The Alzheimer’s Society’s recent fundraising successes have been supported by the charity becoming more challenging and controversial, its chief executive has said. 

The charity won Large Charity of the Year at the Third Sector Awards after it had a record annual fundraising total of more than £100m and supported almost 100,000 people living with dementia. 

Speaking to the Third Sector podcast, Kate Lee said that coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which the charity made almost 200 redundancies, the society’s board signed up to “quite an aggressive programme of brand investment”.

She said: “We came out of the pandemic in quite a strong financial position, having made some really tough decisions about the size of the organisation, and used some surplus funds we had to start a brand campaign.

“We’ve been quite challenging, quite stretching in that brand campaign, because we want to both raise awareness of the organisation, but also raise awareness of the condition at the same time.

“So we have been a bit more controversial, a bit more challenging in that dementia space, but that’s brought loads of attention to the organisation and we’ve seen an uplift on nearly all our fundraising.”

She said the charity had also made “significant investment” in legacy marketing about four to five years ago, which was starting to deliver results. 

The Alzheimer’s Society’s Long Goodbye advertising campaign, which showed the idea of people with dementia “dying” many times as they become unable to do things that used to be normal, drew criticism from some quarters when it was launched last March. 

The Advertising Standards Agency ruled in June that the charity did not break any rules, despite the regulator receiving more than 230 complaints that the adverts were excessively distressing, offensive and irresponsible.

Lee said the charity had a “very, very strong discussion and debate” across the charity before launching the campaign.

“We debated it, we thrashed it out and we came to a decision,” she said. “And I felt the whole organisation stood behind putting that campaign out because they understood the need of carers to have their voice heard.”

Lee also spoke about the charity’s work to improve its diversity and engage better with its younger employees. 

To listen to the full interview, click here.