Sheffield United F.C. is proud to support various local charities, including Sheffield Hospitals Charity, which funds life-enhancing health and social care services across the region.
Sheffield Hospitals Charity provides support for both NHS patients and staff, funding innovative research and high-impact projects that improve care from birth to end of life and all phases in between. The charity’s mission is to fund at least £2 million in various projects and initiatives across Sheffield’s NHS facilities every year.
Life-Changing Impact
Funding provided by Sheffield Hospitals Charity has a life-changing impact for residents living across the city. The charity not only supports patients and their families, but the NHS staff who take care of them. Thanks to generous donations from its patrons, the charity offers support for treatments and projects not ordinarily funded by the NHS, from advanced technologies and cutting-edge equipment to life-changing research studies and more. The charity’s goal is to make Sheffield’s NHS healthcare facilities, social care services, and community teams the best they can possibly be, and to ensure that every person receiving care and working in local NHS facilities is treated with compassion.
NHS facilities face greater financial pressures with every passing year. In Sheffield, this is particularly true—the city is in the top fifth of the most deprived authorities in England. Significant wealth inequality means that a person’s life expectancy can vary by as much as 10 years depending on their neighborhood. In addition to an aging population, Sheffield also has more people with chronic health conditions and more people who report feeling lonely and experiencing mental health issues, compared to other English cities.
These are significant challenges that highlight Sheffield’s great need for quality healthcare and why Sheffield Hospitals Charity works so hard to fund projects above and beyond NHS budgets.
Grantmaking Priorities
To this end, the charity focuses on four main areas in its grantmaking:
Supporting patient and people-centered experiences: The charity offers grants to improve facilities like patient wards, bathrooms, surgical rooms, or accommodations for patients’ families. Other grants in this area focus on improving equipment and services—for example, reducing waiting times, speeding up recovery, or making procedures less painful—and promoting patients’ wellbeing.
Supporting caring and cared-for staff: Grants in this second priority area support wellbeing for staff with the greatest need, such as those working in high-pressure clinical areas and the lowest-paid staff. These grants might fund improvements to staff areas or refreshments, for example, or make possible educational opportunities to help staff improve their skills.
Reducing health inequalities: Projects that address Sheffield’s life expectancy gap are a big grantmaking priority, especially those focused on the major causes of the gap: cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory disease, and mental illnesses. Other grant beneficiaries in this area include people with less access to healthcare, people in deprived areas, and people from ethnically diverse backgrounds.
Maximizing technology, research, and innovation: The charity is interested in supporting research studies focused on cardiovascular conditions, cancer, mental health, respiratory health, and neurology that address a clinical need and can yield patient benefits within five years.Other funding priorities include new technologies and research projects that have a high chance of attracting additional National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funding.
Planning for the Future
Sheffield Hospitals Charity has worked to gain an accurate picture of what really matters in Sheffield and how the charity’s limited funds can be used to achieve the greatest impact—and this information has informed the charity’s grantmaking strategy described above. The charity’s three-year strategy has been developed alongside NHS colleagues and charity staff, as well as being informed by conversations in patient forums and with donors.
In June 2024, the charity was excited to host an exhibition showcasing its work and three-year vision to the people of Sheffield. Moved to the Millennium Gallery for public viewing, the exhibition showcased the charity’s impact and what it had achieved through local support. It explored 10 key areas from across the length and breadth of NHS Sheffield that the charity provides funding for, bringing these projects to life in a creative way.
No Woman Left Behind
Sheffield Hospitals Charity’s No Woman Left Behind Appeal was created to support women and girls across Sheffield by tackling gender-based healthcare inequalities. Coinciding with International Women’s Day 2025, the charity launched a campaign increasing public awareness of the need for better support for women in Sheffield—research shows that women’s health is not attracting anywhere near the level of investment it needs. The appeal highlighted the social, moral and economic reasons why more investment in tackling women’s health inequalities should be a top priority in the city.
Dementia Appeal
Recognizing that everyone living with dementia is an individual, and not a statistic, Sheffield Hospitals Charity launched its Dementia Appeal to raise funding for specialist support for people living with the condition. Donations to the appeal will benefit community members in a variety of ways—for example, making it possible for people with dementia to live independently at home with tailored support; providing specialist training for NHS staff, volunteers, and family carers; and funding improvements to Northern General Hospital, including gardens to encourage sensory stimulation and a “reminiscence corridor” that may help evoke memories.
How to Help
There are plenty of ways to get involved and support Sheffield Hospitals Charity, whether it’s by donating, fundraising, volunteering, or even playing the weekly lottery. Learn more at https://sheffieldhospitalscharity.org.uk/get-involved.