Why we’ve changed to Blood Cancer UK

The change follows a year-long discussion with our community about how we can reach more people affected by blood cancer.

We held meetings with our supporters across the UK, and held online sessions for people who couldn’t be there in person. We also met with people affected by blood cancer who don’t know anything about us and asked them what they think.

Right at the start of this discussion, lots of people in our community told us that our previous name, Bloodwise, was holding us back. Many people didn’t realise we were a blood cancer charity , with many thinking we were a blood donation service.

Changing our name wasn’t a decision we took lightly, particularly given that we only changed to Bloodwise five years ago. But as time went on, it became increasingly clear that having the name Bloodwise meant people were missing out on our information and support, as well as the chance to raise money to help beat blood cancer.

In the end it was clear that sticking with the name Bloodwise wouldn’t be doing the right thing for people affected by blood cancer.

So at the end of 2019, our Board of Trustees, the group of volunteers responsible for the direction of the charity, agreed to change the name to Blood Cancer UK.

We chose the name Blood Cancer UK for two reasons:

• It was the by far most popular name among our community.
• Given that we don’t have a big advertising budget, we wanted to make sure our name makes it as obvious as possible what we do.

We’re also lucky that we have a small group of supporters who were so passionate about the importance of good communications that they kindly donated enough money to cover the cost of changing our name. This means that when people are fundraising for us, they can be confident that none of the money they raise will be going towards the cost of the name change.

We had originally planned for a brand launch campaign to help raise awareness of our new name. But with the coronavirus, we’ve decided not to go ahead with it because all our focus has been on supporting people with blood cancer at this difficult time.

We also considered whether we should delay changing our name for a few months because of the coronavirus. In the end, we decided not to. One of the problems with the name Bloodwise was that it acted as a barrier to people reaching us. Given that people with blood cancer need our support more than ever right now, we decided that moving to a more descriptive name would help more people reach us and so we should do it as soon as possible.

Read our CEO Gemma Peters' latest blog about our name change over on Linkedin or if you’ve got any further questions, please call us on 0808 169 5155.