One of the things that make us different

It was our Annual Meeting on Monday evening. I know, it sounds rather dull – an AGM, yawn.

But the BRACE Annual Meeting isn’t an AGM. We don’t have shareholders or anything like that, so there’s no formal business. No elections, no arm-twisting to get reluctant volunteers to take committee roles.

Our Annual Meeting involves some short presentations about the charity’s work and a longer talk by a researcher. This year, Dr Liz Coulthard from The BRACE Centre gave a really interesting overview of current research that she and colleagues are involved in.

A large proportion of the people there were scientists of one sort or another – biochemists, psychologists, neurologists – from all four universities where BRACE currently supports research. The rest were mostly volunteers and supporters.

This represents one of the things that make BRACE different. If you support a big national charity, you might never get to meet the people whose work you are supporting. I love seeing our supporters meeting the scientists, asking them questions, finding out first hand what’s happening in the fight against dementia.

Turning that round, one of the scientists came up to me after the meeting and said how impressed he was by all the hard work that was going into fundraising. It made me realise that the encounter was a learning process for everyone.

It’s not every research charity that can bring people together in this way.