News

RNID fundraising restructure 'sparked by top departure' 1

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 18 Nov 2009

The RNID decided to merge its fundraising and advocacy departments only after its fundraising director announced he was leaving, frustrated by the slow progress of integration.

Outgoing fundraising director John Trampleasure is due to leave the charity next month, just nine months after taking up the post, for a position at World Society for the Protection of Animals that combines fundraising and campaigning.

“At about the fourth or fifth month [at RNID] I started to recognise that the split between the fundraising work and the wider communication and public advocacy work was really going to make it very, very difficult to break through on making the charity a fundraising success,” Trampleasure told Civil Society.

He said he had been pushing for integration, but the environment within the charity prompted him to “think it might take a couple of years to change”.

In an announcement made this week, the RNID is now to merge its fundraising with its advocacy and campaigns department and the charity has begun advertising for a ‘director of external engagement’ who will oversee the new integrated department.

A RNID spokeswoman told Civil Society that “the changes were made recently, following our new corporate strategy".

“The strategy, which covers 2009 to 2013, involved an honest assessment of our organisational strengths and weaknesses and changes are being made to allow us to work more effectively moving forwards. As part of the new strategy RNID will run no more than three campaigns at once and our advocacy will focus more on preventing hearing loss.”

Trampleasure said the charity only decided to merge the departments after he announced that he was leaving for WSPA. Prior to that point, he said, the charity appeared years away from such integration.

“[Chief executive] Jackie Ballard joined it two years ago, made some significant changes to the structure of the organisation then, and I assumed it would be pretty difficult to get another change so soon after the first change. In the organisation’s view it was about working their way to that place as opposed to stepping into it, because the organisation would probably find it a bit difficult to go through yet another restructure,” he said.

“My departure I guess just fired that up and people thought they’d better get on with it sooner rather than later.”

The role of director of policy and advocacy has been dissolved, with the current person in that position moving to another director-level role focused on integrating the RNID’s campaigning work with other charities in the field.

Tweet

Directory: Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) | WSPA
Who's Who: John Trampleasure