Gareth Jones asks if we are seeing a trend for charity names to explain clearly what the organisation does.

Yesterday’s news that Rethink has rebranded as Rethink Mental Illness raises the age-old question – to what extent should your organisation’s name reflect the work it does?

Rethink’s reasoning was that its name wasn’t clear enough about what it does, yet only five months ago Sue Ryder Care dropped the ‘Care’ from its name on that basis that it made the name sound “distant and corporate”.

So which is the best approach? In recent years it has felt as if charities have been shaking their fusty old literal names for hipper, yet more vague, monikers.

Notable examples of this are World Emergency Relief changing its name to Emerge Poverty Free, Excellent Development becoming simply Excellent, YMCA Glasgow becoming Y People and, understandably, the National Council of Voluntary Child Care Organisations (NCVCCO) re-launching itself as Children England.

Perhaps the classic in this field was the decision in 2008 of the organisation created by the merger of Rainer and Crime Concern to call itself Catch 22, a move that left some scratching their heads.

Clarity

On the flip-side of the coin, there have been relatively few examples of charities moving in the opposite direction and adopting names which clarify what they do.

Perhaps the most notable example of this was NCH’s decision in 2008 to become Action for Children, a slightly more descriptive term than the acronym which harked back to the somewhat forgotten and obsolete ‘National Children’s Home’.

This was, however, the only high-profile example until June this year when RNID went ahead with its decision to become Action on Hearing Loss.

With Rethink now joining the descriptive-names club, will we see a renaissance for this approach?

Can we expect to see Oxfam return to its roots and calling itself the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief? And is it time that NCVO shrugged off the lengthy acronym and renamed itself Charities England?