Why I work at NPC

Benedict Rickey - Consultant

As a regeneration consultant I developed strategies to regenerate deprived areas for councils and government departments. I found the subjects we worked on fascinating, but government was often slow to implement recommendations; and I often found myself frustrated by the pace of change.

For me, moving to NPC has been a refreshing change from the world of public sector bureaucracy. Key decisions in charities and funders are made by a relatively small group of senior staff and trustees. In our consulting work, you often have a relationship with these decision-makers. This means you can often have an direct impact on the way they work. You can be recommending a new service to a charity one week, and being told it will be rolled out the next. It is that sort of responsiveness that makes this such a dynamic sector, and makes working at NPC so exciting.

NPC is also a great mix of research and practice. I am lucky enough to work with analysts who are incredibly rigorous and aim for the highest research standards. As a consultant, I am focussed on how we use this research to make charities and funders more effective. So NPC occupies a unique space—between academic research and the real world of charities and funders—and this is what sets it apart from management consultants, on the one hand, and academic researchers, on the other.

Finally, NPC is a great place to work because of its independence. As an employee, this gives you a rare freedom. You are encouraged to formulate views based on the facts, and then express these views through reports, blogs, articles and speeches. In the past, this independence has allowed us to criticise poor practice in the sector without the need to pull our punches; which has been useful for stirring up debate. Increasingly, we are using our independence to be a critical friend to the sector—identifying problems and then suggesting solutions.

NPC has been a great place to work, to learn and develop, and I would recommend it to anyone passionate about helping the charitable sector “do good, better”.

brickey@philanthropycapital.org

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