Carnegie UK has today launched its new strategy and brand following a two-year review.
Improving wellbeing has been Carnegie UK’s core mission for over 100 years, and this strategy and rebrand provide a new clarity on that purpose, putting it at the centre of all the foundation’s work.
The strategy development was led by Carnegie UK’s CEO, Sarah Davidson who reflects: “If there was ever a moment for a wellbeing organisation to lean into its mission, then this is surely it. Not only is there is a growing and compelling body of research and evidence which demonstrates that improving wellbeing is an effective route to a good and sustainable quality of life for all citizens, but the pandemic experience has given greater impetus and urgency to this set of ideas. We know that, as the immediate threat of Covid-19 recedes, the implications of the climate crisis pose an even more existential challenge to citizens and governments alike.”
At the heart of Carnegie UK’s new strategy is a model of ‘collective wellbeing’ – what is needed for all citizens to live well together. Achieving collective wellbeing requires social, economic, environmental, and democratic wellbeing outcomes to be seen as equally important and given equal weight.
Through its new strategy, Carnegie UK will be advocates for public policy approaches which reflect this balance as a way of advancing social progress. Their ambition is to work with a range of partners to challenge threats to collective wellbeing and change systems to significantly improve collective wellbeing outcomes, working across the five jurisdictions of the UK and Ireland.
The new brand places their mission at the heart of their visual identity. Created through a collaboration by Red Pencil and HHolden Design, the traditional approach to logo first, strapline second, has been reversed so the mission leads the visuals and the foundation’s name is placed in a supporting position. The graphic motif represents not only the Cs of Carnegie, but also the four wellbeing outcomes of the foundation’s model of collective wellbeing.
Sir John Elvidge, Chair of Trustees, said of the new strategy and brand: “When Andrew Carnegie founded his UK Trust, he had the breadth of vision to give it the unbounded task of improving the wellbeing of the masses. He also had the foresight to enjoin successive sets of trustees to interpret the task in ways which would fit the circumstances of their own time. The strategy and new brand present the thinking we have done to move the concept of wellbeing from being a loose thread connecting a very diverse range of work, to something as central to our thinking as when Andrew Carnegie first chose it as his key word.”