For community groups rebranding is “a really big deal”

In the mid-west, the long established PAUL Partnership recently became Limerick City Partnership, reflecting changes since it was originally set up in the 1980s.

CEO Jennifer Moroney Ward said it was important to bring the word ‘Limerick’ into the title.

“One of the reasons we decided to change the name was that the location of the Partnership wasn’t in it. You have Galway City Partnership and Cork City Partnership as sister partnerships in regional cities.”

She said that the change came about following extensive discussions with interested parties. 

“We were doing our new strategic plan, we had internal consultation and external consultation with stakeholders. One of the questions we asked was about the name and whether people understood it. Obviously it has a huge history for a lot of people and a very valued history, so we were very cautious about making any changes. We had that consultation to do a kind of a temperature check, see if people still felt that it had the same recognition.

“We felt that latterly it was getting a bit lost because we didn’t have the location of the city in the name and we also wanted to be working in partnership with the other regional cities. It was just to put the location where we are based that everyone felt was important, that came from external and internal stakeholders.”

Consultation on the new name took place throughout 2024, while there has been a lengthy legal process to negotiate, and there is a new website being prepared, with an overall soft launch planned for November.

While the PAUL Partnership had a long and proud history, she feels there were many people who didn’t understand what the name stood for, while it also didn’t reflect the expansion of what is offered.

“We have a lot of new people using our services and they didn’t know the background to the name. PAUL stands for People Against Unemployment in Limerick, which was of its time, and very much tied to the history of long term unemployment in Limerick. It’s a really cool activist name, but now the Partnership does so many other things alongside dealing with unemployment.

“We (used to) have people ringing up looking to speak to Paul!”

She referred to the ABC Start Right initiative, family support projects, personal development supports and the Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme, saying, “There’s a whole variety of programmes going on here now that complement employment services.”

She feels the new name is an improvement as it avoids confusion and reflects some of its values.

“We wanted to keep “partnership” in the name, because we want to work in partnership with people. We were also getting confused with Vincent De Paul and De Paul Housing locally. We’d also have people ringing up looking to speak to Paul! But the main thing is (the change of name) was coming out of the Strategic Plan consultation process.

“It’s a really big deal to change the name, we don’t underestimate that, it’s a big, big deal. But we kept it simple and we just wanted to align it with Cork and Galway,” said Jennifer.

Bray – to Bray and North Wicklow

Another name change came about when the Bray Area Partnership became the Bray & North Wicklow Area Partnership.

Its communications officer Gráinne Rogers said that the change was to more accurately reflect the area it serves. 

“We have a larger net of coverage, basically. We originally started 30 years ago and we were Bray Partnership, then it became Bray Area Partnership. Now we cover the Bray Municipal District, the Greystones Municipal District and Enniskerry, parts of Newtownmountkennedy and to reflect that coverage we changed our name from Bray Area to Bray and North Wicklow Area.”

She says that while the area it works on is fairly well defined, there is some co-operation beyond the North Wicklow area. 

“Our main programme is the Social Inclusion & Community Activation Programme – SICAP. That covers about 80% of our work and that is clearly defined in the area. Then we do other work, we have a pilot programme on Child Food Poverty Research, that’s with the borough of Dun Laoghaire. That’s in Dublin and it’s a kind of unusual one. There is flexibility with certain projects, but with SICAP the area that we cover is very clearly defined.”

ILDN rebranded this year as the LDCN

Earlier this year the Irish Local Development Network renamed and rebranded itself as the Local Development Companies Network.

“We hired a company called Designedly and they worked through the process with us. They looked after the design, we had to do the background, the legal part and we’ve changed the website now as well,” said spokesperson Michelle Mullally. 

“It’s kind of funny how it came about, it just felt right. We do everything in consultation, we have meetings and it came out of that. Everyone discussed it and there was a consultation to involve everyone, so they could feed into the whole process.

“It just sums us up a bit better. Irish Local Development Network doesn’t really show that there are companies. There are 45 companies in our network and we wanted to put them to the centre.”

She feels it has been very successful so far: “We have had very positive feedback, everyone likes it. It’s a new brand and it has gone very well.”