The Florence Nightingale Foundation (FNF) and the Nightingale Fund have merged to become one charity.
As part of the merger, the Nightingale Fund has entrusted its funds to the Florence Nightingale Foundation, with the latter retaining its title as the charity moving forward.
The move was officially completed on Friday last week.
Professor Greta Westwood CBE, chief executive of the Florence Nightingale Foundation, said: “It is a privilege for the Florence Nightingale Foundation to be entrusted with the responsibility of these funds.
“We will continue to honour Florence’s legacy by supporting nurses and midwives to be the best they can be and to have an even greater impact on patients, people and the communities in which they work.”
The Florence Nightingale Foundation was originally founded as the Florence Nightingale International Foundation in 1934. It was set up by the international nursing community to pay tribute to the life and work of Florence Nightingale.
It was renamed as the Florence Nightingale Foundation in 1994, having also previously been called the Florence Nightingale Memorial Committee of Great Britain and Northern Ireland when it became a charity in 1953.
Tom Bonham Carter, acting chair and trustee of the Nightingale Fund, said: “The Nightingale Fund has faced considerable challenges over the last few decades in trying to fulfil Nightingale’s wishes.
“There has been an inexorable rise in the cost of the post-registration courses nurses and midwives need to complete to improve their care for patients.
“At the same time there has been a decrease in the financial support available from the NHS and other healthcare organisations for nurses and midwives to undertake education.”
He said that the trustees and council of the Nightingale Fund “unanimously agreed” to join with the Florence Nightingale Foundation in the hope that it “will be better equipped to take on these still ongoing challenges and fulfil Florence Nightingale’s wishes”.
The Nightingale Fund was set up in 1857 and holds the original endowment raised by fundraising for Florence Nightingale towards the end of the Crimean War.
Nightingale herself accessed the fund in 1859 to establish the nurses’ training school at St Thomas’s Hospital in London.
The Fund has been safeguarded for much of its history by the Bonham Carter and Verney families because of their family connections with Nightingale.
In 2021, actor Helena Bonham Carter, who is related to Nightingale, gave a reading at a Westminster Abbey service organised by the Florence Nightingale Foundation, paying tribute to nurses and midwives during the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to its accounts, the Florence Nightingale Foundation had a total income of £3.4m in the financial year ending March 2022, with an expenditure of £2.9m.
The Nightingale Fund had a total income of £27,002 for the financial year ending June 2022, with an expenditure of £34,753, according to its accounts.