10 March 2025
This is what we achieved in Year 2...
Build belonging – we published our Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Belonging (EDIB) Plan – the bedrock to create true belonging for everyone involved with us – and Racism and Identity Discrimination Policy and Reporting Process, so anyone can report, and we can investigate, incidents. This is vital in ensuring anyone who engages with us is treated with respect and dignity, irrespective of who they are and what protected characteristics they have. The team also completed formal EDIB training, supported by behaviour change specialists, New Ways.
Go further – our partnership with specialist youth mental health charity, Mind Over Cancer, has gone from strength-to-strength. Following a successful pilot in 2023/24, this year we have 23 young people involved in Mind Over Cancer’s online mental wellbeing support programme. These sessions run outside of trip season and provide a space for young people to continue conversations from their trip and get the tools in place to look after their mental wellbeing.
Drive impact – our impact dashboard is becoming increasingly embedded in our work in terms of collecting young person responses, reporting for funders/partners and building a robust data set to help inform future decisions. A Net Promoter Score (NPS) measure, introduced this year, found 80% of young people would recommend our trips to a friend (overall NPS score 75).
Keep the magic - with a renewed focus on making volunteering as equitable and open as possible, 108 new volunteers joined our team for the 2024 season, including 54 new medics, while 160+ volunteers and skippers have trained as Mental Health First Aiders to better support young people.
We also ran our first ever RYA Watch Leader course. As well as giving volunteers the chance to gain new skills and experiences, benefitting their CVs and supporting education and career ambitions, the new Watch Leader programme also enables the volunteers to support our sailing trips as Mates, which has a two-fold benefit.
Firstly, volunteers with sailing skills are integral to keeping young people safe, and being able to offer this course means we can develop those skills in existing volunteers who already understand our trips and young people. In addition, as we start training Mates in-house, more opportunities will open for new volunteers to support our trips as Crew Leaders, bringing increasingly diverse and different skills and experiences to our volunteer pool.
Ask questions – there has been an ongoing focus on addressing the gender imbalance amongst our skippers while our EDIB Plan outlines recruitment best practice for volunteers, skippers and Youth Advisory Group. Work on developing inclusive recruitment practices to grow diversity across our whole team is scheduled for 2025 (funding permitted).
Think Planet – we are committed to protecting the environment, promoting sustainability and minimising our carbon footprint, as detailed in our Environmental Sustainability Policy Statement, and evidenced through conscious decision making we are taking around purchasing, resourcing and everyday actions. Being fully transparent, due mainly to resources and funding, this has been the most difficult Ambition to move forwards and we have struggled to prioritise measuring and strategising our environmental impact in the way we had hoped at this point in our 2023-25 Ambitions. But we know how important it is to do this work, to drive genuine change in our environmental and sustainability practices and to be credible and relevant in our approach with young people. In year three we will seek funding for external support to progress this Ambition.
Diversify income – there was a focus on increasing Trust and Foundations applications, including adding another Trust and Foundations fundraiser to the team, and growing our High Net Worth Individual network, while development of a new mid-value Giving Club and legacy programme are underway. A successful new sailing clubs talks programme was also launched and continues to grow.
Grow Loyalty – much of this occurred in the background, with investment in building supporter journeys and supporter experience alongside developing our data and relationship management systems to support this. Successful ‘see it yourself’ donor/funder sailing days were introduced too while our Friends of the Trust monthly donations enjoyed a surge in support, particularly towards the end of the year. Thank you to everyone who has become a Friend of the Trust, or increased their monthly donation, in the past 12 months.
Talk Difference – impact continued to be at heart of our communications to connect with and attract young people to come sailing and inspire people to support us.
It wasn't an Ambition in 2023, but following the publication of a new State of the System report and North Star vision in June 2024 - research we had partnered with Young Lives vs Cancer, Teenage Cancer Trust and Children's Cancer and Leukaemia Group (CCLG) to commission - we are grateful to now be part of a Collective Impact Initiative, which aims to apply systems thinking to address the gaps and challenges unearthed through the report.
Led by Young Lives vs Cancer, this group will work to educate, influence and involve stakeholders from every point of a young person’s cancer journey to catalyse changes within the system to enhance the long-term wellbeing of children and young people with cancer, and their families.
It remains a huge deal for us to have a seat at this table and outcomes of this report will influence our 2026-2030 strategy we're currently working on in five main areas…
You can read the full report and all our news stories and commentary around it here - State of the System and North Star Vision.