[The Gut Trust]

The Gut Trust is the new name for the IBS Network. If you've come to us from www.ibsnetwork.org.uk, welcome! We hope you find this new site informative and useful. You'll find login details for the Self Management Programme below. To read about the activities of the charity, download our Annual Report by clicking the link provided.

The Chair of Trustees' speech, which was printed in this year's Annual Report, gives the full reasons why we changed our name. Here's a couple of extracts of what he said:

We are failing if we do not make our services available to the people with chronic IBS who are currently having to cope without us by their side. Because, as we all know, simply knowing the charity exists is empowering. Knowing that there are people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome who are living with it, that there is an organisation that is there to help when no-one else seems able to, gives hope and support to people who have lost hope and who have no support.

We must gain more members. Not because we need the money, though that would be nice, but because it is the right thing to do.

With the aid of a substantial donation from Novartis, therefore, we have embarked this year on the most ambitious project the charity has undertaken since its foundation. Its aim is nothing more than massively increasing our paying membership by making us approachable, visible and trusted, amongst people with IBS, amongst the medical profession, and amongst the wider world.

It's important that I restate that this is due to a grant. We use the income from our existing members to provide services to them – indeed, we calculate that we provide some £57 worth of services annually for a £24 membership fee – a return of over 200%.

We commissioned a substantial amount of research about the IBS Network. We used an external company for this, since we understood that we were too close to the subject and we wanted to ensure that the results we got were impartial and useful. We interviewed 1,000 people with a full representative range of the general public, the medical profession and people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (both members and non-members).

And for the first time we now know what people think about us, and what they think about IBS. The good news is that people who know us think we're doing an outstanding job.

The bad news is that very few people know about us. Even if they do hear our name, they don't know what we do (is the IBS Network a bank? Is it a computer software company?). They don't like talking about bowel functions. They don't think the materials we produce are attractive and approachable. And they don't like our website. Doctors want to refer people to us, but they don't know how to do it. So we're an outstanding organisation, doing great things – but we could do it a whole lot better.

The first problem is the name. As anyone who tries to sell anything will tell you, a name that 'does what it says on the tin' is vital. But it must also be a name that is immediately recognisable to the wider world, which 'The IBS Network' is not. So the first decision we have had to make is the most difficult. After months of research, and months of work, we have decided to change our name. The new name is clear, utterly unambiguous, and uses words the rest of the world understands.

Changing the name, though, simply means that it is easier for people to understand who we are and what we do. After ten years, our look and feel had become confused. If we are to get more members, and be seen in the wider world, we must have a consistent look and feel so that we are immediately recognisable.

So we've done that too: every piece of paper, every poster, every card, from our letterheads down to our Annual Report, from our Can't Wait Card to Gut Reaction, has been redesigned to be more attractive, easier to read, and more identifiable as being specifically 'ours'. The website will also look different. More information will be available to the general public, more information will be available to you. And we will be improving it daily over the months to come.