Alzheimer's Society

Alzheimer's Society

Alzheimer's Society was formed in 1979 by a merger of two dementia-focused charities, building a unified front against a disease that affects over 900,000 people in the UK. The organization is governed by a Board of Trustees currently chaired by Dame Suzi Leather, with day-to-day operations led by CEO Michelle Dyson CB, who assumed the role in 2025. Princess Alexandra has served as the organization's Royal Patron since 1990, lending institutional credibility to its fundraising and awareness campaigns. The Society's deployment strategy blends research grantmaking with direct service provision. On the research side, it funds investigator-led basic science, translational studies, and clinical trials through UK universities and research institutes. A notable structural vehicle is the Alzheimer's Brain Bank UK, a joint venture with Alzheimer's Research UK that supplies tissue samples to dementia scientists globally. Beyond the lab, the Society operates a substantial care infrastructure — including a national Dementia Connect support line, online community forums, and local peer-support groups — making it one of the few dementia-focused charities that directly delivers frontline services at scale. The organization also partners with corporate entities such as CBRE and The Football Association to drive fundraising and awareness, extending its reach beyond traditional medical philanthropy. The Society holds assets estimated by Altss in the $100M to $250M range, derived from donation legacies, public fundraising, and investment income from its cash and equivalent holdings. Its registered office sits at 43-44 Crutched Friars in the City of London. While not a professional investor in the traditional sense, the organization's grants committee functions as a de facto allocation team, deploying capital toward what it identifies as the most promising dementia research in the UK. The appointment of Michelle Dyson CB as CEO in 2025 marks a recent leadership transition that signals continuity of its public-sector-facing strategy, given Dyson's background in government service. The Society's structural differentiator is its refusal to separate research funding from care delivery. Most disease-focused charities either write checks to scientists or run care homes — the Society does both under one roof, allowing its research agenda to be directly informed by the experiences of tens of thousands of families using its services. This closed-loop architecture creates a unique feedback mechanism uncommon among its UK health-charity peers, where frontline staff and volunteers routinely feed real-world data and patient needs back into the organization's research prioritization process.