Impact report

2024-2025 was the year of OxTrail! During the summer of 2024, a herd of 31 life-sized oxen sculptures were located across Oxford city centre and a further 107 mini oxen were placed across the county as a way of raising awareness of and funds for our services. The trail raised £293,850 and saw nearly 180,000 people taking part, with a further 2.5 million people being exposed to the trail through our presence at the Westgate Shopping Centre. The trail also generated £1.2 million for our local economy, with 59 businesses involved in some part of the trail and 74 schools, four nurseries, four youth groups and two care homes also taking part. It was a massive community effort and brought fun, colour – and of course – art to the streets of Oxford and Oxfordshire in aid of Sobell House Hospice.

Income generated across Sobell House Hospice Charity in 2024-2025 reached £4.1m, with both Individual Giving and Community and Events fundraising exceeding their targets by between 21% and 24%. Notable highlights saw over 200 runners taking part in the Oxford Half, raising over £100,000, and our ever-popular Winter Walk at Blenheim bringing in over £14,500. Individual Giving’s lovely memorial opportunities continue to bring comfort to our supporters as well as generating income to support our work – ‘Rainbow of Ribbons’ in University Parks during the summer months brought in just over £16,000 – and ‘Lights of Love’ in December moved to a new location at St Edward’s School and generated just over £27,500. We love the chance to spend time with our supporters, reflecting and remembering. We also love shouting from the rooftops about the incredible and diverse things our community fundraisers do – including holding a 24-hour ‘Lash-a-thon’ during which an eyelash salon in Garsington raised £3,600 for us!

Our fundraising from Trusts and Foundations was very successful in 2024-25, generating £99,000 and helping to support our EDI work, our academic programme and many other areas. We are proud that our funding continues to support RIPEL, our fellowships programme, the hospital teams and our bereavement service, transport, chaplaincy, catering, social work, art and music therapy, staff training and supervision, and very importantly staff wellbeing.

Legacy income improved in 2024-25 with a total income of £704,000. We participated in the Hospice UK Gifts in Wills campaign, with TV and radio adverts focusing on what hospice care means. We worked in partnership with our sister charity Katharine House Hospice Charity and Helen & Douglas House to increase our local media impact, and we look forward to the second wave of this campaign in the Autumn.

Retail had their best year ever, with our shops bringing in over £2m income for the first time.  We are delighted that Oxfordshire supports the circular economy, and we are so grateful to our shops for being incredible ambassadors for hospice services across our community.

In the hospice building, we have completely renovated our main kitchen, making it fully electric and enabling us to provide home-style catering and meet the diverse needs of our patients and visitors. We also utilised a grant from the Department for Health and Social Care of £78,707 to refurbish a number of patient rooms, fit out a suite of rooms for our younger patients and their families (especially those transitioning from children’s hospice services) and purchase a new vehicle for our transport service to enable us to move patients and equipment around more efficiently.

As a charity, we are thankful for the dedication of our staff, volunteers, and supporters – all, of course, inspired by the work that our palliative care staff do every day.