What can the charity fund?
Newcastle Hospitals Charity is a registered charity and regulated by charity law and the Charity Commission. In practice, this means that:
- all funding provided by the Charity must be used for any charitable purpose or purposes relating to the national health service or to general or specific purposes of The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- the charity can provide funding within the trust, or to external organisations, usually voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector organisations
- any funding we provide must satisfy the charity’s public benefit criteria test. If you were a donor, would you be happy for your donation to be spent on the idea or project in question? Are we proud to announce this as charitable expenditure to the public?
The charity is not able to fund:
- costs and services which could be considered as ‘core’ NHS costs and services, or items of expenditure which should be routinely funded from departmental budgets
- services which are required by statute – this does not include practice that is recommended as part of NICE or other clinical guidelines, which are advisory rather than compulsory
- retrospective costs of initiatives and purchases that have already taken place
- projects where there are any conflicts of interest with suppliers or employees of the Trust
- proposals which are detrimental to the trust’s environmental sustainability goals
- unsolicited proposals from external organisations
- monetary grants to individual members of staff to relieve hardship
- items that include funds being used for the provision of alcohol.
