2024-03-31-accounts

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RNIB Group Annual Report and Accounts 2023124 RNIB See differently

04 Welcome from our Chair, 85 Group and RNIB balance sheets Anna Tylor as at 31 March 2024 06 Welcome from our Chief 87 Group cash flow statement for Executive, Matt Stringer the year ended 31 March 2024 08 Our work and impact 90 Notes to the financial statements for the year ended 28 Our people 31 March 2024 32 Our strategy for the next 146 Thank you 10 years 148 Who’s who at RNIB 34 Our plans for 2024/25 148 References and administration 36 Fundraising review 40 Financial review 46 Governance and leadership 66 Statement of Trustees’ responsibilities 68 Disclosure of information to auditors 70 Statement of public benefit 72 Independent auditor’s report to the Trustees of RNIB 80 Group statement of financial activities for the year ended 31 March 2024 82 Group statement of financial activities for the year ended 31 March 2023

Welcome from our Chair, Anna Tylor

Our mission is to ensure society removes the barriers preventing people with sight loss from living a rich and fulfilling life on equal terms with our sighted counterparts. We continue to make progress with the priorities that blind and partially sighted people tell us are key to enabling this. We are growing our services and constantly thinking about what we need to do next; we have made big strides in developing our campaigning capacity and had some great wins.

We reached a landmark this year with the launch of the Eye Care Support Pathway, where we are working with the NHS, the key professional bodies working in eye care, and other sight loss organisations to ensure patients have access to the information, advice and support they need,

when they need it – right from the moment they suspect something isn’t quite right with their eyes.

Our Eye Care Liaison Officers (ECLOs) are the backbone of the pathway; through our ECLOs, we provide a gold-standard of support to those beginning or on their sight loss journey. This year, the service reached more than 72,000 people.

The pathway has been endorsed by 23 independent partners, including the Clinical Council for Eye Health Commissioning. We urge all four governments across the UK to throw their weight behind it to ensure everyone facing sight loss gets the support they need.

We know the requirements for wider services, including training, counselling, education and employment, are growing. Confidence and the ability to live

independently are key to living the life you want to lead if you have sight loss.

This year we helped more than 110,000 people through the Sight Loss Advice Service (SLAS) and through the Helpline. Some 2,854 people attended our Living Well With Sight Loss courses, helping build independence and resilience.

We believe that educational outcomes and access to jobs are key to people’s life chances. In 2023/24, we trained 5,110 educational professionals, including teachers, to ensure more blind and partially sighted children are not excluded from learning.

RNIB’s Bookshare, which gives access to the schools’ curriculum in a format of the students’ choosing (including braille, large print and audio) – now offers nearly 56,000 students access to more than

1,146,000 titles. That’s 108,000 more than last year and it is still growing.

Thirty four employers joined our Visibly Better Employer quality standard this year. Thanks to improved recruitment practices, overall, Visibly Better Employers recruited an additional 530 employees with sight loss, opening up the world of work and career opportunities to more blind and partially sighted people. We’ve also supported 1,898 individuals into jobs or to keep their jobs.

Our customers tell us that too much of society is not working as it should, and together we can change this. We continue to campaign to make accessible information standards a reality – particularly around health, wellbeing, care and treatment.

We know that vision rehabilitation services are not consistent, or reliable, so we are holding local

authorities to account by supporting people who need assessments and using our in-depth FOI (Freedom of Information) research to back up our engagement with local authorities in England and to build pressure through media activity.

We have campaigned hard to press the UK government to reduce Access to Work waiting times, but the scheme still faces huge problems and far too many blind and partially sighted people are waiting months for support. We won't stop until the service is being delivered on a timely basis.

Our campaigning success includes our work to ensure that blind and partially sight people can continue to travel independently by train, by stopping the proposals to close more than 800 ticket offices across England and at Glasgow Central.

Being swift in our ability to respond to challenges is important because we live in a fast-moving world. As an organisation, we are constantly listening and thinking ahead to ensure we are getting the right services to the right people at the right time and that our campaigning efforts are focused on our customers’ priorities. We are never complacent.

We work in partnership wherever we can to get the job done. We are lucky enough to have many supporters, sighted allies and friends who continue to lean into the challenges of our work and our ambition.

Thank you to everyone – our friends, supporters, volunteers, funders and partners – who make our work possible.

Anna Tylor Chair of Trustees

Welcome from our Chief Executive, Matt Stringer

Our year has seen progress with our two key priorities – changing public perceptions of sight loss and behaviours and innovating a sight loss pathway, or Eye Care Support Pathway; but we've also continued to transform our organisation to ensure it’s as ready as possible to meet future challenges.

In this ever-changing world, we can’t be complacent about our ability to react to – and anticipate – the challenges blind and partially sighted people will face in the future.

Our strategy has ambitious 10-year objectives that will ensure every person with sight loss can live the life they want to lead, without limits.

We’ll make sure people in the UK understand sight loss and embrace everything blind and partially sighted people can do and the

positive contribution they make to society, every day.

We want sighted people to be ready for sight loss – because we know the number of people living with sight loss will have doubled by 2050.

To do this, we need everybody to care about, and prioritise eye health. We need more focus on accessibility and inclusion in any project, service, or process. We need more people and communities to campaign with us, help break down barriers and drive social change for a better future that is inclusive by default, not demand.

As our ongoing campaigning work – tackling issues like the challenges of inadequate and inconsistent vision rehabilitation – and our ongoing response to the cost of living crisis show, we need to be relentless in fighting for change.

As many of the issues faced by blind and partially sighted people in the UK have a global dimension – including opportunities presented by AI (Artificial Intelligence), climate change response and inaccessible built environments – we are looking to build international understanding and cooperation. As well as driving public-facing work, we’ve directed our energies internally to ensure we can increasingly work as a whole organisation to become a force for social change.

We’ve reviewed and set new policy priorities to drive our strategy and are building rights-based frameworks and generating research to ensure our work is rooted in insight and policy.

To ensure we can do our vital work, in fundraising, we generated £67.8 million this year to support blind and partially sighted people. At a

time when the cost of living crisis still hits so many people – and blind and partially sighted people are among the hardest hit – we want to give a massive thanks to all our donors and funders for their continued support.

We’re proud to celebrate a landmark with the players of People’s Postcode Lottery; £10.2 million has been raised for RNIB since we started working together in 2019/20. This year’s award of £2.35m in flexible funding, allowed us to be agile, ambitious and innovative across RNIB’s services, including employment, counselling, reading and specialist transcription services; it supported our new innovation function, which develops ideas and customer insight-led responses to the challenges people with sight loss face, and the development of our own digital infrastructure to

help us meet the challenges of the present and the future.

We’re looking to grow other sources of income too, including RNIB Enterprises which carries out commercial activities on RNIB’s behalf. As most of this income is generated from the sale of retail goods, transcription services provided to business and the provision of retail and news services to blind and partially sighted people, we are both looking to diversify and expand our work in partnership with the third and private sectors to bring new products and services to the market.

We’re looking forward to the year ahead with a new Patron as, since the year end, we were honoured to announce His Majesty King Charles III would continue RNIB’s royal patronage. This continues

a long line of support for our organisation from the Royal Family – RNIB’s first Patron was Queen Victoria, who became Royal Patron in 1875. King Charles’ support will make a huge difference to our organisation’s work.

Her Late Majesty was a passionate advocate for the rights of blind and partially sighted people and a great friend to RNIB, lending moral authority to the cause of sight loss; and we only need to remember the many, many tributes paid by people with sight loss to the Late Queen – our patron for 70 years – to understand why we are so grateful for our royal patronage.

Matt Stringer Chief Executive Officer

Our work and impact

We’ve built on the ambitious strategy RNIB launched last year. The new strategy has two key priorities – to change public perceptions of sight loss and behaviours and to innovate a sight loss pathway – and four objectives split between these priorities; it has three additional objectives to ensure RNIB is in the best place to deliver for blind and partially sighted people in the present and the future.

Here we outline the progress we’ve made in achieving our 2023/24 objectives and plans as set out in the last Annual Report.

Priority 1:

To change public perceptions of sight loss and behaviours by meeting two key objectives.

Objective 1:

See Sight Loss Differently

To reverse inaccurate perceptions and change public behaviours to expect equitable participation from people with sight loss.

Our plan:

To campaign on the key issues for blind and partially sighted people through a bolder approach to communication, campaigning and engagement.

Public attitudes and behaviours are one of the biggest barriers experienced by blind and partially sighted people. We’ve been tackling this at a national and local level across the UK and focused on how we can remove key barriers – such as inaccessible travel and the lack of accessible information – which stop

people with sight loss living the life they want to lead.

Policy, public affairs and campaigns is an increasingly important area for creating change along with our focus on community activism at a local level.

Getting around – independent travel and transport

We have made good progress in our work on accessible and inclusive streets:

We’ve worked with a total of 109 local authorities across England to input into the accessibility of the built environment, road schemes and equalities work; to engage with educational provision for children with vision impairment; and to work with vision rehabilitation providers. We launched our Key Principles of Inclusive Street

Design at the Local Government Association Conference in July, with Manchester, Leicestershire and Lancashire County Councils committing to incorporating it into their design guidance. As a result, we’re seeing improved street design plans in Manchester and other areas.

We’ve stopped – or secured improvements to – a number of public developments with accessibility concerns. For example, Norfolk County Council paused the installation of 46 on-pavement EV charging points to address pedestrian safety concerns.

After listening to our feedback, Nexus – operator of the Tyne and Wear Metro – launched its Stadler 500 model train with improved accessibility features including AV announcements, colour contrast, improved lighting and

dropped steps, making travel more accessible for blind and partially sighted people.

We worked with the Rail Delivery Group to produce disabled person’s railcards, with embossed braille, supporting independent travel for thousands more travellers with sight loss.

Rail ticket office closure threat, overturned

We rallied across the disability sector and with campaigners across England and Scotland to stand up against proposals, announced in July 2023, to close more than 800 train station ticket offices across England and at Glasgow Central. We acted quickly to get a strong, consistent, insight-backed message to the UK government, by mobilising and working with disability and sight loss sector allies and existing campaigners, and by highlighting the

injustice of the proposals with the general public. Effective and rapid media targeting and compelling social media storytelling kept the issue high on the agenda while the consultation was open.

Our campaigners had a huge reach and impact – contacting 90 per cent of MPs in England to express their objections. And our national and regional media campaign resulted in 1,121 items of press coverage – with 7.34 billion opportunities for our messages to reach people – including a powerful BBC Breakfast interview.

The UK government made a U-turn on the proposal in October 2023 after reviewing consultation responses. The Secretary of State for Transport Mark Harper wrote to RNIB saying he was “struck by the volume of contributions made in particular by sight loss groups”.

Our research shows that only three per cent of people with sight loss said they could use a ticket vending machine without problems, and 58 per cent said it was impossible. Winning this campaign was critical for maintaining the independence of tens of thousands of blind and partially sighted people. Following the campaign win, RNIB was invited to join a National Accessibility Group for the rail network to continue to advocate for blind and partially sighted rail users.

Upholding people’s legal right to accessible information

In July 2023, the High Court ruled against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in a legal case taken by Dr Yusuf Osman concerning a failure to provide information about his benefits in a format that was accessible to him.

Despite requesting an alternative accessible format, the DWP continued to send him information about his benefits in hard copy letters and email attachments (scanned PDFs) – inaccessible formats for people with sight loss who use a screen reader.

We supported Dr Osman’s case and provided a witness statement detailing issues we’ve seen with DWP and inaccessible information over many years.

The Court declared DWP had discriminated against Dr Osman and other blind and partially sighted people in the arrangements it made for providing them with information in certain alternative formats. As a result, DWP has made several changes to its systems and processes that will ultimately benefit blind and partially sighted people who need information in alternative formats.

Making sure the UK Government and other politicians are prioritising the key issues

In Autumn 2023, we took an exhibition stand designed to look like a studio flat to the Liberal Democrat, Conservative, and Labour Party conferences to raise our profile ahead of the next General Election and show MPs, councillors and party members the importance of properly-resourced vision rehabilitation services.

We demonstrated on the stand how daily activities, such as making a cup of tea, can be carried out safely by someone with sight loss with the right training and equipment.

Our stand won the award for best charity stand at the Liberal Democrat conference and some 650 visitors and almost 70 MPs, including Liberal Democrat Leader, Ed Davey, Work and Pensions Secretary, Mel Stride, and Shadow Minister for Social Care, Andrew Gwynne, engaged with us.

RNIB’s engagement and profile with MPs is tracked via quarterly research with NFP Synergy; this poll of 100 MPs in January and February 2024 showed that RNIB was rated effective by 70 per cent of Conservative MPs in the survey and by 75 per cent of Labour MPs – this put us in the top four charities out of the 28 involved.

Highlights from the nations include...

England

We launched the #MyInfoMyWay campaign, which generated a total media reach of 813 million, to highlight the importance of accessible health information in England to keep the pressure on the UK Government to publish a new, stronger Accessible Information Standard.

Northern Ireland

One of Northern Ireland’s biggest local authorities, Derry and Strabane District Council, has committed to making the area a great place to live, work or visit if you are blind or partially sighted. We're jointly developing a threeto-four-year plan in partnership with the council to realise this.
In February 2024 we hosted Northern Ireland’s first ever Technology for Life Fair to showcase a wide range of assistive technology products for blind and partially sighted people. More than 20 of the biggest companies and organisations in assistive technology attracted more than 500 visitors.

Scotland

• We hosted the first Inclusive Design for Sustainability twoday conference at Glasgow Science Centre in June 2023 to promote and showcase the latest advancements in accessible and sustainable design to around 250 attendees. Representatives of Google, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft and Virgin Media O2 contributed to explore topics including navigational technology, accessible design and digital wellbeing.

Wales

In 2024, we hosted an event at the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) to highlight the detrimental impact inaccessible health information has on blind and partially sighted people. The Minister for Social Justice asked her officials to work with us to establish an entirely new work programme in direct response to the issues highlighted by our campaign which will coproduce and implement a national action plan for ensuring the communication needs of people with sensory loss are met.
We contacted the Chief Executive of Cardiff Council to highlight the risk of inaccessible bus stop boarders – the raised sections of carriageway that remove the need for a bus to swing into the pavement kerb line. These are a safety risk for people with sight loss and the council has

agreed its bus stops will be replaced with more accessible designs and has applied for Welsh Government funding to begin this work.

Raising public understanding of sight loss and shifting perceptions

We launched the second phase of RNIB’s biggest ever advertising campaign – See the person, not the sight loss – repeating TV advertising and promoting new digital videos and interactive elements.

The TV ad focuses on increasing public understanding of sight loss and gives people knowledge about changing attitudes and behaviour to help blind and partially sighted people. The new digital content – called Before You Ask – uses humour and interactivity to encourage people to think more deeply about shifting their own perceptions and

creative said they took action as a result, or that they intended to. The campaign also supported behaviour change objectives, with 84 per cent of that group feeling confident to approach a blind or partially sighted person, as opposed to 63 per cent of our control group.

attitudes. It also answers questions about sight loss.

Results, after we surveyed 2,000 adults in the UK aged 16 and over, showed that the campaign has increased knowledge around sight loss, with around three quarters (77 per cent) of people who had seen it agreeing that the campaign helps them understand how people with sight loss use adaptions in their everyday life; and that they feel more knowledgeable about blind and partially sighted people’s different experiences (73 per cent).

After watching the ads, these results show people have an increased understanding of the role improvements in accessibility play in opening up the world for people with sight loss to participate more fully, as well as a greater understanding and consideration of the experiences of blind and partially sighted people.

More than half (59 per cent) of people who saw the #BeforeYouAsk out of home (bus shelters, poster sites etc)

Our plan:

To expand our community change work and activism, starting with the insight from our pioneering behaviour-change pilot in Islington.

Our social action initiatives, such as this behaviour-change pilot, are designed to inspire people to think differently about sight loss and feel empowered to take action in their communities.

We ran a test and learn pilot in Islington, London, from May to August 2023, involving local residents and businesses. It showed a positive shift in the general public’s willingness to offer assistance to blind and partially sighted people, as well as improving their knowledge of what to do to be helpful. It also led to a significant reduction in pavement obstructions, such as bikes and A-boards.

We will expand our work and develop and test further community-based initiatives elsewhere in the UK.

Our plan:

To deliver the public launch of See Sport Differently and sponsor the International Blind Sports Association (IBSA) World Games to engage more blind and partially sighted people in sport.

In May 2023, we ran our See Sport Differently campaign, which was funded by Sport England and run in partnership with British Blind Sport, to give blind and partially sighted people the confidence and motivation to try a new sport or activity and provide the tools to find an accessible activity in their local area.

The digital campaign featured a series of audio-led and accessible free home video workouts, led by celebrity

fitness instructor Mr Motivator and stories of active people with sight loss sharing different experiences of sports and activities. We directed people to an online portal with relevant information.

The campaign had a potential reach of 35.5 million; while there was evidence it had boosted knowledge and awareness of sport and physical activity among people with sight loss, a survey showed that just under half of respondents (45 per cent), agreed that they knew more about where to go locally if they wanted to be physically active.

We sponsored the IBSA (International Blind Sport Federation) World Games, which took place in Birmingham in August 2023. We used the sponsorship to raise awareness of RNIB with a blind and partially sighted audience and to change public perceptions of sight loss.

PR activity around the event reached more than 691 million people.
RNIB Connect Radio, which broadcast from the event, recorded podcasts which got a 700 per cent boost in listeners during the games.

Objective 2: Design for Everyone, Better for Anyone

To make standards for design of mainstream environments and solutions accessible by default.

Shoppers with sight loss are losing out because they don’t get access to the information and offers everyone else does. We prioritised this objective to address this challenge, while targeting the video gaming industry which has not placed enough focus on making its products accessible. Products and services designed for accessibility are easier to use for everyone.

Our plan:

To persuade more brands to implement accessible packaging solutions onto their products and improve store accessibility.

We worked with global organisations, including FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) giants Unilever and Weetabix, to implement accessible packaging solutions on their products.

Weetabix added optical codes which work with the NaviLens accessible free app on all its packaging, to give shoppers key product information.

• Unilever, which operates in 190 countries, worked with RNIB to improve the accessibility of its product-packaging content with a modified QR code. Its preferred solution – Zapvision AQR – now has codes available across 18 Unilever brands including Persil, Colman’s, Comfort and Dove. It launched accessible QR codes on a number of products, including Berocca Immuno Gummies and Bayer Canescool Soothing Cream Gel in the UK, and work continues to expand the range.

For store accessibility, we worked with supermarket chain Aldi to evaluate its low-level lighting and help it set a standard for use in store refurbishments and launches.

Our plan:

To build our influence and impact on the gaming industry through further engagement and make key tools available to the gaming sector.

Research commissioned by RNIB, Guide Dogs UK and Thomas Pocklington Trust shows that more than a quarter (26 per cent) of blind and partially sighted people in the UK play games online (Good Innovation and Insight Angels, March 2021) – but we know that not all games are accessible.

We created a toolkit – a devkit – for developers which will launch in 2024. It’ll show how games can

be made accessible using audio, visuals and haptics for gamers with sight loss.

Our work has raised the profile of blind gaming and we’ve seen the impact with high-profile games released, including Spiderman 2 and Forza, with features that enable gamers with sight loss to play genres that they have not had the chance to before.

Part of our fundraising through Jingle Jam, the online festive charity collaboration backed by gamers, games developers and publishers, funded the devkit.

Our plan:

To deliver a Design for Everyone marketing campaign to raise awareness and engagement in the travel and transport sector.

We didn’t deliver this in 2023/24 due to a change in direction from a potential partner, but have gained experience and knowledge from our efforts to get a campaign launched.

We moved resources intended for this to support another burst of the already effective Before You Ask campaign.

Priority 2:

To innovate a sight loss pathway by meeting two key objectives.

No one should face a sight loss diagnosis without support, and the sight loss pathway – now known as the Eye Care Support Pathway – is key for ensuring people get the information, advice and support they need from the moment they realise something isn’t “quite right” with their eyes.

While this pioneering work was a priority, we continued to grow our core services including the Sight Loss Advice Service and our ECLO service, while tackling the root causes of some of the inequality in society; through more digital inclusion, better educational attainment and employment opportunities.

Objective 3:

No Diagnosis Without Support

To enable all people experiencing sight loss to move quickly from diagnosis to confidence and expect equitable participation in society.

Our plan:

To engage with health professionals to understand and embed better support for patients with sight loss after they’re diagnosed.

Over the last three years and more, RNIB has led the development of the Eye Care Support Pathway in partnership with dozens of organisations including the Association of Optometrists, Clinical Council for Eye Health Commissioning, College of Optometrists, Department of Health and Social Care, Macular Society, NHS England, Royal College of Ophthalmologists and Visionary.

The pathway is designed to ensure that patients with sight loss have access to the information, advice and support they need from the moment someone realises that something isn’t quite right with their eyes, through to diagnosis and throughout their eye care journey. The pathway will support 2.2 million people estimated to be living with sight loss in the UK.

RNIB started investigating patient experience throughout clinical eye care journeys three years ago, gathering insight from more than 400 people and patients with lived experience of eye care needs and sight loss and extensive collaboration with key partners across the sector.

We prioritised the development of an Eye Care Support Pathway as patients were finding it complex and

confusing to get the information and support they needed. The pathway should resolve more than 100 “pain points” we identified in the current situation, including difficulties finding local provision and peer support, poor communication and a lack of information and patient knowledge.

In November 2023, we launched the pathway – developed with and endorsed by 23 partners, including the Clinical Council for Eye Health Commissioning – to health professionals. We launched a comprehensive report at an event in central London at the Royal College of Surgeons. More than 30 professional bodies and over 40 senior eye care professionals were involved in the consultation and peer review, which led to the report.

In February 2024, a key stage in the implementation of the Eye Care

clinical care pathway and currently many people have no service or find it by accident. Endorsed by 12 sector organisations, the framework is the first step in setting standards which services can measure themselves against and improve.

Support Pathway was reached with our pilot programme of a Low Vision Framework for professionals in seven locations across the UK. Low vision services are an important element of the eye care support pathway as they may be needed throughout the

Our plan:

To pioneer new referral processes to increase the number of people able to get eye care support and information with referrals into RNIB services from primary eye care services and more Eye Care Liaison Officer (ECLO) e-referrals.

We’ve piloted three key ways of ensuring patients with sight loss can be directly referred to RNIB for support, as well as our work with Asda (see page 22). Successful processes will be shared with the wider eye care sector – and NHS commissioning services – allowing them to select the referral method most appropriate to their systems and patients.

• We developed and implemented a new Waiting Well offer to speed up RNIB’s response to patients after a clinic appointment. The Waiting Well team responds to e-referrals and direct referrals from primary and secondary care, including high street opticians and hospital eye services, and in particular, people on waiting lists in need of support. E-referrals should mean people are referred to RNIB as early as possible and before a formal sight loss diagnosis.

We piloted a new way of direct referral to RNIB through Primary Eyecare Services (PES), an umbrella organisation, representing the views of the optometry sector. In North West England, we‘ve tested sending digital referrals securely to RNIB so we can provide non-clinical support when a patient is being seen by an optician for the first time, or where

they're being supported for an eye condition in the community. We’ve run two education and training sessions with Primary Eye Care services showing how easy it is to make a referral and demonstrate the levels of support provided. From the limited North West England pilot we received more than 25 referrals – with 3.5 support interventions (onward referrals or delivery of specific advice) on average, including referrals to local sight loss organisations.

We’ve joined forces with five NHS England-funded accelerator pilots that have been designed to improve and manage the flow of people being referred from primary care to secondary care settings. During the pilot, people with a suspected eye condition (in this case suspected cataract) were referred to secondary care through an NHS

Single Point of Access. This is an NHS Triage function that uses a voice synthesiser backed by human support. During the triage process people were asked if they require information or support from RNIB. If people responded positively, and gave consent, we contacted them.

We’ve seen a 10 per cent increase in the number of digital referrals made into our ECLO service compared with 2022/23.

This improvement ensures more patients reviewed remotely can get access to the service and the support it gives.

Overall, this year 72,717 people were supported by an RNIB ECLO, including 13,603 relatives and carers. RNIB’s ECLOs supported 9,500 patients to go through the process of certification and 19,246 professionals received quick advice,

or information, from an RNIB ECLO to support them in their role or to assist patients in their care.

Patients supported by an ECLO reported:

Either being very well informed, or well informed, about support available after visiting an ECLO (90 per cent of patients).
They had a better understanding of their eye condition when discussed with an ECLO (81 per cent of patients) and 84 per cent said that they were more aware of how to properly care for and treat their eye condition after speaking to an ECLO.
They felt more confident to ask for help when they needed it as a result of seeing an ECLO (87 per cent).
They felt more positive about the future (68 per cent).

Our plan:

Improve uptake of specialist training with up to 3,400 health and social care staff, eye care professionals and Low Vision practitioners.

We exceeded our target by 42 per cent (though, in context, the baseline data was limited). Our RNIB Health and Social Care Skills Development Team trained 4,823 health and social care staff, eye care professionals and Low Vision practitioners.

Expanding training is crucial to tool up more professionals managing eye care in the community and to make sure people understand the Eye Care Support Pathway and how to get people to the right support, at the right time.

We specifically targeted groups of professionals that provide services for under-served groups of patients, including house-bound patients, stable or end stage age-related macular degeneration (AMD) patients and those using community services, where there is unlikely to be an ECLO.

Our agreement to deliver Level 1 Eye Care Professionals Training to all ASDA optical staff, including 400 opticians, at its 157 branches of opticians across the UK, will significantly expand the reach of our training and bring the Eye Care Support Pathway benefits to more people (see Objective 3 page 18).

Our plan:

Our Sight Loss Advice Service will support up to 100,000 customers.

We were pleased to beat our target – thanks to having more ECLOs in place, the growth of e-referrals and the introduction of our Waiting Well service. We supported more than 110,000 people with in-depth practical and emotional support. Our advisers made sure people got the information, advice, and support they needed, at a time that was right for them, enabling them to move quickly from diagnosis to confidence.

Additionally, the Sight Loss Advice Service (SLAS) handled a further 124,000 questions and queries from people affected by sight loss, including patients, carers, and friends and family.

As a result of this support, our customers reported:

An increase in confidence (78 per cent of customers supported).
Acquisition of the necessary knowledge and awareness of the support that was available to them (85 per cent).
An increase in wellbeing (70 per cent).
Better access to the information and technology they need (71 per cent).
Increased feelings of connection (75 per cent – as isolation can be a major challenge for blind and partially sighted people).

We identified more than £20 million in annual income/savings for our customers and supported them to apply for any benefits they were entitled to, alongside challenging any incorrect decision making around their eligibility for benefits.

Objective 4:

Close the Gap

To eradicate the differentials for digital inclusion, educational attainment, and employment.

Our plan:

Improve education for young people by training 3,000 education professionals and help families by responding to at least 2,600 enquiries.

We exceeded our target by 70 per cent – training the largest number of professionals we’ve ever trained within a financial year. Some 5,110 people attended our 20 training sessions for education. Candidates gained knowledge and benefited from the chance to share best practice.

Some 91 per cent of attendees told us they felt more confident after the

training session – when asked to assess the relevance of our session to their work supporting students with vision impairment, they gave an average score of 9.3 out of 10.

Our Children, Young People, Families and Education service (CYPFE) – which helps children and young people with vision impairment up to the age of 25, their families and the professionals that work with them – responded to 3,317 enquiries this year; some 27 per cent more than this year’s target and a 20 per cent rise in support delivered compared to 2022/23.

The team provided support including hosting events, running courses and sharing online information and guidance on topics such as peer support, parents’ guides, available support services and learning and development.

The rise in enquiries is partly due to our Max Card partnership which started in May 2023. Families can apply via RNIB for their free card – the UK’s leading discount card for families of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) – which they can use at venues across the UK to get free or discounted admission.

Our Curriculum Framework for Children and Young People with Vision Impairment (CFVI) is crucial for ensuring pupils across the UK get the best start in education and we’ve made progress in maximising its use across the education sector this year by:

Delivering CFVI-focused and linked Continuous Professional Development (CPD) sessions to more than 900 professionals.
Launching our Unlocking Education for All report, which has initiated work with the Department for Education (DfE) and sensory sector partners to ensure the inclusion of the CFVI in the proposed Sensory Impairment Good Practice Guide which is due to be incorporated in the upcoming SEND improvement plan.
Our CFVI stakeholder engagement and awareness-raising activity has reached more than 28,000 professionals, parents and young people and our own data, raised by Freedom of Information (FOI) requests in 2023 shows an increased awareness and use of the CFVI across all nations in the UK.

Our plan:

Get 600 blind and partially sighted people into employment and support 1,200 people with sight loss to remain in work. Provide employment support to 4,000 people.

We helped 744 people to find work this year (compared to 400 in 2022/23) and helped 1,154 people to stay in employment (compared to 1,100 in 2022/23) by stopping them leaving work unnecessarily due to sight loss.

We met our target for keeping people in employment and exceeded our target for numbers into work thanks to increases in recruitment from the activities of some large employers we have worked with over the last two years. Additionally, we have boosted employment prospects for people with sight loss through our work

directly with employers and with Access to Work, a UK government scheme which can pay for a range of support.

While more progress is needed to reduce waiting times for the Access to Work scheme, we’ve delivered sight loss training to 250 of its staff this year. Support workers funded by Access to Work are needed by many people with sight loss to ensure they can work, making job offers viable.

Some 34 employers, including Amazon, BT, Macmillan Cancer Care and Tesco, joined our Visibly Better Employer quality standard this year and thanks to improved recruitment practices, Visibly Better Employers recruited an additional 530 employees with sight loss in total.

Our plan:

Continue our programme of accessible technology grants for people on means-tested benefits, to a total value of £150,000.

We issued £154,163 in technology grants to 401 individuals (compared to £131,394.48 to 358 people in 2022/23), to help people get the items they needed to engage with mainstream technology and live independently. We missed our target slightly due to internal issues, involving digital infrastructure and staff resources.

However, the people we did help could cite examples of vital support. One customer was able to contact her family after buying an iPhone; other customers used the grant to buy items, including accessible kitchen and communications equipment

and other gadgets to help them live independently.

Objectives 5-7: Drive income growth, increase effectiveness and impact

Our plan:

Boost fundraising income to £67.3m by engaging many new individual, trust, statutory, lottery and corporate supporters and those leaving a legacy gift in their Will.

Together, we raised £67.8m this year to support blind and partially sighted people. This comprises of £20.8m from donations, £40.8m from legacies and £6.2m from lottery and raffle income.

This has increased by £4.1m from £63.7m in 2022/23 thanks to the continued support from donors and funders across all areas of fundraising.

This year was particularly successful in terms of legacies (gifts left in Wills), with £3.7m more income from people leaving a gift in their Will than 2022/23. Due to continued improvements in our legacy marketing, 4,457 people have enquired about leaving a gift in their Will and 299 have formally made a pledge or were actively considering a gift.

We worked hard to attract and engage with many new supporters and inspired them to support our vital work. The total number of individuals who donated in the last year increased to more than 262,000 in 2023/24. More than half of these individuals (a rise of 15 per cent from 2022/23) give regularly as part of our committed giving programme, helping us to plan ahead with confidence and drive forward our charitable work.

Boosting funding through relationships

We were able to build on our fundraising income by building relationships with new donors and increasing our engagement with existing partners. Highlights included:

Players of People’s Postcode Lottery have now raised £10.2m for RNIB since the relationship began in 2019/20 (see page 7).
A £300,000 gift from Wilson and Olegario Philanthropy has helped unlock education for children and young people with vision impairment. Their support of £100,000 a year for the past three years has enabled the development and embedding of a new CFVI in education across the UK and a toolkit for educational professionals. So far there have been more than 8,500 downloads of CFVI materials.
Securing £75,000 from new corporate supporter Cadent, enabled us to provide energy, income maximisation and welfare benefits advice, resulting in a gain of £7.96m in unclaimed benefits for our customers with sight loss since September 2023. Cadent also opened up access to their Winter Support Fund; this has helped 693 RNIB customers at risk of, food or fuel poverty, by providing £100,000 worth of vouchers for food, energy bills and winter household essentials to help reduce spending on energy and to heat food, the home or the person.

For the first time we were chosen as a charity partner for Jingle Jam, a festive online gaming event. The event raised £192,422 for RNIB which goes, in part, to support our Children, Young People, Families and Education (CYPFE) Service, funding family support officers and education specialists.

See page 36, for our Fundraising review

Our plan:

Build a people plan so we’re better set up to find, engage and retain the most talented staff.

We’ve focused on making RNIB a better place to work, with projects including a revised approach to performance development – linking it to RNIB’s strategy with clear objectives – and an employee survey to gather insight on key areas for improvement.

RNIB appointed a new Chief People Officer in February 2024 who will lead the transformation of our people function to better support RNIB’s strategy and its staff and volunteers.

Our plan:

Roll out our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform into fundraising, so our supporters have a better, integrated experience when engaging with RNIB.

We previously introduced a CRM platform to our Stakeholder Engagement and Volunteering teams that matches the solution used in RNIB’s Services. The next stage of our plan, which will seamlessly integrate all existing customer data, involves moving our Fundraising teams’ activity onto a new CRM platform. Using the same CRM system across all RNIB customer touchpoints means

our customers have a much better experience. We can see how people engage with our organisation and tailor their experience and communications to reflect this.

In 2023, we undertook a supplier request and tender process and, consequently, established a partnership with a Microsoft Gold supplier to deliver the platform and support our data integration. We needed a partner with expertise in implementing complex data integration solutions to reduce the impact of the transition process on our customers.

This has pushed back the delivery of a new CRM platform to our Fundraising teams; it’s now estimated to go live by April 2025, but we will ensure we keep providing a good experience to donors and fundraisers during the transition.

Our people

Our volunteers

Our volunteers give us their time and skills to help us in every area of our work. This year, 2,739 volunteers supported RNIB, with many supporting in more than one role, including 1,202 people who volunteered specifically to share their lived experience of sight loss. In 2023/24, more than half (57 per cent) of our volunteers disclosed they had sight loss.

In 2022/23, 3,316 volunteers supported us so this figure is 17 per cent down year-on-year; this included 996 people who volunteered specifically to share their lived experience of sight loss. Nearly half (44 per cent) of volunteers who left RNIB and cited a reason told us the specific opportunity they volunteered for had ended.

To help us manage all customer and supporter data in one place – improving efficiencies when managing updates and recruitment campaigns – our volunteering data was moved to a new system in March 2023; this fall could be due to datacleansing activity and changes in reporting processes.

Key achievements

Anthony Linehan, Research and Policy Support volunteer, and John Drake, Roaming Technology Support volunteer, were both successfully selected to be members of the 500 Coronation Champions – “extraordinary” volunteers recognised for their contributions by Their Majesties The King and Queen as part of their official Coronation celebrations – chosen from more than 5,000 submissions.

In 2023/24, volunteers:

Again, we held our successful Festival of Volunteering series of events, across the UK, to bring our volunteers together with staff and deepen their engagement with – and knowledge of – RNIB. A total of 211 people participated across the seven events, engaging 46 more volunteers and staff than the previous year and 58 per cent of volunteer respondents attended the Festival of Volunteering for the first time.
Supported 2,137 customers through 144 regular Talk and Support groups which connect people with sight loss to each other (1,222 customers supported in 2022/23).
Supported an average of 16,000 individuals via Facebook moderation (15,446 in 2022/23) bringing people together to get peer and professional support.
Transcribed 55,574 minutes of audio (equivalent to 38.6 days of continual listening) in our Cardiff team. Volunteers also contributed 3,058.5 hours in 2023/24 which is the equivalent of 87.4 volunteer weeks of 35 hours per person per week.
We relaunched RNIB’s Employee Volunteering Scheme (REVS) in July 2023, allowing all RNIB staff to volunteer within their working hours. A total of 53 staff members were active in this scheme in 2023/24.

Our staff

We want to ensure we attract talented people that share our values and that we create the best work environment possible.

A clear area we needed to improve was our people function and wider leadership and management infrastructure and capability.

This year we focused on creating a great employee experience and ensuring employee engagement remains high. Sixty two per cent of our employees responded to our annual staff survey; 69 per cent of those respondents (752 staff) told us they feel a strong connection to RNIB’s purpose.

Following feedback in last year’s survey, we recognised the need for – and now have invested in – a Lived Experience programme which

celebrates and champions blind or partially sighted colleagues, their lived experience of sight loss and their work.

The Lived Experience programme will provide training and support programmes as part of a “leadership pathway” that develops talented people with sight loss as future leaders.

Our Listen and Connect programme invites employees to take part in a face-to-face and online events to understand the experiences of blind and partially sighted people to give staff a better understanding of sight loss.

Gender pay gap reporting: We have a legal duty to report our gender pay gap information every year and our report helps us assess the diversity of the organisation, evaluate our progress and implement steps on how we can improve it.

There’s a UK government requirement for all companies with more than 250 employees to publish their gender pay gap data. The 2023 gender pay figures are based on data available on our reporting date, 5 April 2023.

The gender pay gap is different from equal pay, which formed part of the 2010 Equality Act. The act prohibits discrimination on grounds of race and gender and other protected characteristics and involves females and males or white and ethnic minority employees being paid the same for like/similar work.

The gender pay gap is the average difference in earnings between male and female employees. The latest report (2022/23), which was published in March 2024, shows mean and median pay gaps have slightly increased compared to April 2022’s

figures. Our mean (average) gender pay gap was 8.15 per cent in 2023, compared to 7.53 per cent in 2022, and our median (middle) gender pay gap was 7.29 per cent in 2023, compared to 3.6 per cent in 2022. We recognise that we still have more work to do to close our gender pay gap.

There’s already valuable activity taking place as we strive to do this:

Our Accessibility, Diversity and Inclusion (ADI) strategy, which will set the standard for how ADI is rolled out across the organisation.
Flexible working policies from day one of employment for all new recruits; these help those with caring responsibilities and to enable working families to remain employed in roles that reflect their skills.
Staff networks, training and policies around ADI, including a Women’s Network and menopause policy.
Inclusive recruitment and selection process and salary review ensure we can attract and retain the best talent to help us achieve our vision.

Our strategy for the next 10 years

Our strategy has ambitious 10-year objectives to ensure every person with sight loss can live the life they want to lead, without limits.

We’ll make sure people in the UK understand sight loss and embrace blind and partially sighted people and the positive contribution they make to society every day. We also want sighted people to be ready in case they experience sight loss; we know the number of people living with sight loss will have doubled by 2050.

We’ve set out our strategy and objectives for the next 10 years but set our targets for the next three years (by April 2027). Achieving these will keep us on track and focused on the 10year objectives.

In the next three years, we'll concentrate on supporting people with sight loss in three primary impact areas which – when solved – directly fulfil customer needs and have the biggest influence on areas of our customers’ lives.

To date, we believe these areas have been overlooked and underfunded and we also believe that if we continue to make a real difference in these areas it will improve life for the most people with sight loss in the long term.

For example, we know one of the biggest barriers to employment is getting to work. We’re confident therefore that investing in the

impact area – Getting around – will contribute to a positive effect on employment.

1. Eye health and eye care:

We know that entry and progression through the current routes of eye care support can be messy and traumatic, resulting in inconsistent and inadequate support; some people lose their sight unnecessarily. This has significant negative emotional and practical/economic impacts for the individual and society.

2. Skills and tools for life:

We know that not enough children or adults receive timely, consistent, or necessary rehabilitation or skills to live with their sight loss, and they aren’t getting timely or consistent access to vision rehabilitation. This has implications throughout life, whether in accessing education, or maintaining a social life.

3. Getting around:

We know that blind and partially sighted people can’t travel independently and spontaneously on transport or in streets and buildings, with different transport costs and services across the UK. This can have significant implications getting to work, or the ability to enjoy leisure activities and other tasks.

Aside from these three impact areas, we'll ensure that more people will care and think differently about sight loss, ensuring our reach and impact is extended and that more people act in support of the cause.

We'll improve understanding of sight loss and RNIB, growing support for RNIB by persuading individuals and their communities to take action, backing each of the impact areas.

We'll drive growth in both our impact and income by delivering outstanding experiences to all customers and enabling them to engage with more of RNIB’s work.

In delivering on the three main impact areas, we know we'll have a positive impact on five other areas of our work where we'll prioritise effective support, policy and influencing activity. These five secondary impact areas are:

Employment and financial inclusion
Education and habilitation
Leisure and volunteering
Relationships and social networks
Shaping society

Our plans for 2024/25

Our three primary impact areas:

1. Eye health and eye care

We'll start to implement and ensure our Eye Care Support Pathway complements two condition-specific clinical pathways: cataracts and retina.
We'll ensure more patients and professionals have access to information, advice, and guidance from RNIB by establishing our partnership with ASDA and seeking other partnerships; getting more referrals from optometrists; expanding our ECLO service to cover nine additional hospitals; deliver an outpatient pilot to reduce the number of people not attending appointments and expand the reach of our Low Vision Framework.
We'll run a campaign to ensure public bodies in England are following the Accessible Information Standard; we’ll also

launch an accessible Certificate of Visual Impairment for Local Authorities in England.

2. Skills and tools for life

We'll co-produce an Outcome Framework to help demonstrate the post-diagnosis outcomes people with sight loss need and build public and political support. We will develop a plan to improve these outcomes.
We'll persuade decision makers to adopt quality standards and establish national monitoring through the Care Quality Commission for England and other relevant bodies across the nations.
We'll develop a legal strategy to support more successful individual challenges to rehabilitation provision, as well as ensure more people can access the right entitlements and advice through our services.

3. Getting around

We'll develop an accessible travel app, with a pilot in Nottingham, to give people the information and tips they need to get to new locations with confidence.
We'll create an accessibility consultancy ensuring more examples of accessible transport are delivered.
We'll develop a comprehensive framework to map the experiences of travellers with sight loss across a range of journeys and map transport systems to address systemic accessibility issues in transport networks.

Additionally, we'll deliver effective support, policy and influencing across our five secondary impact areas:

Employment and financial inclusion
Education and habilitation
Leisure and volunteering
Relationships and social networks
Shaping society

Also, our internal operating model and supporting technology and processes will be reviewed to maximise impact for blind and partially sighted people and sustainability. We'll run a transformation programme to ensure our work is in line with the new strategy, define the roles and skills RNIB needs to do this and cut costs.

Fundraising review

We’d like to say a huge thank you to all the individuals, companies, trusts, foundations, funders and public bodies that have supported us this year. Despite continuing economic challenges and the ongoing impact of the cost of living crisis, we saw growth in the number of supporters that made a financial donation when compared to 2022/23. Our kind supporters ensure we can continue to positively impact the lives of blind and partially sighted people.

In 2023/24, we raised £67.8m as reported in the Statement of Financial Activities (page 80).

Funds raised through voluntary sources represented 75.6 per cent of RNIB’s income. Once again, this came from individuals who thoughtfully remembered us in their Wills (£40.8m) and from the support of:

Regular and one-off cash donations (£19.1m), including lottery and raffle players raising £6.2m accounted for within Trading Activities (page 97).
Donations from supporter-led fundraising activities such as our Sooty Box collections and participants in challenge events, such as the London Marathon (£1.2m).
Philanthropic funds generously donated by individuals, trusts and foundations, and raised through special events (£1.8m).
Charitable income raised from our corporate partners (£0.9m).
Grants awarded by lottery and statutory funders (£3.9m).

This is an increase in our overall income of £3.9m from 2022/23.

Income and engagement priorities

We implemented a new income and engagement strategy, which outlines our plans to increase our income and number of supporters over the next five years.

This year, legacies remained our greatest source of income and we experienced a good year thanks to the generous support of those who left a gift in their Will. We continued with our successful approach to legacy marketing which generated enquiries from nearly 5,000 people, who may leave a gift to RNIB in their Wills.

During the year, we faced external challenges, particularly with individual giving, including increased supplier and operational costs and the impact of the economic environment on the number and value of gifts. We continue to review

our individual giving activities and are exploring ways to maximise and diversify sources of voluntary income.

We’ve continued to develop our high-value funding relationships with trusts, foundations and major donors who have supported us generously this year. Income from corporate partnerships has remained the same at £0.9m. Our relationship with People’s Postcode Lottery continues to grow, and we've successfully secured ongoing support for 2024/25.

To drive growth and focus on customer experience, we:

Reviewed our approach to ensure we can stay in touch with more RNIB customers and supporters, enabling us to provide tailored and purposeful engagement.
Made telephone calls, as a pilot, to a cohort of customers to engage them with other RNIB

opportunities, which has already led to more than 100 new supporters making a regular gift.

Reviewed our fundraising products to improve efficiency, environmental sustainability and identify cost-saving opportunities.
Developed a new corporate partnerships strategy to boost value and impact.
Began development of our CRM system to meet the specific needs of income and engagement when launched in 2025/26 (see page 27).

Fundraising controls and regulation

Our fundraising success depends on maintaining the trust of supporters and the public. We've controls in place to ensure our fundraising is ethical, transparent, compliant with current regulation and meets public expectation.

Our Board of Trustees plays a role in our fundraising activities. The Public Engagement Committee and the Finance and Investment Committee scrutinise key fundraising activities and performance. Additionally, the Audit and Risk Committee oversees fundraising control and regulation through regular reviews and independent assurance from internal auditors to ensure processes operate effectively.

Our due diligence checks and the ethical standards we follow in fundraising are in line with The Investment and Treasury Management Policy. RNIB’s Ethical Fundraising and Due Diligence Policy provides the framework for understanding the wider implications of who we accept gifts from, or work in partnership with. It's actively used in decision-making.

We're committed to high standards in fundraising practice and customer service, to put our supporters at the heart of everything we do. In practice, this means putting ageverification controls in gambling products, scrutinising marketing materials to ensure suitability, reviewing and monitoring customer feedback, controlling the frequency of our communications and more.

We're registered with the Fundraising Regulator and are an organisational member of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising.

Through these registrations, we're committed to upholding the high standards in fundraising practice and providing excellent customer experiences. We continued to work closely with both bodies throughout 2023/24 to raise the quality of fundraising across the sector.

Our lottery and raffle activities are managed under our Gambling Commission licences. These not only ensure we meet our legal requirements, but also help us provide the necessary protections and support for the best experience for our players.

Use of agencies and third parties

A vital part of our strategy is our work with external agencies and their subcontractors which fundraise on our behalf. These agencies are contracted to carry out a range of fundraising activities including door-to-door, telephone and private site fundraising; this helps us reach as many people as possible cost effectively.

We hold these agencies to the same high standards we expect of our in-house fundraisers. We regularly

carry out mystery shopping, call monitoring and other quality checks on all their activities.

All our third-party agencies and inhouse fundraisers are contractually required to follow the Codes of Conduct and Code of Fundraising Practice put in place by the Fundraising Regulator, the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, and the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

Vulnerable people

We take implementation of our Safeguarding Policies and Procedures extremely seriously. This includes staff training at all levels so every member of staff can identify a person in vulnerable circumstances and knows what actions to take when an incident arises. All our third-party agencies are required to adhere to these policies.

Complaints

We acknowledge all complaints, investigate them fairly and thoroughly, and report on them regularly to learn, improve and shape the work we do. We acknowledge all fundraising complaints within one working day and aim to investigate and respond fully within 20 working days. The total number of fundraising complaints this year was 249, a slight increase from 242 in 2022/23. This increase can be attributed to a rise in the number of people expressing a dislike to certain fundraising methods and the frequency received.

This year we've begun a review of all fundraising activities and have started

work on diversifying our methods. This will give donors more choice on how to be involved and further opportunities to engage with RNIB in the ways they prefer.

We reviewed our Customer Feedback and Complaints Policy and we've made it easier and more accessible for our supporters to understand the process and provide feedback. We're continually making improvements to our complaints-handling and response times.

Our commitment

We remain committed to continually improving our fundraising standards and review our practices on an

ongoing basis to ensure compliance with all relevant codes and regulations. We ensure that anyone involved in our fundraising activities is aware of our requirement to live by our Fundraising Promise, which states that:

We are committed to high standards.

We are honest and open.

We are clear.

We are respectful.

We are fair and reasonable.

We are accountable.

Financial review

Overview of our financial performance and position

RNIB Group’s net operating deficit for 2023/24 was £0.8m (2022/23 surplus of £19.6m). In 2022/23, the surplus included non-recurring adjustments relating to profit on disposal of fixed assets of £22.1m (see note 28) and a loss on sale of subsidiaries of £2.2m (see note 4). Last year’s recurring activities

created a deficit of £0.3m. These deficits resulted from a deliberate decision to invest the reserves raised by the disposal of the London Head Office to transform how we work and deliver our services. There will be further use of the strategic reserve fund for the benefit of advancing RNIB's vision.

This year, we continued to use some of our surpluses from previous

years to deliver on our strategy. We invested £7.4m net (a 14 per cent increase) in charitable activities to help boost the impact of our work. With significant expenditure on our money raising costs of £16.7m (2023: £17.2m), we continued to grow our donor base, building on our recruitment successes of 2022/23, and saw more than 60,000 new donors giving last year.

Income

We generated gross income of £89.7m (2023: £106.6m). The year-on-year decrease of £16.9m is due to the non-recurring £22.1m profit on disposal of fixed assets from 2022/23 (see note 28). Excluding this one-off gain, income rose by £5.2m, primarily due to legacy donations.

• Our trading income, generated through our fundraising raffles and lotteries, commercial transcription services, retail products and consultancy, was £20.8m (2022/23: £19.8m). RNIB Enterprises Ltd, RNIB Group’s main trading subsidiary, grew its income to £14.7m (2022/23: £13.4m) while lottery income fell by £224,000 continuing last year’s trend. Poor ticket sales – mainly as a result of economic conditions – caused this fall.

driven by the new strategy – caused this £3.5m increase. While there was an increase, some areas of activity cut costs and boosted efficiencies to concentrate on charitable activities.

Donations to RNIB were £20.8m (2022/23: £20.2m).
Our investment income grew due to greater sums being held in investments following the sale of our office in Judd Street and interest rate rises. Investment income grew to £1.7m (2022/23 £0.5m).

Other headlines:

Operating cash outflow of £7.0m (a 2022/23 operating cash outflow of £6.7m).

Expenditure

A decrease in funds of £1.3m (2022/23: an increase of £22.3m).

Group operating expenditure was £90.5m (2022/23: £87.0m). A combination of inflationary pressures and internal changes in the group –

Headline net expenditure for charitable activities, centred on our two priorities for the year, are:

Priority 1: Change public perceptions and behaviours

See Sight Loss Differently – we invested £13.1m(2022/23: £11.7m) in work to reverse inaccurate perceptions and change public behaviours. This included the See the person, not sight loss campaign.
Design for Everyone; Better for Anyone – we invested £0.8m (2022/23: £0.9m) working in partnership with others as we make more standards for design of mainstream environments and solutions accessible by default.

Priority 2: Innovate a sight loss pathway

No Diagnosis Without Support – we spent a net total of £6.9m (2022/23: £5.2m) – to help ensure people experiencing sight loss move quickly from diagnosis to confidence in living with sight loss.
Close the Gap – we spent a net total of £3.8m (2022/23: £3.3m) to address disparities for digital inclusion, educational attainment and employment.
Organisational enabling objectives – to drive income growth, increase effectiveness and impact.
Investment on income generation activities for financial sustainability decreased to £16.7m, which is 18.5 per cent of group operating expenditure (2022/23: £17.2m; 20 per cent).
We spent £25.3m (2022/23: £27.9m) on other charitable activities, including reading services, the Sight Loss Advice Service and all other activities that give practical and emotional support to blind and partially sighted people.

Support costs are allocated to the other priorities as overheads. A full analysis of group expenditure is shown in note 5. The allocation of support costs is shown in note 6.

Subsidiary entities

In this report, ‘RNIB’ refers to The Royal National Institute of Blind People, the Royal Charter company and registered charity and all of its charitable and non-charitable wholly-owned subsidiaries (unless otherwise specified).

Three active trading entities of the RNIB Group (RNIB Enterprises Limited, RNIB Direct Services Lottery Limited and RNIB Feel Good Friday Lottery Limited) contributed £3.1m (2022/23: £4.6m) to RNIB through Gift Aid.

The full results of all subsidiary entities are shown in note 4.

Balance sheet

Overall, net assets, including pension

deficits, have decreased to £134.7m. Due mainly to decreased cash held and the pension schemes now being in deficit under FRS102 accounting basis approach.

Pensions

The triennial actuarial valuation was completed as at 31 March 2023 for the main RNIB Retirement Benefits Scheme (RNIBRBS) – a defined benefit scheme. As at 31 March 2023, there was no technical provisions deficit.

The RNIB scheme had a calculated deficit of £0.7m at 31 March 2024 (2023: Surplus of £15m) under the FRS102 accounting basis approach.

The RNIB Pension Trust scheme has a calculated deficit of £0.3m as at 31 March 2024 (2023: Surplus of

£0.3m) under the FRS102 accounting basis approach.

At 31 March 2024, the financial statements show a total deficit pension reserve of £17,000 (2023: £36,000) relating to the National Library for the Blind (NLB) Pension Trust scheme, as determined by the FRS102 accounting basis approach. NLB is a linked charity of RNIB. A full analysis of pensions valuations and costs is shown in note 25.

Reserves policy

RNIB’s reserves policy is reviewed annually and includes both a liquidity (which has primacy) and free reserves measure. This is to reinforce our organisational focus on cash management and effectively manage risk and financial sustainability in the event of an unexpected reduction of income.

Liquidity is defined as free cash and liquid investments – plus available financing facilities – reduced by the value of restricted funds to ensure these funds are appropriately ring-fenced.

Free reserves exclude restricted funds and designated funds, which include the net book value of land and buildings occupied by RNIB services and activities. The assessment of free reserves excludes any surplus or deficit reported on the pension scheme.

The required liquidity and free reserves levels are predominantly determined by a risk-weighted assessment of income streams. The target level is held in liquid form with an adjustment for working capital to arrive at corresponding liquidity and free reserves levels. The resulting range for year ended 31 March 2024

was £24.7m to £37.1m (3.5 to 5.3 months spend). The free reserves target range was £39.7m to £52.1m (5.7 to 7.4 months spend) for the year ended 31 March 2024.

At 31 March 2024, liquidity stood at £43.9m (2023: £52.4m), so above the upper end of the target range. This figure however includes funds designated for future strategic investments of £25.4m. Free reserves of £49.7m (2022/23: £43.4m), are within our Reserves Policy target range.

Going concern

Our going concern assessment focuses on immediately available sources of liquidity to fund our strategy and investments, ensuring we always maintain a comfortable margin of headroom in case of the unexpected. We've carried out robust assessments of the current

financial position and forward projections, along with stress testing reviews for the next two financial years. The stress testing work carried out is for all major sources of income and certain types of expenditure. Income stress tested includes legacy receipts, donations and fundraising, and commercial income. Expenditure stress tested includes wages and the transformation project. Stress testing includes significant factors that may affect income and expenditure and includes the economic environment, operational risks and significant unforeseen events. The assessment has given our Trustees confidence that the charity will have adequate resources to continue to operate for the foreseeable future. As a result, these accounts have been prepared on a going concern basis.

Investment policy and performance

Amounts relating to RNIB’s investments are held in respect to unrestricted, restricted and endowment funds. The investments related to endowment funds have strict controls over how they are used. These investments are managed in accordance with our wider Investment and Treasury Management Policy, which sets a long-term objective for exceeding an inflation-based measure (set at CPI +2.0 per cent).

Following the sale of the Judd Street offices, the monies received have been invested and are managed by independent fund managers. These investments are also managed in accordance with our wider Investment and Treasury Management Policy. There are three funds which are managed

by two fund managers. Fund 1 – consisting of long-term investments held with Rathbones – has a longterm objective for exceeding an inflation-based measure (set at CPI +2.0 per cent). Fund 2-consisting of shorter-term investments held with Rathbones – has an objective of achieving cash returns through income from investments, plus a one per cent return. Fund 3 – consisting of long-term investments held with Waverton – has a long-term objective for exceeding an inflation-based measure (set at CPI +2.0 per cent).

Total investments held now relate to £43.0m in unrestricted funds (2022/23: £41.4m), £0.1m in restricted funds (2022/23: £0.1m) and £1.2m in endowment funds (2022/23: £1.2m).

Financial markets recovered in 2023/24 and during 2023/24 total realised and unrealised gains/ (losses) on the various funds were an unrestricted funds gain of £1,135,000 (2022/23 loss of £307,000), restricted funds gain of £6,000 (2022/23 loss of £188,000) and endowment funds gain of £3,000 (2022/23: loss of £403,000).

Governance and leadership

Structure, governance and leadership

How we are managed

RNIB is led by a Board of Trustees which has ultimate responsibility for what happens in the organisation. Practically, day-to-day management of RNIB is delegated to the CEO who delegates to members of the Executive Leadership Team (ELT). The ELT is formed of the Chief Officers of the seven departments which comprise the organisation: Office of the CEO; Social Change; People and Culture; Income and Engagement; Finance, Property and Technology; Services; and RNIB Enterprises.

The Board retains responsibility for approving RNIB’s vision, organisational strategy, annual plans and budgets and key policies. It holds management to account for delivery against the strategy and plans and

also has a duty to assure itself that the organisation is operating within its policies and the law. The Chair of Trustees leads the Board, assisted by the Vice Chair and Honorary Treasurer. The Board is supported by the Director of Legal and Governance, who acts as Company Secretary and the Governance team.

There are four main Board meetings per year; additionally, Trustees attend other meetings including quarterly Committee meetings; up to two away days each year; training (for example, annual safeguarding training); visits to RNIB activities and services; and other ad hoc meetings and working groups as necessary throughout the year.

Trustee recruitment and reappointment

The Board’s Governance, Nominations and Remuneration Committee carries out

succession planning and makes recommendations to the Board on Trustee recruitment and reappointments. In September 2023, the Board appointed two new Trustees, Paul Arnold and Tanya Castell, and one Associate Trustee, Mary Elliott. In June 2024, Mary Elliott was appointed a full Trustee.

The Board has one Trustee with financial experience to act as Honorary Treasurer and one with safeguarding experience to act as Board Safeguarding Lead Trustee. Other than these two specific roles, decisions about what skills to recruit to the Board are based on the outcome of a skills and diversity audit. The Board is mindful that four Trustees are due to step down in 2025, and a further four in 2026; though there is an option to extend some Trustees’ terms of office to prevent a sudden loss of skills and experience,

and the Board will consider this option in due course. While this level of turnover could present a risk, it is also an opportunity.

In 2024, the Board agreed a new, long-term approach to Trustee recruitment to achieve its overarching aims in terms of succession planning, skills and experience, and Board development. In pursuit of this, the Board commissioned an external skills audit it to enable it to agree what skills it will need to add through recruitment over the next two years to support the delivery of RNIB’s strategy. In 2024/25, we plan to recruit two new Trustees. RNIB places a high value on lived experience within our organisation, and as at 31 March 2024, 45 per cent of Trustees have some form of sight loss.

Trustees are generally appointed for a three-year term which can be

renewed once; they can serve for six years in total. In exceptional circumstances, Trustees may be renewed for further terms of a year at a time, up to a maximum of nine years. If a Trustee wishes to be reappointed for a second term of office, an appraisal process will be carried out. The Chair and Vice Chair will obtain feedback from other Trustees and staff, appraise their performance, and make a recommendation to the Board as to whether they should be appointed for a new term.

In addition, each Trustee meets with the Chair annually to discuss their performance and needs and to identify objectives, with the Chair’s review being conducted by the Vice Chair. In 2023/24, Alice Collins, Stephen Monaghan, Anna Tylor, and Deborah Womack were all appointed for a second term of office.

RNIB Board committees and working groups

The purpose of Board committees is to scrutinise and discuss matters within their particular terms of reference in more detail than would be possible for the whole Board to do within its meeting schedule. Matters to be approved by the Board would usually be reviewed and endorsed by the relevant committee prior to being presented to the Board. Additionally, a range of matters are delegated to specific committees, for example, the approval of certain policies. The committees meet quarterly.

Generally, each committee has three Trustee members; some have up to two Non-Trustee Committee Members who are appointed for renewable terms of up to three years. These members augment the skills on the Board with additional

expertise and experience. All of the Committees are chaired by Trustees, and the Chairs meet regularly to discuss governance and ensure they work together in an integrated way. The current committee structure is as follows:

Audit, Risk, and Assurance Committee (ARAC) – overseeing, monitoring, and reporting on the audit, risk and assurance arrangements of the RNIB Group.
Finance and Investment Committee – overseeing and monitoring the financial performance and sustainability of the RNIB Group including investments, borrowing and capital expenditure.
Governance, Nominations, and Remuneration Committee (GNRC) – ensuring high standards of governance; overseeing the

appointment of Trustees and other non-executives; and setting the overall policy for the remuneration packages and contractual terms of the Chief Executive, Executive Leadership Team and staff.

Public Engagement Committee – overseeing the delivery of RNIB’s public engagement strategy, including fundraising and campaigning.
Safeguarding Committee – overseeing the arrangements for safeguarding of all those who come into contact with RNIB and its subsidiaries to ensure that safeguarding policies and procedures are put into practice.

In addition to these formal committees, the Board also has two working groups, each with three Trustee members. These are formed by the Board under an agreed remit, but are time-limited, being intended

to enable the Board to support the CEO and management in respect of specific short-term areas of focus within RNIB’s strategy. The Policy and Public Affairs Working Group was established in November 2023; and the People Working Group in January 2024.

RNIB’s subsidiaries

RNIB has five subsidiary charities; their boards are appointed by and made up of members of RNIB’s Board.

RNIB also has three non-charitable subsidiaries. The most significant one is RNIB Enterprises. This is the main trading subsidiary that manages our commercial operations including transcription and consultancy. RNIB Enterprises has a unitary Board of Directors appointed by RNIB, comprising two members of staff of RNIB; three voluntary non-executive directors; and two RNIB Trustees,

one of whom chairs the Board. This structure has been established to ensure appropriate oversight by RNIB while maintaining a working quorum of unconflicted directors. The RNIB Board approves the annual business plan and budget for RNIB Enterprises as part of the group's annual planning process; the finance and investment committee also receives quarterly updates on the financial performance of RNIB Enterprises.

Relationship with other charities

We have worked closely with the approximately 150 charities that support people with sight loss and delivered services, in conjunction with local organisations for blind and partially sighted people, to maximise impact.