Innovations, opportunities and ambition at NPC Ignites 2020

We are all facing unprecedented change, in the ways we work and in our everyday lives.

How many blogs have you read in recent months that have started that way? Quite a few I’d imagine. It is however true that we have all adapted, and NPC will continue to adapt when in October we host our most ambitious annual conference yet.

This year’s conference

NPC Ignites is going virtual, our 2020 conference will now be fully online. Taking place across 14 October and 15 October, this year’s conference will be a mix of live and pre-recorded sessions. Tailored to the needs of a sector that is as needed and as busy as it has ever been, this more flexible way of hosting a conference will gather leaders from across the sector to discuss and debate the change, innovation and collaboration that is now so clearly needed.

We can’t wait to welcome all of you, from all corners of the sector and the UK, to NPC’s tenth annual conference. Our first speakers are already confirmed. We are delighted to announce that Baroness Barran, Minister for Civil Society, Steve Douglas, the new Chief Executive of St Mungo’s, Sufina Ahmad of the John Ellerman Foundation, Greg Hurst from The Times, Julian McCrae of Engage Britain, Fran Perrin of Indigo Trust and an NPC Trustee, and Delroy Corinaldi, a Trustee of the Terrence Higgins Trust and an NPC Trustee, will be sharing their thoughts on what direction the sector needs to now take.

There are no prizes for guessing what will dominate discussions at this year’s conference. However, this crisis is so all-encompassing that we will still cover all of the big issues the sector has been facing for many years, only now we simply cannot afford to leave them unresolved.

In the run up to NPC Ignites, we are hosting a number of events on the future of the sector, with curated panels of charity leaders and policymakers. At our annual conference, we will collate these expert discussions and debate, in detail, the key opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for charities in the coming months.

What’s more, NPC Ignites will include sessions on power dynamics in grant-making and digital innovation. We will discuss social and racial justice. As well as the role charities must play in helping to solve the climate crisis.

Solutions for the sector

With our own research in May showing that, without help, 27 of the largest service-delivery charities in the UK faced an estimated £500m shortfall, the future of our sector is obviously far more than just a talking point. Therefore at this conference, the rigor of debate will be strong and the ideas under interrogation will receive high levels of scrutiny. It is more critical than ever that we come together to examine new solutions to the problems we currently face.

As a sector, we have to decide which of the new adaptations that we have developed during the coronavirus pandemic do we want to take further, and what weak aspects of our work must we cast off. October’s annual conference will be a place of shared learning, and the sessions taking place across the two-day event will help you to make important decisions for your charity.

As we move onward to a new normal, we will continue to face great challenges. There is no time for complacency—buy your ticket and join us at our forum of free and open debate.

This crisis has shown us that we need our most radical action yet, and there is no choice but for our conference to be a call to action for the sector. You may have read blogs that started like this one before, but you won’t have been to an NPC Ignites like this one before.

Click here to book your tickets now or to find out about sponsorship opportunities. Get all the latest updates and join the discussion on Twitter via @NPCthinks and #NPCIgnites.