Delivering on our aims

How did we do in 2019/2020?

We’ve made some great progress in many areas this year and wanted to do more in others. This page describes how we’ve performed against the goals we set.

Launch and start work with a new strategy focused on changing the outcomes for those affected by kidney disease sooner.

Invest £6.8m into research across the causes, prevention and treatment of kidney disease in children and adults.

Accelerate research into leading causes of kidney disease such as diabetes and high blood pressure by continuing to work with other disease specific charities to deliver research collaboratively.

Leverage the most from our relationships and influence with other funders and partners to boost research funding into kidney disease.

Ensure the NURTuRE biobank completes sample collection for chronic kidney disease and idiopathic nephrotic syndrome and opens access to researchers. Secure funding for other sample types.

Facilitate year one of the Iron and Muscle study; a clinical trial to identify if giving iron can improve wellbeing in patients with chronic kidney disease who are not yet anaemic or on dialysis.

Advance research areas recommended in our inequalities report and continue our work with at risk communities.

Grow the number of people signed up to our online patient community, Kidney Voices, and help more to participate in research.

Raise £11.7 million to fund our work.

Invest in future opportunities for raising income and awareness.

Invest in our staff and technology to maximise what we can do, including launching a new website.

Ensure that at least 80 pence in every pound we raise is spent on our charitable objectives. YES. Our new strategy was launched and we have begun work on our strategic priorities - transforming treatments, helping people living with several health conditions and building our community. Our focus on reducing health inequalities is in every area of our work.

NEARLY. We invested £6.4 million into kidney research, just short of our target.

YES. We have been working to develop ways of working more collaboratively with other charities to accelerate research and raise awareness. For example, we agreed we would co-fund future research with the PKD Charity, because polycystic kidney disease (PKD) leads to 1 in 10 cases of chronic kidney disease in the world.

YES. We continue to work closely with the Stoneygate Trust and the Garfield Weston Foundation to fund research. We also co-funded a grant with Worldwide Cancer Research and funded our second Daphne Jackson fellowship, which supports people back into a research career.

NEARLY. We reached our 3,000 target for our chronic kidney disease sample group in June 2019 and our idiopathic nephrotic syndrome group was over halfway towards the 800 target in March 2020. We are still exploring creating new disease groups.

YES. Patient recruitment commenced in July 2019 and was halfway to target by end of 2019. The coronavirus pandemic has meant this trial will now be delayed by six months.

YES. We established a Health Inequalities Advisory Group and we spread the word about health inequalities at the UK Kidney Week annual conference in 2019. Our peer educator projects continue to have an impact – see pages 14 and 15.

YES. The number of people signed up to Kidney Voices has more than doubled. We continue to develop our public and patient involvement (PPI) framework and more people are taking part in our research projects.

NO. This year we raised £9.95 million, despite the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the charity in the final weeks. Although our income didn’t reach the planned level of growth, it increased by 2% on our 2018/19 income.

YES. We carried out two big awareness raising activities during the year – our ‘Keeping Kidney Fit’ campaign and the World Kidney Day campaign. We are updating our charity look so we can reach even more people, in response to research to better understand our audiences. And we continue to develop new ways to raise funds.

YES. We invested in Office 365 technology and staff training so we were ready to switch to remote working when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Our new website launched in 2019.