RNIB has long had clubs and structures in place to deal with significant donors, it just didn’t quite know what to do with them. Josephine Job explains how the charity revamped its donor clubs


We have two main recognition schemes at RNIB for our major donors but recently we recognised that we weren’t using either very effectively. We called in The Management Centre to help us create the best engagement schemes for our high level donors and their recommendation was to keep the schemes we had but to make them work harder and more effectively.

RNIB Vice Presidents

Firstly, we had a Vice Presidents (VPs) scheme. The criteria for becoming a VP was that you had given or leveraged at least £1m to RNIB. This could be personally or through a lead role in a fundraising appeal. Alternately some of our VPs had simply made a highly significant contribution towards the aims of RNIB. We had 15 VPs but they didn’t have a formal role and we weren’t even sure that some of them knew they were VPs. We felt strongly that we could work better with them by engaging them in the aims of the charity.

Through interviews with our donors and our follow-up discussions with them we found out that some VPs wanted to be very ‘hands off’ while others were keen to be more involved. We therefore introduced a programme of engagement that would distinguish our Honorary VPs from our Active VPs. As the name suggests, Active VPs are more involved in promoting the work of RNIB through hosting events, lending their name to campaigns and making introductions to other potential supporters. They are also involved at a more strategic level, asking for their opinion on the future direction of the organisation.

There is no financial target associated with our Vice Presidents as the title is awarded in recognition of their significant contributions. However, we hope that this public recognition will support our retention strategy for our most valued major donors.