How we've delivered on what we said we'd do

We’ve set ourselves some big challenges for the next five years – to meet these ambitions, we’re transforming some of the ways we work. We're one year into our five year strategy, and we've made a strong start.

While some of our plans to influence the funding landscape were challenged, and we didn’t publish our report on how much the sector spends on blood cancer research, our shift to focus instead on partnerships has unlocked exciting possibilities.

We’ve doubled this target, seeing an increase of 106% on last year towards our Clinical Trials Support Service. After a pilot project we developed in 2022, we’re now running an ongoing service for anyone still awaiting the right trial for them.

Thanks to our Action Plan Taskforce of specialists, researchers, GPs and people with experience of having blood cancer, we have now published our Blood Cancer Action Plan. Our hope is to transform blood cancer survival in the UK.

This year, we answered 2,314 phone calls and emails, and 2,233 social and forum posts from people needing information and support. We welcomed 1,141 new members to our Online Community Forum, and worked with our community to create over 10 new booklets, leaflets and pages covering different conditions and advice.

Awareness has gone up year on year thanks to the increased reach of our information, support and communications. During our Walk of Light month we saw a clear peak in the percentage of people with blood cancer who say they’re aware of us: 50.9% – the highest since we began measuring.

We raised a total income of £18.5 million this year (over our £16.5 million target). We’ve aimed high to win some big donations and high value partnerships, while investing in our efforts in our flagship events and amazing volunteer communities.

This year, 52 new people joined our Involvement Network (growing it by around 40%). They’ve helped shape our strategy, Action Plan and appeals, guided our service transformation project, co-developed our new health information, advised on our grants and joined interview panels to make sure we’re recruiting the right people to help us achieve our aims.

Our 2023-2024 Annual Report at a glance