Reporting Back from Conservative Party Conference!

We’ve now returned from conference season and, after spending a weekend resting our feet, are able to reflect on an extremely successful few weeks for the Back Britain’s Charities campaign. Last week we were of course in Manchester, enjoying the surprisingly sunny, dry weather and mingling with politicians and activists from the Conservative Party.

We had numerous visitors to our stand with people keen to find out about our “people power” report, as well as play our interactive game! So popular was our stand that by the end of conference we’d run out of bears to give to our guests!

We received a number of high-profile visitors to our stand, including the likes of Conservative Party Chairman Grant Shapps MP, Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Health, and Sir George Young MP, Chief Whip. Whilst none of the MPs who played our game were able to topple Ed Balls, we can confirm that Europe Minister David Lidington set a fast time and took top honours for the blues!

We also held another great fringe in Manchester, where the Minister for Civil Society Nick Hurd MP kindly joined us to offer his thoughts on our conference research, as well as giving the audience his ideas on how to get more people engaged with charities. In addition to CAF’s John Low, Penny Mordaunt MP and Pete Moorey from campaigning group Which? came to share their experiences of both charitable activity and ways that people can be mobilised to get involved with causes.

It’s great that we’ve received such a positive response throughout conference, and we’re delighted we’ve been able to explain to conference goers the challenges that charities are faced with, and what can be done to support charities during difficult times. Now we’re back in London, we’ll continue to make the case for the importance of charities and see how we can learn the lessons from conference season to get more people backing Britain’s charities!