Shift Beyond | In conversation with Daisy Carter, NPC

What if the very thing we’ve been taught to chase – growth- is actually part of the problem?

That’s the provocation behind Shift Beyond Conversations, a podcast series exploring how we might tackle poverty, inequality, and injustice without falling into the trap of empire-building. Hosted by Rich Jones, CEO of St Andrew’s Community Network in North Liverpool and the social enterprise Angels Connect, each episode challenges conventional thinking about the charity and impact sector; inviting leaders, funders, and thinkers to ask hard questions about what real change looks like.

In this episode, Rich is joined by Daisy Carter from New Philanthropy Capital (NPC), whose work bridges research, consultancy, and philanthropy. Together, they unpack how the sector’s fixation on scale can obscure the deeper, systemic change communities truly need, and what it means to “build solutions without building empires.”

When Growth Becomes the Goal

Daisy begins with a simple but striking insight: “An empire, above anything else, is concerned with its own survival.”

It’s a statement that lands heavily. Empires, she explains, thrive on indispensability, they hide failure, resist change, and protect their centre. In the charity world, that instinct often shows up as an obsession with growth. The bigger the footprint, the greater the perceived impact. But Daisy questions whether expansion is always synonymous with progress.

For her, the challenge is to build organisations that plan not for their own survival, but for systemic change that outlives them. That requires a different mindset. One marked by collaboration, openness, and a willingness to embrace failure as learning.

“Designing dependency out, Has as to be a core commitment. We can’t claim to empower communities while ensuring they always need us.”

The Scale Trap

“Many charities, have become the service delivery arm of local authorities.” They’re meeting urgent needs, but often at the cost of addressing the conditions that created those needs in the first place.

Much of the sector, has become trapped in a cycle of responding to symptoms rather than reshaping systems. But there are signs of hope – models emerging at the grassroots, where organisations are intentionally choosing to “scale deep rather than scale up.”

It’s a phrase that captures the heart of this conversation. Scaling deep means embedding change locally, nurturing relationships, and strengthening communities from within. 

“For lots of these organisations, it’s precisely because they’ve chosen not to grow wide that they can genuinely work with people to create lasting change.”

A Sector Obsessed with Survival

Asked whether the sector has an obsession with growth, Daisy pauses. “I’m not sure it’s obsession,” she says. “It’s survival.”

That survival instinct, she explains, is baked into how funding systems operate. Organisations compete for limited pots of money. Success is measured by outputs and reach, not by transformation. As a result, “strategy focused on growth becomes an organisational reflex,” she says. It may keep the lights on, but it rarely changes the world.

This pressure can distort strategy and measurement alike. It rewards short-term visibility over long-term depth. Funders ask for numbers, not narratives; dashboards, not dignity. 

Shifting the Lens : From Metrics to Meaning

If growth isn’t the answer, what is? Perhaps it’s a shift in how we understand and measure impact. Systemic change is messy, nonlinear, and hard to quantify. It doesn’t fit neatly into annual reports or KPI frameworks.

“It takes trust, and it takes courage. People don’t always know how to ask permission for that kind of work – to their boards, their funders, even to themselves.”

That idea of permission, and the power dynamics behind it, echoes throughout the conversation. Both agree that change will require boards and leaders willing to embrace ambiguity, uncertainty, and shared ownership. It means moving away from command-and-control leadership towards a posture of humility and learning.

The Courage to Step Back

Leadership, Rich reflects, often equates to doing more – more projects, more partnerships, more activity. But Daisy offers a counterpoint: “Sometimes the most powerful thing a leader can do is step back, to enable others to step forward.”

That, she argues, is how dignity and agency are restored. True empowerment isn’t about layering interventions onto people’s lives, it’s about making space for communities to shape decisions about their own futures.

Rich admits that can feel uncomfortable for those wired to act quickly. “We’re doers,” he says. “But sometimes our urgency to do good means we intervene before we understand the root causes. We create busyness that centres our activity, not people’s dignity.”

It’s a sobering reminder that even well-intentioned action can reinforce dependency if it doesn’t start with listening and trust.

Redefining Success

So what would success look like if not measured by scale? Daisy’s answer is clear: “Start with shared values and shared intentions. Be generous with learning.”

Instead of asking how can we reach the most people?, she suggests reframing the question: how can we change people’s lives? The aim isn’t to grow activities, but to grow impact – to deepen it, to share it, and to make it sustainable beyond any single organisation’s lifespan.

That’s the essence of Shift Beyond: ambition rightly directed. Not empire-building, but community liberation.

Living the Philosophy

For Rich, this philosophy isn’t theoretical. It’s embodied in Angels Connect, the digital triage and referral platform his organisation built to redesign access to debt and welfare advice.

Instead of scaling another charity service, Angels Connect gives power to the frontlines – teachers, GPs, community workers, even neighbours – so that anyone can connect someone to help within minutes. It’s a system built for dignity and immediacy, not dependency.

“Angels Connect doesn’t just imagine a different way,” Rich says. “It lives it. It redesigns the system so people don’t fall through the cracks.”

Beyond Altruism

As the conversation closes, Rich summarises the challenge facing the sector:

“Our impact isn’t measured in how big our organisations become, but in how free people are to live with dignity and without injustice, inequality, and poverty.”

Building solutions without building empires requires courage – courage to fund differently, to research differently, to lead differently, and sometimes, to let go.

For those reading, this is an invitation. To start where you are. To look for collaborators who share your values. To back models that don’t just ease symptoms but tackle systems.

And above all, to remember Daisy’s closing words:

“Start there.”