Caravan – a history

From the Victorian era to the 21st century

The history of welfare charities in the UK food industry formally began in the third quarter of the 19th century. But it was not until 1964 that a dedicated Benevolent Fund was set up solely for the grocery trade. Before this, the major Benevolent Fund in existence was the Grocers’ Federation Benevolent Fund (GFBF), which looked after the interests of former independent retailers.  In 1962, the GFBF took over the administration of the London Grocers’ & Tea Dealers’ Benevolent Society. A year later in 1963, the Grocers’ Employees National Benevolent Society asked the GFBF to provide a secretariat for their organisation, while maintaining a separate identity and organisation.

These developments highlighted the need for a national Benevolent Fund to cover the whole of the industry. After discussions with all sections of the grocery trade, the Benevolent Society for the Grocery & Provisions Trade was formed in 1964, changing its name to the National Grocers Benevolent Fund (NGBF) in 1969. Its constitution and aims have remained largely the same since this time. Over the years, the NGBF has always been a very successfully run welfare fund, supported by the leaders of the industry and well administered. But as the NGBF, we had become increasingly concerned with two key issues – namely, our ability to sustain and improve our success in raising funds and our ability to identify and contact all those who would most benefit from our support.

Low awareness within the industry in general had been a problem for the NGBF for some time. We knew that we needed to raise our profile and communicate our role to a wider group of people in order to secure commitment. In particular, our stakeholders had identified the charity’s need to attract support and help from younger members of the industry as a matter of priority.

Part of the above problem was that it had become obvious over the past few years that the NGBF “brand” was seen by many as old fashioned, and this was a fair criticism - the NGBF name had its origins in the 19th century and the logo went back to the 1960s. Both were seen as old fashioned, traditional, out of touch and confusing to younger people in the industry. We were failing to establish our relevance to the industry we were trying to support.

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