Helping people find their lives again - RNIB

Strengthening our voice and impact
In order to achieve the best possible results we need to be seen to be the voice of blind and
partially sighted people in the UK and we need to increase our impact further by working with
other organisations to make ourselves heard. During the year RNIB spent £4,971,000
strengthening our voice and impact, of which £4,261,000 was made possible by income
from donors.
Targets
1. Grow our community of
members by increasing
membership to 13,000 and
by building closer links with
and between members
through special events
across the nation.
RNIB Membership numbers have continued to increase steadily
but had only reached 10,400 by March 2009. However, our
outstanding 90 per cent renewal rate shows our members are
loyal and value their membership. The number of members
involved in social interaction activities such as book clubs,
phone groups and networking events has significantly exceeded
expectations.
2. Support the launch and
implementation of the UK
Vision Strategy, which aims
to develop a unified plan for
action on all issues relating
to sight loss and eye health
across the four countries of
the UK.
3. Develop RNIB’s emerging
strategy in readiness for
2009.
RNIB played a pivotal role in the launch of the UK Vision
Strategy in April 2008. This year an action pack has been
produced to help stimulate activity at a local level, a UK Vision
Strategy website has been created
(www.vision2020uk.org.uk/ukvisionstrategy) and
implementation plans are being produced for all four UK
countries.
We are delighted that our widespread consultation and
preparation meant that we were able to hit the ground running
at the start of the new strategy. We have changed
responsibilities and styles of working to enable us to make the
three priorities of our new strategy a reality. We will focus on
supporting people to live independently, creating a society that
includes people with sight loss and stopping people losing their
sight unnecessarily. More information on our new strategy can
be found in the section “Introducing our new strategy”.
18 RNIB annual report and accounts 2008/09