Two pancreatic cancer charities have said they will merge in a bid to reduce duplication and to enable them to have a bigger impact.
Pancreatic Cancer Action and Pancreatic Cancer Scotland have announced plans to form a new charity as they both celebrate their tenth anniversaries.
The organisations will initially continue under separate branding but will develop a new identity for the merged charity once the move has received official approval from the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator.
PCA has 13 members of staff and had an income of £893,000 in the year to 31 December 2018. PCS has three staff members and brought in £223,000 in the year to 31 March 2019.
No staff members would be made redundant in the move, a spokeswoman told Third Sector, and the charity would maintain the office currently occupied by the separate organisations in Hampshire and Glasgow.
“Addressing the urgent need to take more action, the intended merger of PCS and PCA will enable considerable progress and impact towards making the 2020s the decade of change for pancreatic cancer,” a joint statement said.
Ali Stunt, the founder and chief executive of PCA, is expected to lead the merged charity, with Fiona Brown, development manager of PCS, managing the Scottish office.
The two trustee boards will be joined together to form a single board.
Stunt, a survivor of the disease, said in a statement that it was her ambition to ensure more people were diagnosed in time for surgery to be possible, as had happened in her case.
“By coming together, both charities know we can make greater strides in making our vision – a day when everyone is diagnosed early and survives pancreatic cancer – a reality,” she said.
“The pancreatic cancer charity world is very fragmented. This merger will reduce any potential duplication of effort and resources and means we can make a bigger impact”.
Brown, who lost her mother to pancreatic cancer in 2003, said the disease had been “left in the dark for too long” and it was clear that “we can do more to help ensure we arrive at the day where we all know more survivors”.
The merger is expected to be completed by late March or early April, a spokeswoman said, subject to OSCR approval.