Foreword
This report was researched and largely written before Covid-19 took hold. The pandemic has affected every part of life as we know it. But the virus has placed a particularly heavy load on sections of society where BAME people are over-represented – among those living in poverty, in low-paid and precarious work, and in key worker roles. This over-representation is not coincidental but a result of the ways in which racism is embedded in our socio-economic
arrangements (Khan, 2020; Pidd, Barr and Mohdin, 2020).
The crisis has also taken its toll on the charity sector. Some charities have been inundated with demands as they try to service populations and organisations heavily impacted by the virus and also the fallout from efforts to combat Covid-19. This is perhaps particularly the case with small charities close to often-excluded populations that mainstream charities and the state can find ‘hard to reach’.
This situation means that BAME populations may be over-reliant on self-help and on often under-resourced BAME-led specialist organisations. Even where there is, potentially, money available to help BAME populations and BAME organisations, there is little in the way of pipelines to get resources to where they are urgently needed.
Before Covid-19 hit home, this report was calling for the charity sector to prioritise racial and ethnic diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Additionally, as is made self-evident by the fallout from Covid-19, there is a need to reinvest in BAME-led charities and civil society. In part this is to hold mainstream charities to account for what they do and don’t do to support and service BAME populations. But, crucially, this investment is also needed to enable BAME-led charities and civil society to play a full and equal part in the post-crisis reconstruction of the charity sector and wider society.
The aim is to create a healthy ‘ecosystem’ for change. That is, one that features a complementary relationship between mainstream and BAME-led charitable endeavours to ensure equitable progress in society so that all people are properly supported and protected from harm, both in everyday life and in crises.
But while the need to combat structural racism and advance DEI is perhaps clearer than ever, in the midst of the pandemic the conditions for change may have also deteriorated.
Many charities will have lost income as they are unable to deliver projects and contracts or generate revenues from events and fundraising. Furthermore, charitable funders – rightly – have increased short-term spending to support some organisations through the crisis, and this may affect the availability of future funding, including money for investment in sector initiatives on DEI.
In these circumstances, charity efforts for greater diversity inside the sector and for race equity in wider society could be deferred indefinitely in favour of ‘steadying the ship’. But, as the research in this report shows and anti-racists note (Charity So White, 2020), the status quo does not deliver DEI or undo racism.
We cannot wait for the ‘good times’ to return to the charity sector before we prioritise DEI approaches and positive life outcomes for BAME people. Instead we must, more urgently than ever, rethink and reconstruct who we are as a sector, how we work and what we do. By prioritising the best in charity values, we can use the crisis to come together to undo structural disadvantage and racism in society and to replace it with equity and justice by design.
