Tynedale Hospice at Home was founded in 1993 and today provides three vital front-line services; nursing care, hospital transport and pre and post bereavement support to children, adults and families in the communities of Tynedale, Ponteland and West Northumberland. Unlike many hospices, Tynedale Hospice at Home’s palliative nursing care is provided in the home where the patient and their families can be surrounded by familiar comforts and can be cared for in a place of their choosing.
They also provide a hospital transport service which offers a door-to-door service to and from hospital appointments for those with a life-limiting diagnosis and is provided entirely by volunteer drivers who use their own cars. This service is an essential lifeline to many in their community – especially as the hospice covers an 800 square mile radius, much of which is rural.
Adults, children and families who are facing or grieving the death of a loved one can access the family support service, which is available to anyone in the community, regardless of whether they have had experience of another of the Hospice services. The Hospice has a trained team of staff and volunteers who provide one to one, group and family support and also work in schools when required.
Fundraising is a very important part of the activity at Tynedale Hospice at Home because it is vital in ensuring the excellent levels of care and essential services are maintained. As a local charity Print & Mail Runner are extremely pleased and proud to provide support through the provision of print and direct mail services. The day-to-day products include leaflets, posters and cards are relatively easy and straight forward to process, but they also send a quarterly Newsletter out to their database of regular donors and interested parties, which is more complex. It is vitally important that these mailings are done correctly.
Traditionally the Hospice used a mailing house out of area to process their Newsletter mailings and had been relatively happy with the service provided. There had been a few issues, but generally things went well so their opinion had been ‘better the devil you know’ and were reluctant to change. As Cathy Bates the Fundraising Manger said “I met Alastair from Print & Mail Runner at a local Business Networking group and was happy to be able to use him for leaflets we needed printed quickly, which were great. Over the next few months, we got to know each other better and we used Print & Mail Runner more and more for our print requirements and each time we were impressed with the quality and level of service we received. But the Newsletter mailings were a different proposition because of their importance to the fundraising activity of the charity. After consulting with my colleagues, we decided to let Alastair quote for the next mailing and sent him the spec.”
We received the specification for the next Newsletter mailing and it was quite complex with several different sectors requiring different items in the pack many of which needed to be matched with each other – personalised cover letter and donation form matched to the addressed outer envelope then in some packs raffle ticket books with personalised labels attached to them along with a reply envelope and of course the Newsletter. Lots of moving parts!
Charlotte Pearson is the Head of Income Generation at the charity and has overall responsibility for the Newsletter mailing and is the person who decides on who the supplier would be. Charlotte commented “To be honest I was very nervous about taking on a new supplier for the Newsletter mailing. I was aware of Print & Mail Runner and the positive comments from my colleagues including Cathy about the quality of service. I was happy with the quote supplied by Alastair and with his response to the many and various questions I asked – I am a bit of a control freak – ha ha!”
Both Cathy and Charlotte indicated that there were keen on using a more local supplier and due to the track record and experience of Print & Mail Runner decided to place their trust in us to process their Newsletter mailing 😀.
The final spec was supplied along with the print ready artwork for the printed elements and the data. There were quite a lot of things to consider including the security of charity’s database. It was extremely important that it was handled sensitively. All the files were password protected and proofs supplied by hand on flash drives. Once everything had been checked and signed-off the mailing was processed. Due to the number of different packs involved and the requirement to match various different elements we ensured that the appropriate quality control checks were put in place to make sure that the mailing was 100% correct. Once completed the mailing was despatched via Royal Mail.
Once the Newsletter had been sent out. We received the following e-mail from Charlotte: The mail returns have started arriving back and all looks good – thanks again for all your support with this recent mailing. We would be more than happy doing our next mailing through Print & Mail Runner if that works for you?
We were thrilled and look forward to the next one with relish!
For more information on the fantastic services provided by Tynedale Hospice at Home, please check them out at: https://tynedalehospice.com
Print and Mail Runner specialise in the art of print and mail. We try to keep things simple and straight forward, providing an end-to-end service. Everything we do is backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee. What this means is that you do not pay for our service until the project is completed to your total satisfaction, so you are always in control – brilliant!
If you would like to learn more about this project or require further information about the different services provided by Print & Mail Runner, please do not hesitate to contact us via tel: 0191 580 2031, e-mail: hello@pm-runner.co.uk or web: https://pm-runner.co.uk. We are always happy to help in any way we can.