Our impact

We exist to Beat Macular Disease.

Thanks to your generosity, kindness and commitment to our common goal, you are bringing us closer to a cure. Your support means we can reach more people than ever and fund more groundbreaking research.

Our services impact

April 2024 - March 2025

Every one of our supporters makes a real difference to the lives of everyone affected by macular disease. With your help, we provided advice and support for people affected by macular disease in the following ways:

• 19,200 people received advice and information from our Helpline team
• 36,000+ people viewed our online information webinars
• 15,883 Macular Society members
• 325 support groups continued to meet (in-person and online) with 7,676 members
• 1,157 specialised counselling sessions delivered to 544 people who needed it
• 800+ people participated in our dedicated Facebook group bringing together younger people affected by macular disease
• 348 people were supported by one of our volunteer telephone befrienders
• Thank you to our 1,023 dedicated volunteers, most of whom are affected by macular disease themselves.

Support for you

• The 2024 Macular Disease Conference attracted 5,558 people and a further 4,000 people watched recordings by the end of March 2025.
• Our new online condition specific groups, focused on rarer conditions, supported 55 members each month.
• The counselling service expanded to include groups on topics such as employment, being newly diagnosed and Charles Bonnet syndrome (visual hallucinations often associated with sight loss).

Listening to your feedback

• Our first annual service user impact and evaluation survey was sent to people who received direct support in 2023. A total of 98% of respondents would recommend the Macular Society to peers and 90% said they trusted the information obtained from the charity.
• In late 2024 we launched our first Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP), made up of 15 people with lived experience of a macular condition themselves or as a carer for someone with macular disease.

Our volunteers

• We worked with our volunteer community to produce our first volunteer handbook and offer improved support.

Our research impact

April 2024 - March 2025

With the help of our supporters, our research programme to stop macular disease leading to sight loss achieved the following:

Funding new research

• Investment of £868,000 in new research grants was awarded, including 5 new 'seedcorn' early-stage research projects.
• 38 live research projects are underway.
• 5,000+ people registered to our research participant database. 
• We funded our first research fellowship, in partnership with the Daphne Jackson Trust. This encourages researchers to return to research after a career break, boosting expertise in the macular disease research sector.

Driving collaborations

• In 2023/24 we became a member of the UK Ageing Research Funders Forum (UKARFF) to unite funders of academic and clinical research into ageing and age-related disease. In 2024/25 terms of reference for the group were agreed and UKARFF hosted a conference to support early career researchers.
• The Macular Society, Fight for Sight, Glaucoma UK and Retina UK came together to form the CERT partnership (Charities in Eye Research Transformation) to facilitate joint work, leading to more treatments and therapies for the prevention and management of sight loss through research.
• We are making progress on developing a Clinical Trial Delivery Accelerator (CTDA) for ophthalmology, to speed up recruitment, increase the number of clinical trials and allow patients better access to new treatments.

Harnessing technology

• We hosted a scientific meeting to map out the biological features which need to be modelled to create the first-ever Virtual Eye.
• Our charity collaboration Action Against AMD (AAAMD) has begun to acquire pilot data to analyse eye scans to identify earlier signs of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Vision matters

Engaging with policy makers

• Our partnership, The Eyes Have It (TEHI), met with parliamentarians on Westminster Eye Health Day 2024 and, in early 2025, held an exhibition in the Houses of Parliament to raise awareness of the urgent need for a dedicated national eye health policy. We have made submissions to the 10-year health plan and eagerly await the outcome.

Eye charity collaboration

• We are part of the ‘Visual Impairment Charity Sector Collaboration’ of eight eye charities. In 2024/25, work concentrated on creating a patient support journey, developing an online tool to help find useful technology and producing an online research data hub for key reports.
• We also focused on promoting the needs and abilities of visually impaired people in the workplace and, this year, we partnered with the Thomas Pocklington Trust to employ three visually impaired interns.

Regional action

• We have continued to engage with the NHS in the redevelopment of eye care services at more local levels and in the devolved nations. In Wales, we lobbied for action to reduce long waiting lists for wet AMD treatment in some areas.

Education

• An email campaign was launched for people who are new to the Society or who have been newly diagnosed with a macular condition. It introduced key weekly topics and signposted to further information and support.