NEXT week is National Giving Week when employers and their staff are being asked to support charities.

It is not about offering support for just the week, which begins on Monday, as the campaign also aims to get the message across that charities need year-round financial help, and that one of the ways of doing it can be to sign up to give through payroll.

One of those hoping the message will hit home is Vivienne Woolston-Bass, marketing and fundraising director of St Michael's Hospice in Basingstoke.

She is responsible for encouraging businesses to support the hospice, and her target for this year is to raise £68,000 by next March.

She is nearly halfway to the goal, but would like to see it exceeded as it costs £1.5million a year to run the hospice, which has 15 beds and a community nursing service.

Forty per cent of the money comes from the North Hampshire Primary Care Trust, and the remaining 60 per cent is from the hospice shops - which annually raise about £250,000 - legacies and fundraising.

So far, local companies have donated £32,000 in the first six months of the hospice's financial year and Ms Woolston-Bass would like to see staff respond by signing up for payroll giving.

She would like to be able to raise £6,000 a year in this way, but the figure is currently only £1,500.

"Payroll giving is so simple. The figures could be phenomenal if people committed to £5 a month - not much more than a couple of pints or a large glass of wine," she said.

"The cost to the tax payer is only £3.60 with the tax relief."

Ms Woolston-Bass added: "If 500 people in companies in Basingstoke committed to £5 a month in a year, we'd raise £30,000."

Shoosmiths, the firm of solicitors based in Basing View, has adopted the hospice as its charity of the year and wants to raise £12,000, and there is also regular support and sponsorship from many other Basingstoke companies.

This Christmas, one of Basingstoke's new businesses, the funeral director JNO.

Steele, has come on board to sponsor Light Up the Hospice, which starts on December 5.

Ms Woolston-Bass said: "At Christmas, rather than sending internal cards, staff could sponsor a light for Light Up the Hospice.

"The media get very excited when a celebrity dies but what we should remember is that each individual is a celebrity in their own community - which very much includes the workplace.

"We need people to appreciate how important the work of the clinical team is.

"I wish hospices had been around when my own mother died of cancer."

Basingstoke businesses have the ideal way of supporting the hospice in National Giving Week, as it coincides with the annual Bad Hair Day fundraising event next Friday.

Information on Bad Hair Day is available from Melanie Blackman on 01256 333300 or e-mail melanie.blackman@stmichaelshospice.org.uk