CANCER charity Macmillan Jersey have seen record demand last year, according to their chief executive Steph Gibaut – but what’s behind the figures, and what goes into running a charity in 2026?
Mrs Gibaut joined the charity eight-and-a-half years ago. In that time, the charity has grown to spend almost £900,000 per year and provide thousands of hours of support sessions – and, Mrs Gibaut said, it is continuing to grow.
The charity focuses on supporting those who have cancer and their loved ones – from wellbeing sessions, emotional support groups, complementary therapies abd sessions like pilates and meditation. Patients can drop in at its HQ at the Lido Medical Centre, named the Oasis, where they are greeted by a volunteer nicknamed the “smiling welcoming face”.
Cancer rates in Jersey
CANCER rates in Jersey have consistently been high – with particularly high rates of skin cancer – and demand for Macmillan’s services has grown in recent years.
Mrs Gibaut said this was down to two reasons: patients being referred directly after they are diagnosed and better awareness of their services. However, she also said that worryingly high cancer rates is also likely to be playing a part.
In partnership with the UK charity Skcin, Macmillan is looking to introduce a Sun Safe Schools accreditation programme.
She said: “Years ago there was no education around it and therefore there was a culture of thinking that it’s absolutely fine to be exposed to the sun. We now know that that’s having an impact.
“So it’s about trying to educate people younger, so that in the future, and this is for the long game, we may well see a reduction in rates.”
Cancer strategies
Macmillan Jersey’s 2025 report “focuses on our full strategic cycle” as the charity comes to the end of its five-year strategy, according to Mrs Gibaut.
By linking this to the Island’s Cancer Strategy, the charity could partner with the Health Department after years of trying – “one of the biggest breakthroughs in our strategy”.
“It was a project that we had been trying to initiate for many years, and finally, it came to to light at the end of 2023,” she said.
“And the the service that was created off the back of that is called Improving the Cancer Journey Jersey, and it was a partnership whereby Macmillan Jersey is now part of the cancer pathway for Islanders.”
Newly-diagnosed Islanders are referred to the Improving the Cancer Journey Jersey team and invited to have a holistic needs assessment with the organisation, where they discuss their needs and create a plan, involving Citizens Advice, Jersey Cancer Support and GPs where needed.
Though this is optional, Mrs Gibaut said she hoped to eventually reach every single person who could use the charity’s support.
She said: “What is success? You know, I often think that it’s not really success yet, because we haven’t met everyone. Success will be when we support every single person.”
Expenditure, volunteers and more
Between 2021 and 2025, Macmillan Jersey’s annual expenditure increased from £544,394 to £890,352, and its income has increased from £747,455 in 2021 to £963,090 in 2025.
“We’ve almost doubled our expenditure, but actually we’ve more than doubled our service delivery. So in order to create a service that is sustainable and secure, we’ve had to grow,” Mrs Gibaut said.
“Part of that is in line with this new [holistic needs assessment] project that we created – it was a brand-new service, it was a brand-new project, therefore it needed a brand-new team. Our biggest expenditure is our staff and salaries.”
A total of 14 people work for the charity, eight of them full-time. Counsellors have part-time caseloads.
The charity has also had to grow its facilities at the Lido Medical Centre, where it now has four counselling suites, a group support suite and a suite for complementary therapies, as well as two offices.
“When I joined the charity, we were using one counselling room,” said Mrs Gibaut.
Staffing & fundraising
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, volunteers have become harder to find and it is harder work to raise funds for charities.
Mrs Gibaut said: “There’s been a real shift in voluntary support. We’ve managed to keep our volunteers from pre-covid, but the shift has been the recruitment of new volunteers and we don’t seem to have as much appetite.
“I think some of that comes down to the cost of living and people’s need to work for longer.
“So we’ve had to look at paid resources to ensure that we have reliability and consistency of services.”
Since the pandemic, Mrs Gibaut said the charity had “completely diversified” its income.
She said: “We relied solely on individuals and events, and then when Covid hit, suddenly there were no events and nobody was able to take part in challenges because everybody was in their houses, so we were really in a tricky situation. So, in the last strategic cycle, we strategically decided to diversify our income, and that has been really, really beneficial to us as a charity.
“Probably around 45 to 50% of our income now comes from grants and trusts. It creates some sustainability – not fully, because actually some grants are just one year, and what we strive for is three-year grants, so that we know that there is some sustainability in funding, rather than going into a new year not knowing what money we have.
“The other part of fundraising is challenging because there are so many amazing causes in Jersey, and the cost of living is high. Therefore, relying on individuals and relying on participants to take part in your events has become far more challenging.
“Six years ago, our annual Rowathon was a really successful event in Jersey. We would very easily get 60 teams entering and the event itself would raise a substantial amount of money. Now, if I look to this year in March this year, we did our Rowathon and we struggled to get 15 teams. So the shift has been massive.
“I think a that’s because everybody’s feeling the pinch, but I also think it’s because there are so many amazing causes and that is hard for people to decide where best place to support.
“As a charity, we’re so grateful to our supporters because we’re not government funded, and we don’t get any funding from Macmillan UK. So we have to rely on Islanders to support us, and we are so grateful that they do.”
Growing services
The charity has in recent years had to cut down who it offers therapies to and waiting lists can be two to four weeks for counselling and six to eight weeks for complementary therapies.
Meanwhile, the number of counselling and higher-level emotional support sessions has more than doubled in the past five years. In 2025, they delivered 835 of these sessions. Wellbeing sessions have jumped from 405 in 2021 and 590 in 2024, to a record 965 sessions in 2025.
“We are at a point of needing to grow wellbeing support even further. Pre-last year, we were delivering complementary therapies to patients, families, and friends. We’ve now had to say that actually our complementary therapies are only for patients currently, because our waiting lists are too long,” Mrs Gibaut said.
“We have a partnership with Highlands College, so any family members we are able to signpost to Highlands College, who very kindly volunteer their students’ time to deliver services to family members, so that we can focus on patients.
“We would like to bring back the family as well, but currently we just just don’t have capacity to do it.”
To bring back support for families, she said, “we need more space and we need more people”.
In the eight-and-a-half years that Mrs Gibaut has worked at Macmillan, she has seen the charity grown
At the end of the next five years, she said, “we would like to be supporting every patient in Jersey and family members”.
“To ensure that we’re able to support everyone in Jersey from diagnosis and beyond, and that’s pretty ambitious,” she said.
“We don’t have a permanent home; we rent our space, and I’m very grateful for that beautiful space.
“I’d love for us to be part of something much bigger, to be part of a cancer centre that had all services available under one roof, for the patient to be able to access everything in one place, because for me that still feels a little bit disjointed.
“If we really think about that patient and we really think about their experience, the holistic needs assessment is great. It identifies the needs and it refers patients to the services they need. But how wonderful would it be to have that all under one roof?
“So for that person, they’ve had their diagnosis, they are swooped up, they’re supported from that moment. It’s all there and it’s available for them. So that’s what I would like to see in five years.
“Let’s hope we can make that possible.”
