In December 2022, PhotoVoice was renamed ‘PhotoVoice Charity’, to enable a new Community Interest Company (CIC) to be established. This new company, which will be operating under the name ‘PhotoVoice’ will be delivering future PhotoVoice projects, training courses, talks, events, and all the other activities we have previously delivered. It won’t fundamentally change how we operate, but we wanted to clarify a few points about this change:
- PhotoVoice Charity will remain, to protect the legacy and history of its work, but future operational activities will be delivered by the Community Interest Company.
- PhotoVoice and PhotoVoice Charity will exist in parallel, but remain independent of each other.
- All future correspondence including newsletters, our social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn), will come from PhotoVoice, rather than PhotoVoice Charity. If you don’t want to continue to receive correspondence from PhotoVoice, please do unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of any email newsletters, or unfollow us.
A Community Interest Company is a non-profit organisation which doesn’t have charitable status, but is committed to doing work for the benefit of the community. It’s a relatively new type of company, which can often operate with more flexibility than charities. Importantly, a CIC is committed only to delivering works which have social good at their core, and for PhotoVoice, any income generated will only ever be used to further our social aims. While some CIC’s may have shareholders, or can issue dividends, PhotoVoice does not. It is entirely non-profit in its operations.
You may be wondering why this change? Well, running a charity is challenging, and it’s been a challenging number of years, not just for PhotoVoice but for the sector as a whole. The impact of Covid, the funding landscape, the cost of living crisis, have all created a huge amount of uncertainty across the charity sector, and we’re aware that many organisations we’ve collaborated with have had to make some difficult decisions, with some closing entirely.
We wanted to avoid that being a possibility by taking active steps to safeguard the important legacy that PhotoVoice has developed over the years. By establishing a separate organisation which can take on the operational aspects of our work, the charity remains shielded from the volatility of the current climate.
This won’t fundamentally alter anything about how PhotoVoice designs and deliver projects, or compromise our ethical standards in any way; we will continue to strive for a world in which everybody is given the opportunity to speak out and be heard.
Any donations to PhotoVoice Charity will continue to be used to help further its charitable aims and objectives, through commissioning work from PhotoVoice.
If you would like to donate to PhotoVoice Charity, please select the donate button below; note that all donations from UK taxpayers can be gift-aided. You can also donate directly to PhotoVoice, though please note that any donations cannot be gift-aided. Any direct debits or recurring donations to PhotoVoice Charity will continue to be received by PhotoVoice Charity.
To contact PhotoVoice Charity trustees, please complete the form on this page. To contact PhotoVoice, please visit here.