Our impact
NPC has been helping the charity sector, philanthropists and businesses to maximise social impact in the lives of the people they serve for over 20 years. Through our think tank and consultancy work, we will continue to provide a challenging and independent voice that inspires bold initiatives and much needed innovation in the social sector.
We help charities, philanthropists, businesses and funders to move from ‘in principle’ to ‘in practice’. We develop and encourage the take up of new ideas and strategic leadership to help the social sector overcome the everchanging challenges they and their beneficiaries face.
NPC is a thought leader, yet at the same time focused on the practical side of the work, providing solid, hands-on guidance and support.
-Annual survey response
Highlights of our year
Read our 2022/23 Annual ReportRead our strategy and theory of change for more on how we seek to transform the social sector. Sign up to our NPC Newsletter to stay up to date with our work, and complete our NPC survey to share your views. Explore more of our practical resources and thought leading blogs, debate the big ideas at our events, and gain bespoke support through our consulting.
As a charity, we rely on the generosity of our supporters. Find out more about how you can support our work to transform the sector.
NPC's positive influence on encouraging impact evaluation stands out as a key achievement.
NPC Survey
- Influencing: What role can charities play to partner in key government policies?
- Innovating: How might innovation in technologies, tools and approaches help tackle and embrace tomorrow’s problems?
- Improving: Provide the tools and resources to enable charities and funders to flourish.
- In the summer of 2023, NPC and partners met with young people, people from ethnic minority communities, Disabled people, and older people across the UK, to find out how the environmental crises are affecting their lives and what they want charities and policy makers to do next.
- We shared our Signpost + collaborative programme working with communities, data folk, the social sector and beyond to ensure that young people find support when they need it.
- In our Open philanthropy guide we share how grant-making can be more inclusive.
- We launched a practical guide to becoming a diverse, equitable, and inclusive funder by embedding DEI into your grant-making cycle.
- Our Centring Lived Experience paper contains step-by-step guidance on how to effectively incorporate insight from lived experience throughout your organisation.
- To mark our 20th birthday, we talked to leading figures and people doing things differently to ask: Where next for social impact?
- First launched at the start of the pandemic to help charities understand the needs of communities around the UK. Our databank is updated to allow the user to produce their own tailored reports.
- We launched our ambitious Everyone’s Environment programme working with over 40 social and environmental charities to empower people from the UK’s diverse social groups to have a say on how we confront the climate and nature crises.
- In response to the cost of living crisis we launched a guide on how funders can mobilise to help charities adapt.
- Our briefing, Putting the S back into ESG, aims to ensure ESG strategies help tackle some of the most entrenched social issues in the UK.
- We closed Inspiring Impact, and brought the valuable resources onto the NPC website.
- We continued our analysis of the government’s Levelling Up initiative, and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
- We launch our initiative to find out how Covid-19 has changed charities and funders, what made them more impactful, and how they can continue.
- We begin tracking the government’s flagship Levelling Up policy and where the funding is going.
- Our report on Evaluating the Building Connections Fund gathered evidence to improve the evidence base on loneliness, which will be used to inform longer term policy and funding decisions.
- Theories of change for campaigning explores the challenges that campaigning situations pose and how you can overcome them and develop a theory of change for campaigning.
- We published a systems map on Breaking reoffending cycles in the criminal justice system.
- We see the Covid-19 pandemic as a defining moment for charities to shape the sector. We launch a range of resources and toolkits for charities, funders and philanthropists, including a data dashboard showing places in the UK most affected by Covid-19.
- We appoint our first US director.
- We spark debate by asking, Where are England’s charities? And are they in the right places?
- A rebalancing act: how funders can address power dynamics provides practical guidance on what funders should focus on.
- My Best life is a collaborative, open project seeking digital solutions to the challenges facing young people. It uses NPC’s new working in the open space NPC Labs to share it’s learning and to ask questions.
- We publish the first learning and insight paper into the Government’s Youth Investment Fund (YIF).
- Our Walking the talk research explores what’s holding the charity sector back from improving diversity, and Make it count argues why impact maters in user involvement.
- Our Impact Risk Classification provides a light-touch practical framework for assessing an organisations approach to impact.
- We launch the learning report, ‘Tapping the potential’ for The Richmond Group of Charities. It captures learning from the initial stages of Doing the Right Thing—an approach to building meaningful collaboration between the voluntary sector and public bodies. We begin as the learning partner on the Youth Investment Fund (YIF)—a joint investment scheme between DCMS and The National Lottery Fund to provide new opportunities for young people to get involved in their communities.
- We set out our manifesto for what it looks like to use evidence effectively and suggest ways to achieve it.
- Our report, Charities taking charge: Transforming to face a changing world looks at how charities should always be looking proactively for ways to improve, even transform, their work and increase their impact.
- We launch our state of the sector programme. A rigorous analysis of sector leader opinion, and how it changes over time. We repeat the survey in 2019.
- We start a conversation on how the philanthropy sector can improve – leading to more and better philanthropic giving.
- We publish our first guide on system change, what it is and how to do it. It remains one of our most popular guides.
- Our popular Leading Impact event series begin.
- We host our first NPC Ignites conference bringing together the brightest minds in the charity sector.
- Our Supporters’ Circle launches as a network of philanthropists to come together to support our work transforming the charity sector.
- We highlight ten exciting innovations from around the world which are helping to grow philanthropy by ensuring resources are used most effectively.
- We lead the way in driving productivity and innovation in the charity sector with Dan Corry’s first lecture for the RSA.
- NPC develops as a Think Tank with the introduction of a Head of Policy to work on influencing government.
- We are instrumental in the establishment of the Ministry of Justice’s Justice Data Lab, which received the Royal Statistical Society award for ‘Statistical Excellence in Official Statistics’.
- We set up the independent Commission on the Voluntary Sector & Ageing to encourage charities and funders of all types, not just those working with older people, to consider how the ageing population will affect them.
- Our findings increase understanding of the issues that can lead to child abuse and show donors how they can help stop it – NSPCC act on our evidence.
- We offer the first representative picture of the charity sector’s response to the challenge of impact measurement.
- Using economic analysis, we measure the value of sport in tackling youth crime.
- We begin our events series which has explores everything from from practical seminars to topical discussions.
- After many years of developing theories of change for charities and funders, we launch our first guide to creating your own theory of change.
- Dan Corry joins as NPC’s CEO, following Martin Brookes.
- We embark with others on Inspiring Impact, a 10-year programme to create a culture of continuous improvement among voluntary organisations.
- The Social Impact Analysts Association (SIAA) is founded dedicated to helping professional with social impact analysis.
- Our paper, Count me in: Improving numeracy in England, makes a big impact and is mentioned in Parliament.
- Our philanthropy work leads to the Philanthropy Advisors Forum, which later joins with others to become Philanthropy Impact.
- We investigate how changes in the criminal justice system affect the work of charities and how funders can create lasting change for individuals and communities.
- We launch our blog site to spark discussion and facilitate knowledge sharing in our sector. We publish over 100 blogs a year, helping our audience to think differently and explore new ways of working.
- Our analysis explores how charities are helping young people recover from mental health problems. We start a national conversation with coverage in over 100 publications.
- We show donors how charities can prevent truancy. Truancy destroys children’s life chances and costs the UK economy £800m each year.
- We examine the barriers refugees and asylum seekers face, in the system and in society, in Home truths.
- Our research leads to the establishment of the National Numeracy Trust and the Children and Young People’s mental health coalition. We also support the development of influential funders, including the Stone Family Foundation, Private Equity Foundation (now merged into Impetus-PEF) and Synchronicity Earth.
- We produce a guide for donors for helping families with a disabled child, over half of whom live on the margins of poverty.
- Our monthly newsletter is launched, which today reaches over 20k subscribers.
- We develop our charity analysis services and publish our first guide to what makes a good charity.
- We set out a vision for a world in which effective charities receive the resources they need to create maximum impact in improving lives. Charities delivering the best results are not always those with best access to money, and donors do not always know which charities are really making a difference.
- We become known for our landscape research and analysis of specific social issues. Among the first was Charity begins at home, a guide for donors on how to combat violence against women.
- New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) is founded by a group including Peter Wheeler, Gavyn Davis, Peter Sweatman and Harvey McGrath. Bernard Mercer is our first CEO.
- We set a goal to improve the efficient and effective use of resources for charitable purposes by evaluating the governance of particular charities, or a range of charities, and the impact of their activities.