NPC Ignites 2024: Taking a systemic approach

Planning a conference can involve a fair amount of guess work—it’s hard to predict what the hot topics will be in the future and there’s always the risk of missing the mark.

However, this year the theme and line up for our annual NPC Ignites conference in October has hit the nail on the head.  Following the election of a new energetic Labour government, new possibilities have opened up. Systems (ways of doing things, even ways of thinking) that we have been stuck with for over a decade, are now opening up. That’s why this year our conference is framed around systems change.     

The question which everyone is scrambling to answer is what the state of the economy and public finances means for government decisions—such as the Spending Review and Budget due in late October. We also want to know who is likely to gain and loose from any decisions made.  We are very lucky to have the guru on all this, Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, as a keynote speaker. Paul is a regular commentator in the media and was particularly busy with appearances on TV, radio, and podcasts during the election campaign. So, we look forward to his honest account of what the economic possibilities and dangers are.  

Closing our conference is Catherine Roche of the remarkable Place2Be, a charity which does so much for children’s mental health, sharing her reflections on a systemic approach. 

We will also hear from former Oxfam boss Danny Sriskandarajah, now Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation, a radical thinker. I am sure Danny will give us much to think about, including what the new government should be doing! And on that theme, we will be running a breakout session on how charities and funders can work with the new government. 

NPC Ignites 2024 will feature speakers from large charities, such as Beatrice Butsana-Sita, Chief Executive of the British Red Cross and Sir Peter Wanless, Chief Executive of the NSPCC.  As well as speakers from smaller charities and funders, such as Benaifer Bhandari, CEO of Hopscotch Women’s Centre and Fozia Irfan OBE, Director of Impact and Influence at  BBC Children in Need. 

There will also be breakout sessions focusing on the key issues facing the sector, such as how funders can evaluate and learn without being too top down and whether AI can help us take a more systemic approach (or if it just a lot of hype). 

And we will be dedicating time to the climate crisis, drawing on learning from our Everyone’s Environment programme. Now more than ever social and environmental charities must operate systemically and collaborate to achieve impact for people and planet. We will be exploring what this means in practice. 

And of course there is me. This will be my last speaking engagement as CEO of NPC, as I step down at end of October after 13 years in post. I will be reflecting on where we have got to on the impact journey and where we need to go next. Who would want to miss that! 

Hope to see you in October. 

This year NPC Ignites is sponsored by SmartyGrants, an end-to-end grants management solution that integrates modern grant-making practices into an intuitive, affordable platform.