The Lifeboat is the RNLI's main contact with you, our supporters, so we are keen to ensure that it is doing its job well. To help us understand your needs better, we sent out 25,000 questionnaires with the autumn 2003 magazine. Thank you to all the readers who took the time to complete and return their questionnaire - your responses will help to shape the Lifeboat magazine in the future. But what did you tell us?We were delighted to find that, in general, you are enthusiastic fans of the Lifeboat.

Over 60% of respondents read the magazine from cover to cover, and 95% make sure that they read it on a regular basis. We asked you whether you liked getting your magazine four times a year and 91% of you said yes. It is important for us to get this balance right: keeping you informed about RNLI activities while making sure that we keep costs to a minimum.

Many of you are also supporters of other charities, with the National Trust, RSPB and Cancer Research UK being the most popular.

Reassuringly for us, almost half of you thought the Lifeboat magazine was equally as good as other charity magazines and 45% thought it was better or much better. We are naturally delighted with this, but we would still like to hear from you if you have any comments or suggestions on how we can make the Lifeboat even better.

When we redesigned the magazine to reflect the RNLI's new branding about a year ago, we received a large number of letters commenting on the new design, both good and bad, so we were particularly interested in the general view of our readers. We were pleased to find that a resounding 92% of readers agreed that articles are easy to find and over 85% agreed or strongly agreed that the new scheme was fun and vibrant, with just 6% disagreeing. We are taking note of some specific, more negative, comments about the design and making slight adjustments, in particular to make page layouts clearer.

As regards the content itself, 13% of you feel that there is not enough information in the articles. This is not a high proportion but it concerns us alt the same. We are carefully considering how we can ensure our supporters are fully aware of the RNLI's activities, how it spends your money and what it is doing to save more lives.

Overall, you are most interested in articles about lifeboats, with slightly less interest in articles covering Sea Safety and QBeach Lifeguards.

This is perhaps because these areas are newer to the RNLI and have been, until recently, less well developed.

We will keep this in mind in planning future Lifeboat content, better integrating these topics and showing their growing impact.

Lifeboats in act/on is your favourite section of the magazine, scoring 4.5 out of 5 in popularity. Thisreflects the heart of the RNLI's activities and it is not at all surprising that this is what our readers really enjoy. The tales of courage and endurance are extraordinary and we endeavour to do them justice in the pages of a magazine. Should we report the services in a formal, technical, understated manner, or write in a more evocative, narrative style, helping readers understand more fully what our crews experience? The popularity of this section suggests we have chosen a suitable style: vivid and emotive without being melodramatic.

Finally, we asked what one aspect of the magazine you would change if you had the chance. Many readers were concerned about the amount of advertising, both within the magazine and in loose-leaf inserts, although there was recognition that it is important for us to offset our costs in this way.This revenue is indeed vitally important to us and allows us to produce a far higher quality, more detailed magazine than we could justify if the RNLI were to cover all the costs itself but we are conscious of the downside of this. We have a strict editorial policy about the amount and type of advertising allowed and will continue to ensure that the advertisements we include are of use and interest to our readers and are not in conflict with the aims and spirit of the organisation.

One reader asked: 'Why do all the ads seem to target the over 50s?'The answer is that our advertisers know that over three quarters of our readers identify themselves as aged 55 or over and so the advertisements reflect this. But we are actively looking to expand the range of advertising we carry, realising that what is appropriate for a 55-year old person will be very different from that for an 85-year old, let alone the younger supporters who are now being recruited.

Other requests for change included more information on the design and construction of lifeboats, more 'real life' stories, more regional coverage, more on crew and family life and more reminders on safety. We are looking into all these ideas and many more, so please keep on reading the Lifeboat - thanks to your feedback, we will be able to make it even more interesting, enjoyable and inspiring, reflecting the unique service provided by the RNLI..