What’s In A Name? ACO Report features Smallwood Trust’s rebranding

The Smallwood Trust has been featured in the Association of Charitable Organisations’ Breaking down barriers report on Tackling the stigma surrounding individuals approaching charities for support as a case study in how changing a charity’s name can help to attract more beneficiaries.

Previous to the name change in 2017, the Trust had been called the Society for the Assistance of Ladies in Reduced Circumstances since its formation in 1886. Paul Carbury, Chief Executive of the Smallwood Trust, explains in the case study that, “We changed our name to the Smallwood Trust in 2017 to reflect a more modern approach while still honouring the heritage of the charity and our founder, Edith Smallwood. The re-branding was part of a wider transformational strategy to increase and make our grant-making more accessible.”

In terms of how the rebranding, which included a new website, has affected beneficiaries, Carbury concludes: “It is difficult to say in isolation the impact of the name change alone as it was part of the wider transformational change. What we can say is over the last 4 years we have increased our annual grant-making from £600k to £4.5 million, attracted a diverse board of trustees and staff, significantly expanded our networks and attracted a substantial amount of external funding to enable us to support more women – 19,000 in 2020 across all programmes – and the name change and re-brand has been a component part of that development.”

You can read the Association of Charitable Organisations’ Breaking down barriers report on Tackling the stigma surrounding individuals approaching charities for support HERE

You can find out more about the Smallwood Trust’s grants for individuals HERE