RNIB improvements: Are there lessons here for your charity?

In recent years, the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has faced a raft of challenges that have tested its resilience. As a leading UK charity supporting people with vision impairment, the RNIB has had to rebuild trust and make bold steps to recover from multiple failings found by the Charity Commission to ensure it could continue its work. The charity’s journey from crisis to recovery, offers a valuable insight and lessons other charities can learn from.

RNIB challenges

Significantly, a lack of leadership led to a crisis in 2018 for the RNIB, with the Charity Commission describing the failings as “one of the worst examples of poor governance and oversight having a direct impact on vulnerable people.” The Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated its services inadequate, and Ofsted found persistent safeguarding failures, poor incident investigation, and unsafe care standards, putting vulnerable children at significant risk. This led to the closure of the Pears Centre for Specialist Learning. Later the RNIB sold all its remaining schools, colleges and care homes.

Added to this, was (and continues to be) the growing demand for the RNIB’s services – the result of an aging population and increasing rates of diabetes and macular degeneration – which along with inflation, have put a strain on financial resources. At the same time, public spending reductions adversely affected the availability of grants. The current high cost of living has also meant that donations from the public have reduced and tend to be more unpredictable.

Against this backdrop, the RNIB is committed to continued investment in and the promotion of new assistive technologies, while also educating users and organisations on accessibility standards, which is a costly process.

How did the RNIB turn its fortunes around?

• Refocus of its mission

The RNIB concentrated on what the beneficiaries actually needed, which was ‘to ensure that people with sight loss can live the life that they want to lead’. From this, it refined its vision to do what is necessary to include and empower people with sight loss in everyday life, and help them to be financially self-sufficient.

• Tightening governance and oversight

The RNIB undertook a two-year recovery programme to address its shortcomings. New personnel were brought in at the highest levels to completely rewrite policies on risk management and incident reporting.

• New financial controls

A new director of finance was recruited to overhaul monthly forecasting. Every cost was examined with a view to reducing back-office and corporate overheads by 25-30%. This has inevitably led to redundancies but through a thorough consultation process it is hoped many individuals can be redeployed to new, more focused roles within the organisation.

• Service redesign

RNIB has shifted from traditional location-based services to a digital-first model. The charity has worked to improve its website and technology platforms, to meet its users’ needs giving thousands of blind and partially-sighted people 24/7 access to advice articles, peer-to-peer forums, specialist helplines and sight-loss libraries. More than that, new income is being generated by working with corporate partners to help build better products for those with sight loss.

• Rebuild of the charity’s culture, people and training

Again this is a top-down transformation of the way staff are trained to ensure that they buy into the RNIB’s main mission and to ensure they have the tools to carry out their tasks as efficiently as possible. It’s hoped this will help improve staff retention and the charity’s financial stability.

Transformation of RNIB

The RNIB has turned a £12 million annual deficit into a surplus. It has embraced technological change to offer people with sight loss a broad spectrum of online assistance. It has transitioned from geographically fixed resource centres to flexible outreach teams, embedding support in community hubs, and online. But there is still more to do, and the RNIB has policy teams in Westminster and the devolved governments who are constantly lobbying for grant aid and changes to legislation which will help those with sight loss.

No charity can stand still. Is it time for your charity to revisit and perhaps redefine its main vision? Do you have the appropriate individuals leading your charity to ensure that its vision can be met in the most cost effective way?