The Board of Trustees has taken the exciting decision, driven by research, to reposition the Actors’ Benevolent Fund for the benefit of the current and future generations working within the acting and stage management community. We firmly believe this is in the best interests of the charity and are pleased to set out the journey the Board and charity has been on.
Our rich history
In the near 150 years since we were founded, thousands upon thousands of actors and stage management professionals have been helped in their times of need. We were founded by a pioneering and inspiring group of luminaries within the profession and have seen many examples of innovation and development throughout our charity’s rich history. By 1894, we were giving allowances, helping over 12,000 applicants. Additionally, when COVID-19 silenced our industry, His Majesty King Charles III (The Prince of Wales at the time) performed a poem to support our emergency appeal.
More recently, we have begun to extend our services to meet the emerging needs of our community, including mental health support and emergency grant programmes. In 2024, we spent over £2.3m on charitable activities, up from £2.1m in 2023, reflecting the increasing scale of the challenge, and our resolve to do more to help.
Our challenge
Society has changed significantly since the Actors’ Benevolent Fund was founded in 1882, at a time when there was no welfare state and the industry looked very different. Like any organisation, we must keep adapting if we are to remain relevant and have the greatest possible impact that we can among those that we exist to support.
It is important for us to listen to our membership and those in the profession for whom this charity exists. In our 2023 Members’ Survey, over 90% told us to focus on raising awareness and extending our reach. Following this, we engaged with over 5,000 industry professionals, and the findings were striking:
- Awareness is low. Over half of survey respondents hadn’t heard of the ABF (or weren’t sure) and three quarters didn’t know what we do.
- Accessibility is a challenge. We heard the ABF needs to become more accessible, and our website needs to be more user friendly.
- We need to modernise. Some felt we were a bit old fashioned and needed to recapture our pioneering spirit.
We were aware that the charity’s image had not been updated in at least 25 years. It became clear that this was holding us back and needed to change if we are to effectively achieve our goal of reaching more people. So, we set out to identify how our image could resonate best with the profession today while not losing sight of our heritage.
As Shakespeare has shown us, language evolves. We found that the word ‘benevolent’ is rarely used in our everyday lives, and as a result was not understood by many of our respondents/community. Additionally, ‘fund’ places a very heavy focus on money, at a time when our membership has indicated we should widen our range of support. The Board of Trustees concluded that the name was no longer serving the charity in reaching our full potential, and that to best achieve our charitable objects we should update our image and identity.
Acting for Impact
With the bold and pioneering spirit of our predecessors in mind, we are proud to act for impact and launch our new identity “Actors’ Trust” as we look to the future. This name remains authentic to our aims and activities, indicates the longevity of the organisation and is in line with thousands of other charities that use the well-known and respected word ‘Trust’.
This is accompanied by a refreshed image, underpinned by an expansion of our support services aligned with our charitable objects. These include initiatives to support mental health and community, greater digital access, and an extension to our grants, meaning we will now offer financial support in all situations where someone is ‘unable to work for reasons outside of their control’, such as major life events. This is also accompanied by a refreshed website which is much more user-friendly and will enable more people to receive help.
This change is about raising the profile of the charity to ensure we are helping many more actors and stage management professionals who urgently need our support. It’s also about making access easier and quicker for all. Ultimately, Actors’ Trust is designed to make the charity more prominent and accessible, embodying a positioning that will resonate strongly with those we are trying to reach and allow us to help even more professionals within the industry.
The Actors’ Benevolent Fund remains the legal name of the charity, with Actors’ Trust being the new working name. It is worth noting that there are many examples of other benevolent funds which have changed their name in recent years, for many of the same reasons outlined above. So we are in good company.
To close
We are at a turning point and we’re evolving to meet the challenges ahead, strengthening the charity for the future. As we stand on the shoulders of the giants of our past with admiration and gratitude, we are confident that this repositioning is in the best interests of those we exist to support, is based on evidence and will enable us to make the greatest possible difference that we can in a world and profession that is rapidly changing. We need as many people as possible to join us to create a better world for the acting and stage management profession so that this can continue for the next 150 years and beyond.
With our warmest wishes.
Alex Macqueen, Chair of the Board
Alison Wyman, CEO
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