Our Benevolent Fund

The Royal Society of Chemistry Benevolent Fund supports members and their families in difficult times, through advice and guidance, financial support and volunteer support

History and context

The Benevolent Fund was established in 1920, when the then Institute of Chemistry established it as a memorial to its members who died in the First World War. It was for “necessitous persons who are, or have been, Fellows or Associates of the Institute, their wives or children, and the widows and dependent relatives of deceased Fellows or Associates”. The ethos of ‘members helping members’ stemmed from prior fund-raising activity of the Council before the fund was officially formed.

This ethos remains at the heart of why the Benevolent Fund exists, with its primary charitable objective of “the relief of poverty”. A volunteer support network of 100 volunteers means we have members at hand to visit and support other members in need if and when the need arises. Much of the funding continues to come from generous donations and larger bequests from our members.

Current situation

While the purpose of the fund remains the same, the landscape has changed significantly since post-war years. The demographic and diversity of our members is very different, and the economic situation of our members, and the support routes that are available to them are very different too. At the same time, the Fund value has been increasing, with investments and interest providing an additional healthy increase to the fund each year.

While we need to ensure that the funds available are sufficient and sustainable to meet current and future needs of our community, we also have an obligation within our status as a charity to ensure that funds do not accumulate, that those that are entitled to support can access it, and that the charitable remit is still fit for purpose and not outdated for modern society.

Review process

In 2014 we carried out a formal review which covered the
following areas:

• How well is the purpose and remit of the Benevolent Fund understood among members who could apply to it?
• What do other benevolent funds do and how does their expenditure compare?
• Is there more we could do to support our members?
• Is the charitable Trust Deed fit for purpose?
• What are members’ perceptions?

Our member survey showed that 69% were aware of the benevolent, with 31% having no awareness of it. We therefore convened four focus groups of members, with different age segments, to understand more about perceptions of the fund. From this we learned the following:

• Most members we spoke to had misconceptions about who the benevolent fund was for and what support was available.
• Many had an initial assumption that it was primarily for the elderly or ill, rather than financial necessity – this was particularly true for the younger segments.
• For many the name was seen as old fashioned, and it didn’t represent the non-financial support that is available.

Recommendation

We therefore plan to change the ‘working name’ of the fund and ensure the messaging and imagery make it accessible. This will be accompanied by increased marketing activity. The ‘Benevolent Fund of the Royal Society of Chemistry’ would remain in the strapline and the registered charity name.

Other benevolent funds

We reviewed the charitable remit of other similar benevolent funds, along with the services they offer and their number of applicants and grants awarded.

We found that our benevolent fund has a relatively narrow remit for its prime purpose: ‘relief of poverty’; many of the other benevolent funds have the broader remit of ‘prevention and relief’, which gives them more flexibility in supporting an individual before he or she hits desperate financial circumstances.

We have also used the expenditure information from other benevolent funds that support professional scientists and engineers to predict how much our expenditure could increase, if we improve our branding and marketing as well as broaden the remit. The forecasts indicate that, even with conservative estimations, funds are expected to grow year-on-year at a faster rate than expenditure is expected to grow.

What else could we do?

In the short term, as part of our current remit of relief of poverty, there are additional services that we plan to introduce for those who are considered financially necessitous. These range from more intensive careers support from a local consultant, to legal support through a helpline, to support for specialist therapies. Further information on these will be included in our marketing and communications in the coming months.

In the medium term, we plan to increase our remit to include prevention of poverty. This would bring us more in line with other benevolent funds linked to professional bodies. We would then be able to extend the services above to those at risk of becoming in poverty, where such services can help reduce that risk. Other additional support to help prevent poverty might include grants towards retraining where a need for this can be demonstrated.

Under our current remit, beneficiaries should normally have had over three years of membership to be eligible for support. This generally excludes most students in their early years of study. The Benevolent Fund is not intended to support normal student hardship or debt. However, some students hit unexpected difficulties beyond the norm, such as family bereavement or illness, which can financially set them back more than they could have planned for. We therefore plan to explore introducing student hardship grants, only for these exceptional, unfortunate cases, which could be awarded to members with less than three years of membership.

Is the Trust Deed fit for purpose?

There is actually a large degree of flexibility within our current Trust Deed, due to a clause that states if funds are not needed to relieve poverty, then it may be used to carry out any other legally charitable purpose. This provides a lot of freedom, but not much guidance on how it might be applied. Following legal advice on this matter, we therefore plan to formally make changes to include ‘prevention of poverty’ within the Trust Deed to formalise this activity. 

All our other forecasts and comparisons with other benevolent funds also show that we can be confident we have funds to cover the new activities that we aim to introduce, but also that the funds are likely to continue to grow.

Therefore over the next year we will also be scoping if there are new charitable ways that the benevolent fund may be able to support disadvantaged individuals, including supporting young people into chemistry education routes that may not otherwise be possible for them. At this stage this would just be a scoping exercise, and changes would only be made when the financial impact of other changes have been realised. Again, this is something we may wish to more formally capture in the Trust Deed in the future.

Next steps

Some changes are already underway for the improvements we can make within the current Trust Deed. Where we are looking to expand support towards the prevention of poverty later this year, we welcome comments and feedback from our members before such changes are made. 

The Benevolent Fund could not be what it is without the support of our members. We thank all those who contribute to the fund through donations or volunteering time, for the significance difference you make to so many people’s lives.