How can we be the generation that beats blood cancer?

Dear supporter,

The pandemic has meant the last couple of years have been very difficult ones for people affected by blood cancer, and they have also been challenging for us as a charity.

Below I talk more about those challenges and how we want to address them in the next five years. But if you’re short on time, the most important message I’ve got is that we want to hear from you about how we can best meet the needs of people with blood cancer now and in the future. We have created this short survey to get your views.

Our fundraising has always been based on events that involve people coming together, and so Covid has meant rethinking how we raise money and responding to a drop in income by having to reduce the size of our charity. At the same time, we have supported our community through the pandemic, whether it’s explaining what the latest guidance means, campaigning for faster access to vaccines, or funding research into vaccine response in people with blood cancer.

I am so proud of how we as a community have pulled together to ensure we have not only got through these challenges but STILL been able to fund millions of pounds of research towards beating blood cancer.

And while Covid has meant it’s often been difficult to meaningfully plan more than a few weeks ahead, it feels that we are now at a point where we can start thinking about our long-term plans.

This is not just a case of dusting off the plans we had at the start of 2019 and getting on with them. The pandemic has meant the world has changed, and so have we – we’ve got a new name, our Covid work means we’re now in contact with many more people, and we’re raising more money online than ever before.

So now is the right moment to spend some time thinking about the future, asking ourselves questions about where we’re trying to get to and what things we need to do to be able to get there.

I don’t have fixed views about the answers to any of these questions. But for all the changes the last few years have brought, I am determined that one thing needs to stay the same – that people affected by blood cancer remain at the heart of everything you do.

This means that when I take a strategy document to our Board of Trustees for approval in a few months, it needs to be a document that reflects the things that are important to you, rather than on the views of me and the other members of staff here.

As a first step towards making this happen, I would like you to fill in a survey about what you think we should be focusing on, where we are doing well, and where we should be doing better. It will only take a few minutes to fill in – please, please do so, as the more people who complete it, the more confident we can be that the priorities we settle on reflect the priorities of our community.

This survey is an important starting point for detailed discussions about the choices we need to make for the future, but it is just a start.

Once we have the results, these will be used to guide a series of detailed discussions about how we best meet your priorities, and we’ll be asking people affected by blood cancer to be a part of all those discussions. I’ll also be writing regularly to let you know the latest news and check in with you to make sure we’re on the right track.

One final point – we want to be the charity that meets the needs of everyone affected by blood cancer, not just those of them who we’re in contact with at the moment. So please consider sharing the link to the survey on social media or passing it on to anyone you know who is affected by blood cancer but might not be reading this.

The more people affected by blood cancer who fill it in, the better equipped we will be to make sure that we really are the generation that beats blood cancer.

Thank you,

Gemma Peters

Chief Executive at Blood Cancer UK

If you're worried about or have questions about blood cancer, the impact of coronavirus, or would like to talk through how you're feeling, please don't hesitate to contact our free and confidential Support Services Team.