Our partners

The Strategic Engagement Team for the Third Sector

There is estimated to be about 200,000 charities in the UK, with more than 150 of those comprising of national, regional, and local charities working with blind and partially sighted people and those at risk of sight loss.

Working together we can equip and empower blind and partially sighted people and improve conditions in society, so they can live the life they want to lead.

The Strategic Engagement Team for the Third Sector at RNIB supports engagement, communications, and activity with charity partners. We have a wide range of opportunities including information sharing, awareness raising, training, resources, support, and services, where we are actively seeking to collaborate to help others. If you are interested, please get in touch with the team: [email protected].

The team also support the work of the Vision Partnership.

Vision Partnership

The Vision Partnership is a collaboration of eight of the leading charities in the sight loss sector.

The partnership was formed when the COVID-19 crisis saw the sight loss sector rally together to address the challenges being faced by blind and partially sighted people at that unprecedented time. Established in October 2020, the partners are: Blind Veterans UK, Glaucoma UK, Guide Dogs, Macular Society, Retina UK, RNIB, Thomas Pocklington Trust and Visionary (the membership organisation of over 110 local sight loss charities across the UK). The partnership operates in an informal way and means that the charities benefit from working in partnership, with other like-minded organisations, while also giving each charity the autonomy to work independently to benefit their own supporters and service-users.

The strategic focus of the Vision Partnership is the big issues that improve the lives of people with sight loss and those at risk of developing sight loss. The four main areas are:

1. Political influencing
2. Developing an evidence-base including data collection
3. Prevention and medical research funding
4. Independent living and vision rehabilitation

A programme of activity accompanies each of the priorities and progress is monitored to ensure maximised impact. Lived experience of blind and partially sighted people is at the heart the work. Other established areas of collaborative activity are also ongoing. Interested parties from within the sight loss sector and beyond who are willing to contribute to the work streams are invited to get in touch. For further information about the Vision Partnership contact: [email protected].

The Disability Charities Consortium (DCC)

RNIB is part of the Disability Charities Consortium (DCC) which brings together CEOs and policy leads from nine of the UK’s leading not-for-profit disability organisations. We make sure disabled people’s experiences are reflected in UK policy making, by working collaboratively to influence politicians and officials working on disability policy.

The other DCC members are: Business Disability Forum (BDF), Leonard Cheshire, Mencap, Mind, National Autistic Society, Royal National Institute for Deaf people (RNID), Scope, and Sense.

The DCC feeds insights and topical concerns into the Cabinet Office’s Disability Unit to help inform disability related policy development. The DCC engages with decision makers to ensure that public policy is made with and for disabled people.

We work with more than 50 organisations - similar to ourselves - in countries across the globe. These include:

• APH – American Printing House for the Blind
• National Federation of the Blind
• CNIB – Canada National Institute for the Blind.
• Vision Australia 
• National Council for the Blind of Ireland

In our lifetime, sight loss will double affecting up to 500 people a day; that's one person every three minutes.

Unless we collectively act we will continue to see barriers stopping blind and partially sighted family, friends and colleagues from thriving. By partnering with RNIB your organisation can play a fundamental role in creating a fairer society for blind and partially sighted people leaving a legacy for generations to come.

We take a bespoke holistic approach to partnering, considering your brand, culture, CSR and Inclusion agendas.

We’d love to hear from you. Some of the support we have provided to corporate partners recently includes:

• Educating staff on a better understanding of sight loss so they take care of their eyes better.
• Creating social change by helping us remove outdated stereotypes on what blind and partially sighted people can do.
• Fundraising through Charity of The Year, Strategic Partnerships, Appeals, Cause Related Marketing, Payroll Giving, residual client funds, Corporate Grants and Sponsorship.
• Customer base synergy if your customers are 40+ they are more likely to be affected by sight loss. Together we can keep them thriving.

Other valued support such as gifts in kind, pro bono support, volunteering skilled teams into our organisation or supporting our community growth plans.

In return we can offer:

• A dedicated account manager that has access to all our organisational resources
• Support on a localised level from our regional fundraising, volunteer and campaigns teams
• A variety of inspirational and engaging stories
• The potential to access a wide range of platforms such as our award winning Connect Radio and strong social media platforms
• Fun, employee engaging, positive PR generating, rewarding feel good partnerships that will meet your social responsibility goals.

To find out more please email us at [email protected] or call us on 0207 874 1334.

We are members of a number of international networks and organisations. These include:

• World Blind Union
• EBU - European Blind Union
• The DAISY Consortium (International Standards for Accessible Publishing)
• ICEVI (International Council for the Education of people with a Visual Impairment)
• W3C (International Standards for the World Wide Web)
• IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations)
• IAAP International Association of Accessibility Professionals

We strive to provide a strategic, ethical and service driven approach to procurement.

Procurement mission statement

We aim to ensure our procurement process provides RNIB with value for money, and goods and services that are of high quality.

Procurement is an integral part of our strategy, so it’s vital our process:

• takes an ethical approach
• provides RNIB with high quality goods and services in a timely fashion
• provides RNIB value for money
• enables RNIB to meet the needs of the people and groups we serve.

Our procurement vision statement

To extend the influence of procurement to all areas of RNIB, to assist with the provision of value for money goods and services that assist the organisation in achieving its objectives.

To be true to our mission of providing those goods and services of the appropriate value and quality at the lowest overall cost available and at the time needed.

We will be innovative in our approach to problem solving, and be proactive in supplying and meeting the needs of the people and groups we serve, utilising approved methods and available/new technologies.

Procurement strategy

Our procurement strategy supports our strategic objectives and ambitions. We have five strategic procurement objectives, which are:

• value for money
• sustainable procurement
• developing and valuing our people
• knowledge and information
• excellent procurement service.

These strategic objectives are underpinned by our four guiding principles. To:

• be close to the business
• be an exemplar of best practice
• enable our goals and programmes
• promote diversity and corporate social responsibility.

Our procurement policy

We understand that to achieve best value, we need a procurement policy that encourages innovative service provision and delivers efficiency, effectiveness and value for money.

The key principles of our procurement policy are:

• Value for money – a prime aim of the procurement process is to ensure that best Value for Money (VFM) is achieved.
• Competition – procurement should be through open competition unless there are exceptional reasons.
• Payment on time – suppliers must be paid on time in accordance with contractual arrangements.
• Ethical standards – procurement must be undertaken to the highest ethical standards, and fairness to suppliers.
• Legal aspects – contracts must be in writing, and in accordance with RNIB policy.
• Environmental impact – purchasers must consider environmental impacts and aim to minimise adverse effects.

Supplier Code of Conduct and Anti-Slavery

• Download our Supplier Code of Conduct (PDF)
• Read our Modern Slavery statement

If you have any questions please email [email protected]