach enabled new services to be introduced alongside extended opening hours, and it also allowed sufficient time to introduce additional fundraising programmes that have ensured the sustainability of these services.
One area which saw massive changes as a result of Sybil’s gift was the Gatehouse’s Casework Team. The new funds enabled the recruitment of two additional Caseworkers and a significant increase in capacity, with a much higher percentage of guests able to benefit from this service. Since then we have further increased staff capacity in the Team, but this would never have been possible without that initial legacy funding.
The Casework Team works with individual guests to provide a wide range of individual support across areas such as tenancy sustainment, homelessness prevention, accessing legal support, mental health and other health needs, general wellbeing, addictions, benefits and budgeting, accessing education, work and training, safeguarding of vulnerable adults, modern slavery and victims of crime and abuse. Their goal is to offer long-term, holistic support, enabling guests to achieve reintegration into the local community through a transition back into permanent housing, employment and independence.
