By Peter Gilheany, director at Forster Communications.
What additional support service do you think ACEVO should offer charity leaders? I’d suggest access to a chiropractor, considering how often leaders have to look both ways at once as they navigate all the challenges confronted by civil society organisations at the moment.
One of the biggest challenges is responding to the worsening crises facing people and planet and simultaneously taking action to improve how they operate and increase their diversity, equity and inclusion.
These are often positioned in opposition to each other, competing for attention and resources but I think that is based on two misconceptions:
- That the latter is a distraction from the urgency and priority of the former and;
- That you cannot take a lead on tackling the issues you were set up to confront until you have got your own house and approach to an issue like EDI completely in order.
Charities and grant-makers operate in complex environments and have long had to look both ways on these issues, but the importance of doing so has heightened with rising need and the parallel increase in scrutiny on organisations. It is imperative that charities and grant-makers seeking to deliver change don’t become paralysed by this, unable to make progress through fear of criticism or being called to account. To a certain extent, this is currently happening in the business world, with the growing phenomenon of green hush – businesses deliberately keeping quiet about their sustainability initiatives, targets and progress for fear of being called out for not doing enough, or not moving with enough speed.
With everything that is happening now, keeping your head down like this should not be an option for civil society organisations. What is needed is a combination of bravery, commitment and integration.
The bravery comes in the form of doing something that can be scary for organisations and leaders alike– communicating that you are a work in progress. Being open and responsive to criticism and recognising and communicating about mistakes you have made and the changes you are putting in place as a result.
The commitment comes not just from communicating this but from putting in place the resources for it to be more than communication. Ensuring that you have an infrastructure in place to monitor and evaluate your impact against internal and external goals and the capacity and capability to respond operationally to internal and external challenges and criticism.
The integration comes from recognising that the need to increase your equity, diversity and inclusion is integral to delivering against your mission, rather than being separate to or even a distraction from it. In some ways, the current approach to EDI in civil society organisations is similar to where CSR was for businesses 5 years ago – something that sat outside their core operation, that they felt they needed to address primarily because of pressure from stakeholders like staff, customers and regulators, but not central to their success. CSR has since been almost entirely swallowed up by sustainability as a central driver for businesses, on which many are pivoting everything that they do. It would be great if civil society organisations could learn from that, so they can skip the five-year transition and move directly to placing EDI at the heart of their work.
This is getting increasingly critical by the day with seemingly never-ending political inertia, the escalating cost of living crisis, the exhausting but somehow inexhaustible and mutating “culture wars” and the conflict in Ukraine. Put simply, one won’t fully succeed without the other. Organisations have to look both ways.
