Project
Age Exchange’s chief executive and chair both took a pragmatic view that to ensure the continuity of this vital service as well as delivering even greater impact, they would need to merge with another organisation. They therefore sought help from Eastside People to evaluate and approach potential merger partners, ideally those with similar aims of supporting older people and people with dementia (either as a primary focus or as part of their service mix).
Eastside People worked with Age Exchange to help them develop a brief, profiling ideal prospective partners, and then drew up a longlist of 22 not-for-profit health and social care organisations across two geographic categories:
- London/South East organisations
- National organisations.
This was then condensed down to a shortlist of 11, which Eastside People approached on behalf of Age Exchange.
Eastside People also helped develop an information pack on Age Exchange for prospective partners.
Solution
These approaches led to productive conversations in the months that followed, but Age Exchange ruled out several small partners on the grounds that this would not address their challenges. After a successful meeting with one of the UK’s largest health and social care charities, Community Integrated Care (CIC), they began the process of formal merger and announced their partnership nine months later.
As a result, Age Exchange merged with CIC, becoming a subsidiary. The partnership enables Age Exchange to benefit from CIC’s infrastructure to grow its organisation and increase its reach, while enabling the latter to elevate its existing dementia services and expand its offer to include Age Exchange’s industry-leading reminiscence and dementia services to the people they support. The merger has also helped raise Age Exchange’s profile and strengthen CIC’s charitable focus.
Today, they continue to break boundaries as the only arts charity embedded within in a social care provider, as a subsidiary charity of Community Integrated Care.
Age Exchange, with Community Integrated Care, has a unique mission to bring arts, culture and creative expression into the lives of thousands of people who draw upon social care, live with dementia and face isolation.