Marie Curie

What it is

Marie Curie (charity number 207994, registered in 1962) is the UK’s leading end-of-life charity. It provides home-based nursing care for people with terminal illnesses through the day and night, runs hospice facilities, and operates a support line for patients and families.²

The charity traces its origins to 1948 and began running its own day and night nursing service in 1958.³ Originally focused on cancer, it broadened in the 2000s to care for people with any terminal illness, based on need rather than diagnosis, and now describes itself as the UK’s largest not-for-profit end-of-life care provider.³

Where the money actually goes

The latest filed accounts cover the year ending 31 March 2025. Income was £181.1m and total expenditure was £189.6m, so the charity spent £8.5m more than it raised that year.¹ As with any single-year deficit at a large care provider, this can reflect deliberate use of reserves or rising frontline costs rather than distress, but it belongs in plain sight.

The operation is staff-heavy by necessity: 3,582 employees deliver nursing and hospice care, supported by 5,129 volunteers, with 15 trustees overseeing the charity.¹ Direct care does not scale the way research grants or cash transfers do; it requires nurses, beds, and shifts. Charity Commission reporting is up to date.

Effectiveness

End-of-life care is hard to score on a cost-per-outcome basis, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. The value Marie Curie delivers is dignity, comfort and skilled nursing for people in their final weeks, plus support for their families. That is genuinely needed and thinly provided elsewhere, but it does not produce the clean lives-saved arithmetic that global-health charities can.²

For a donor who specifically wants to fund good deaths and family support in the UK, Marie Curie is the specialist vehicle. For a donor optimising measurable impact per pound, that is a different question with different answers.

The bottom line

A well-governed, clearly-focused charity doing essential and under-supplied work: end-of-life care for anyone with a terminal illness. The deficit year is the one thing to keep an eye on. If UK end-of-life care is your cause, give with confidence. If your yardstick is measurable impact per pound, weigh it against the alternatives below.