The breakout sessions are your chance to dive deeper into the themes shaping foundation practice today and exchange learning and experiences with peers.
Across the day, you'll join two dynamic 60-minute breakout sessions – one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
This year, we are offering roundtable discussions and interactive workshops. Roundtables will be intimate, conversation-led sessions: an opportunity to build connections with peers whilst exploring the topic in depth. Breakout sessions are dynamic, larger-group sessions with a presentation or showcase in the format and plenty of room for delegate participation.
Roundtables will be held in the morning only. For morning choices, you can select a roundtable OR a workshop. For afternoon choices, please select a workshop. Alternatively, you can choose to join one of our two peer connection sessions instead of a roundtable or workshop.
All sessions are listed below.
Led by expert practitioners from across and beyond the foundation sector, these roundtables and interactive workshops cover a wide range of topics and offer something for everyone. Whether you’re shaping strategy, making grants, or managing investments, there's something here for you.
This is your chance to explore what it really means to explore the power of collaboration, connection and collective impact in an ever-changing world.
Morning sessions (11am–12pm)
Roundtables
1. Whose place is it anyway? Power, funding and community voice in place-based funding
Led by: Eli Manderson Evans, CEO at Blagrave Trust
2. Managing conflicts on foundation boards: a discussion for staff and trustees
This session will explore how to prevent conflicts, deal with them when the arise and tackle grievances lodged against staff or trustees. There is no obligation to talk about your own board experiences if you don’t want to.
Led by: Joe Saxton, ACF trustee and chair at the Association of Chairs
3. Navigating pay and benefit challenges in charities and foundations
Non-profits have unique challenges that influence the way they reward their staff. These include funding uncertainty, the need to balance a broader range of stakeholder interests, a focus on longer term impact over short-term performance, and a preference for internal equity over external competitiveness. In this session we'll discuss the reward frameworks that have evolved and survive in non-profits, and the priorities that are shaping the way they are likely to evolve in the future.
Led by: David Wreford, partner and member, Charities' HR Network, with ACF Official Parner, Marsh
4. How to align your capital with mission: learnings from the Endowments Investing Challenge
Led by: Danielle Walker-Palmour, director at Friends Provident Foundation
5. Building for the long-term: how can funders better support charity resilience?
Led by: Sam Rider, senior consultant, Charities Aid Foundation (CAF)
6. 28 million live in modern slavery worldwide — we all have a responsibility to act
Led by: Dame Sara Thornton DBE QPM, director modern slavery at ACF Official Partner, CCLA
7. What does it take for funders to turn collaborative intention into real, sustained impact?
Led by: Catherine Robinson, head of charitable giving, St Monica Trust
8. What does effective collaboration between national and regional or local funders look like in practice?
Led by: Mike Diaper, group funding and impact director, London Marathon Foundation
9. Spending down: questions, insights and opportunities for all foundations
Led by: Oliver French, independent consultant working with the Roger Raymond Charitable Trust
10. Enterprise development and sector resilience: can earned income help organisations survive and thrive?
Led by: Tim Wilson, associate director of social investment and social enterprise, City Bridge Foundation
11. Northern Ireland: is it on your funding map? Here's why it should be
Is the conflict really over? How does Northern Ireland's history and politics shape communities today? Where is funding most needed – and how do you begin? This facilitated roundtable conversation, hosted by ACF's Northern Ireland network, is designed for funders who want to engage meaningfully in the region but haven't yet made the leap. Hear from those with on-the-ground experience, ask honest questions, and explore practical routes in. If you call yourself a UK funder, this session may be just what you need to truly fund like one.
Led by: Róisín Wood, chief executive at Community Foundation Northern Ireland and Tim Jones, programme manager at Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust
Workshops
1. No easy path: moving to authentic co-production
A growing number of foundations are attempting to incorporate lived experience and co-production into their work, but true power-sharing requires deep connection and authentic collaboration. This interactive workshop uses Buttle's co-produced research, No Easy Path, as a real-world framework – sharing the practicalities, ethical structures, messy realities and institutional shifts required to place grant beneficiaries at the heart of research, campaigns and governance. Small group discussions help delegates stress-test their own foundation's practices against real-world safeguarding, governance and the realities of relinquishing traditional institutional control.
Led by: Charlotte Robey-Turner, youth engagement and co-production manager, Buttle UK
2. Legacy in family foundations: a full stop or a living thread?
How do you honour the past without constraining the future? This peer-led workshop invites you into a candid exploration of one of family foundations' most complex challenges: navigating legacy in a changing world.
Through small-group discussions, provocations and collective reflection, participants explore the tensions between settlor intent and evolving values, the emotional weight of legacy decisions, and the role of staff as stewards of process – shifting legacy from a fixed endpoint to a living thread.
Sarah Copeland, director of people, learning and improvement, The Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, and Stuart Hobley, director, Linbury Trust
3. UKGrantmaking 2026
Interactive session to understand UKGrantmaking, and explore opportunities to use data as a springboard to understanding your place in the UK funding eco-system.
Led by: Ruth Jolley and Katherine Duerden of 360Giving, and Helen Mathie, Funders Together
4. Reaching and supporting NEETs: what can funders do?
As the What Works Centre for Youth Employment, Youth Futures Foundation has looked beyond the headline figure of 1m young people who are 'NEET'. Over half are 'inactive' – not in education or employment, not seeking work and disconnected from policy initiatives like the Job Guarantee scheme. Hundreds of thousands are outside the system, but reachable.
This workshop presents evidence from our research and young people themselves, using short exercises to explore what funders are currently supporting, where they can add value within the policy landscape, and what collaborative action could address the gaps.
Led by: Barry Fletcher, CEO, Lekan Ojumu, deputy director, programme and grants, and Anna Darnell, deputy director of strategic development at Youth Futures Foundation
5. Risky business: funders and communities reframing risk together
Risk is not an objective reality – it's something felt, embodied, and shaped by power. Yet most funding decisions treat it as a spreadsheet problem. Developed and road-tested with nearly 100 funders and community groups, this workshop invites participants to examine risk through a somatic lens: not just what risk means, but who carries it, who decides, and what we lose when risk-aversion keeps money away from the groups doing the most transformative work. Participants leave with practical tools and a framework for talking to boards about risk.
Led by: Esther Foreman, CEO, The Social Change Nest
6. Lessons from both sides of the funding table: how applicant experience improves funding outcomes
Funders and charities share a common goal: creating positive impact. Yet too often, application, assessment and reporting processes create unnecessary friction for everyone involved.
In this practical and conversational session, we'll explore what makes for genuinely positive grant-making experiences, drawing on insights from real life grant applicants and grant-makers. We'll examine how trust, transparency and proportionality can strengthen funding relationships, reduce administrative burden and improve outcomes across the funding journey.
Led by: ACF corporate partner, Blackbaud, Sarah-Jayne Pickering, fundraising consultant, and ACF member (TBC)
Peer connection session
Peer-to-peer session for emerging leaders
A facilitated space for emerging leaders to connect, share experiences and explore the opportunities and pressures shaping their roles in trusts and foundations.
Led by: TBC
Afternoon sessions (2.15pm–3.15pm)
Workshops
1. What keeps foundations up at night? A year of evidence on the sector's biggest challenges and opportunities
What are the real challenges facing foundations today, and where do the opportunities lie? Drawing on a year of nfpResearch data, this interactive session brings together three perspectives rarely seen side by side: what foundations themselves told us in the latest ACF member survey, how grantees and unsuccessful applicants view their funders, and what MPs and the public actually think about trusts and foundations. Joe Saxton shares reflections from in-depth interviews on how grant-making is evolving. Expect data, debate and plenty of discussion at your table, with space to test your own assumptions against the evidence.
Led by: Tim Harrison-Byrne; co-managing director, nfpResearch
2. Using communications to build community, shared purpose and empathy
We are living in an increasingly fractured society, where significant forces are seeking to widen those fissures – a troubling trend affecting all organisations tackling social issues, from community groups to grant funders.
Peter will outline how organisations, and grant funders in particular, can reorient their communications to strengthen community bonds and tackle the empathy crisis driving polarisation and extremism. He will highlight practical tools and approaches to build shared purpose and identity, supplemented by inspiring examples of organisations who have taken this approach and the impact they have had.
Participants will leave with concrete ideas they can apply immediately, and space to reflect on how their own funding strategies and narratives might better contribute to a more cohesive society.
Led by: Peter Gilheany, director, Forster Communications
3. If your grantees ran your foundations for a day, what would they change first?
This interactive workshop explores power, voice and accountability in funding relationships, inviting foundation staff to step into a different perspective.
Rather than discussing grantees from a distance, participants imagine experiencing funding processes themselves – exploring decision-making opacity, reporting burden, relationship versus transaction, speed and flexibility, and language and access. Reflection rather than accusation. Let the discomfort do the work. Leave with one thing you'd actually change.
Led by: Guddy Burnet-Shields, programme director (VAWG) and Aneita Lewis, administration and operations lead, Firebird Collective
4. Connecting the dots: the decisions that matter most
What are the biggest investment challenges facing charities, endowments and foundations today? Join our interactive workshop to explore the issues trustees and investment committees are grappling with, from spending and liquidity to sustainability, governance and long-term growth. Share perspectives, discuss approaches with peers, and leave with practical ideas for your own organisation.
Led by: ACF Official Partner, Aon
5. Not just being nice: help us co-create the relational funders manifesto
UK society has consistently undervalued relationships – and as funders, our systems too often drive transactional ways of working over trust, shared purpose and mutual respect. In this hands-on workshop, hear how the National Lottery Community Fund, Young Foundation and Rank Foundation are embedding relational funding in practice. Then roll up your sleeves: you will actively co-create a relational funding manifesto – a joint declaration of intent for how we work. Leave with a practical output and, we hope, the inspiration to help build a world of good relationships.
Led by: Hannah Rignell, Sarah Baker and Jonathan Eastwood, deputy directors at National Lottery Community Fund, Caroline Broadhurst DL, CEO at The Rank Foundation, and Daniel Farag, director of innovation and practice at The Young Foundation
6. Learning together: getting ready for SORP 2026 impact reporting
This interactive workshop will support charitable foundations to prepare for SORP 2026 impact reporting requirements. Through live Q&A, illustrative examples and peer discussion, we will consider what the changes mean in practice, what useful evidence foundations already hold, and how to strengthen connections between grant-making aims, activities, outputs and outcomes. We will explore how to move towards clearer, evidence-informed impact statements and how the new requirements can catalyse better organisational learning.
The Charity Commission is seeking feedback to tailor support for charities meeting SORP 2026 requirements. This workshop provides a forum for honest discussion about current awareness, confidence and capacity, alongside practical advice to get you started.
Led by: Vicky Chant, Sir Halley Stewart Trust, Isaac Parker, the Charity Commission for England and Wales, and Ruth Townsley, Helix Research and Evaluation
7. Defenders of civic space – what is the role for foundations?
Civic space is closing. What role do foundations have in defending it? This session brings together civil society voices and funders to identify threats and explore the practical work required to protect civic space in the UK. It will examine the barriers and opportunities for cross-sector collaboration, as well as give participants opportunities to discuss (in small groups) opportunities for funders to play an active role.
Led by: Paul Parker, recording clerk, Quakers in Britain (convenors of Civil Society Voice), David Cutler, director, Baring Foundation and Asif Afridi, chief executive, Barrow Cadbury Trust
Peer connection session
Peer-to-peer session for trustees
A facilitated space for ACF member trustees to connect, share experiences and explore the opportunities and pressures shaping foundation governance today.
Led by: TBC