2025 Shortlist | Herts Vision Loss
Herts Vision Loss
Winner – Improving Impact: Charities with 4-30 paid staff
About the Charity
Herts Vision Loss (HVL) is a local charity with more than 100 years of history, supporting blind and visually impaired individuals across Hertfordshire. Its mission is simple yet profound: to empower people with sight loss to live happy, independent, and fulfilling lives. HVL achieves this through a diverse mix of services—counselling, assistive technology support, befriending, advocacy, and home visits—while also tackling wider social issues such as isolation, unemployment, and domestic abuse. In 2023–24 alone, HVL reached more than 2,000 people through targeted and personalised services.
Despite its small size, HVL delivers an impact that far exceeds its scale—supporting people not just practically, but emotionally and socially, in navigating life with sight loss. Their projects reflect a deep understanding of lived experience and a strong community focus.
Charity number: 1180450 | HertsVisionLoss.org.uk
England – South East | 4-10 paid staff
What the Board Achieved
Over the past year, HVL’s board has demonstrated how strategic, forward-thinking governance can supercharge a small charity’s impact. The trustees led a refresh of the charity’s strategic plan, placing a clear emphasis on mental health, inclusion, and digital independence. By using a centralised impact measurement framework—introduced and monitored by the board—trustees gained deeper insight into what works, what doesn’t, and where to invest the charity’s limited resources for maximum effect.
These insights drove real, measurable change. HVL saw a 20% increase in beneficiaries, with over 1,000 visually impaired individuals accessing services in 2023–24. Among them, 85% of befriending participants reported reduced isolation, and 70% of counselling clients experienced increased resilience. Strategic investments enabled the launch of new services, such as the Eye to Ear counselling project and Visionary Bonds, a peer-volunteering initiative co-designed with service users.
Trustees didn’t just govern from afar—they rolled up their sleeves. Several visited projects, joined focus groups, and underwent training in governance and impact measurement. The board also identified its own knowledge gaps, recruiting new trustees with expertise in mental health, technology, and fundraising. Through this, it enhanced both organisational resilience and service quality.
What Inspired the Judges
The panel was impressed by how HVL’s board not only understood the charity’s mission but actively shaped how that mission is delivered in a modern, impactful way. It was clear that trustees led the development of the centralised impact framework, which tracks complex outcomes like social isolation and emotional resilience—areas notoriously difficult to measure.
What stood out most was the synergy between the board and the management team. The two groups collaborated seamlessly, using data and real beneficiary feedback to drive evidence-based decisions. Rather than resting on tradition, HVL’s board embraced change. It recruited to fill skill gaps, showed honesty about challenges (such as volunteer shortages and inconsistent data), and responded with thoughtful, strategic solutions.
In a small charity, it’s easy for governance to become reactive or operational—but HVL’s board remained firmly strategic while staying close to the heart of the work. Trustees’ commitment to learning, evolving, and embedding beneficiary voices into governance decisions is an example for other small charities.
Herts Vision Loss is proof that with the right leadership, even a 110-year-old charity can stay relevant, resilient, and radically impactful.
