Speaking and events

An argument worth
arguing with.

Mark Goodway MBE speaks to funders, charity leaders, public-system commissioners, employers and students about hidden and transferred cost: why the same pressures keep returning, who is actually paying for them, and what a different set of decisions would look like.

Invite Mark to speak Tell us about the event and we will come back with a figure and availability.

The talks

Four arguments, adapted to your room.

Each is built from the same body of work and shaped to the audience in front of it. Titles are a starting point, not a menu: most organisers want something aimed squarely at the question their delegates are already arguing about.

For any audience

The 50p Lettuce

Why efficient systems fail the people they serve. The argument of the book, delivered as a keynote: how a system learns to make its true costs invisible, and what that has done to welfare, housing and crisis support.

Funders and grant-makers

When applications outrun assessment

Volume has risen, quality has become harder to judge, and the cost of the process has shifted onto applicants who never learn why they failed. What the volume is really telling you about how the funding system decides.

Employers

The pressure your people carry into work

Housing, caring, debt, health and crisis arrive at work as absence, turnover, overtime and agency cost. Why wellbeing programmes cannot reach the source, and what can.

Boards, universities and students

Rebuilding Lives

What fifteen years on the frontline actually taught us: building an alternative crisis support model, what it prevented, what it cost, and why the funding system could not see the difference.

Cut the cost here and it reappears there, larger, later, and on someone else’s budget. The question is never whether we can afford prevention. It is who is already paying for its absence.

Formats

Three ways to use the time.

Most common

Keynote or conference session

Forty-five minutes and questions, or a shorter slot if the programme demands it. Written for the specific audience, with material they can act on rather than applaud.

In person or remote · fee agreed in advance · travel charged at cost

Conversation formats

Panel, interview or webinar

Chaired discussion, in-conversation sessions, podcasts and webinars. Useful where the organiser wants challenge and disagreement in the room rather than a single view from the front.

Typically 30 to 60 minutes · fee agreed in advance

Teaching and development

Workshop or lecture

For universities, professional bodies and leadership programmes: a taught session with structured exercises, taking a group through the method rather than the conclusions.

Half or full day · fee agreed in advance

A different thing

Board and leadership sessions

Working with your own leadership team on your own problem is advisory work, not a talk. It is a Systems Leadership Session, and it is scoped and priced differently.

See How we work →

All speaking engagements are paid. Fees reflect the format, the preparation involved and travel, and are confirmed in writing before the date is held. Copies of The 50p Lettuce can be included for attendees at a rate agreed with the organiser, which many events use in place of a delegate pack.

Mark Goodway MBE

The speaker

Mark Goodway MBE

MBE 2023 BBC Panorama The Guardian Bloomberg Finalist Author

Former Chief Executive of The Matthew Tree Project, named Best Crisis Support Programme (UK) and Most Innovative Social Mobility Change Model at the 2024 Non-Profit Organisation Awards, and the designer of the Rebuilding Lives model: an integrated approach to crisis support that demonstrably prevented homelessness at a fraction of the cost of responding after it occurs.

Author of The 50p Lettuce, published 24 September 2026 by Spero Cura Publishing.

He originated and led Bristol’s entry to the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge, the Learn, Grow, Eat Revolution, one of twenty-one finalists chosen from 155 European cities in 2014. He has given evidence to an APPG inquiry, sat on the Bristol Fairness Commission expert panel, and been featured by BBC Panorama, BBC Inside Out West and The Guardian. He was awarded the MBE in 2023 for services to disadvantaged people and charity.

"The learning accumulated over fifteen years of frontline delivery can now do more good in the hands of the many."

Invitations

Tell us about
your event.

The more you can tell us about the audience and what you want them to leave with, the better the session will be. We will come back with availability, a fee and a proposed shape for the slot.

Email info@goodwayadvisory.com
Telephone 020 3137 6038
Lead time Conference programmes are usually set months ahead. Webinars and network sessions can often be arranged more quickly.